This article considers the role of early childhood education within these uncertain times of human induced climate change. It draws from feminism and environmental humanities to experiment with different ways of becoming-with the world. By bringing together Donna Haraway’s figure of the Modest Witness and Deborah Bird Rose’s notion of witnessing, the article rethinks what it means to ‘observe’ in terms of ethical response-ability and matters of concern. Data from a multisensory and multispecies ethnography are used to illuminate the observational practices that commonly take place in early childhood settings. The article concludes by employing ‘lively stories’ showing how modest witness(ing) reworks early childhood observations traditionally considered apolitical, distanced, and judgmental towards meaning making as a form of entanglements and open-ended dialogue. Modest witness(ing) attempts to put into practice initial ethical and political pedagogies that early childhood teachers can draw from and begin to address matters of concern in their own settings.

As teachers, researchers, caregivers, and people who take care of young children, we are often in conversation with children. These conversations are complex, filled with child and adult interactions. Further, both the child and the adult hold various levels of power, and work as a group within the interaction. As an artist and early childhood educator, these considerations are central to the author's own rethinking of adult-child conversations as aesthetic experiences. Through the observation and documentation of several adult—child conversations with three preschoolers, the author attempts to understand when an adult—child conversation is an aesthetic experience, as well as to negotiate the power present within the interaction. Further, the author discusses the implications of the experience on her own practice and future research.

Neoliberalism, capitalist ideas, and the disastrous human-induced state of the environment are evidence of the lack of connection between humans and the earth, calling for a rethinking of the relationships between humans and the planet. As early childhood educators, we wonder about our role in rethinking these relationships and in particular, the relationship between children and planet. In this article, we articulate the actions and positioning of teachers in three different research studies and various contexts (Victoria, AUS; Oregon, USA; California, USA) utilizing Latour’s (2004) ‘matters of concern’ as a framework to rethink engagement and relationality. Each project considers how place can be a provocation that makes visible the entanglement of children, families, teachers, and the more-than-human as a way to rethink pedagogy. The limitations, tensions, and possibilities that occur within and across these entanglements are explored, highlighting how the enacted practices could disrupt dominant early childhood discourses and practices.

In response to dominant discourses of quality and an over-reliance on humancentric practice, the Learning with Place framework emerges as an innovative way to rethink practices, structures, and policies within education and beyond. ‘Learning with Place’ views the local Place as agentic, recognising Place as inclusive of local First Nations knowledges and stories, histories and the more-than-human (for example, landforms, waterways, animals, insects, flora, and fauna). Through ‘Learning with Place’, deep relationships with the local Place are generated and these relationships become the catalyst for actions and decision-making regarding caring for/with local Place. This article offers an example of ‘Learning with Place’ in action through an early childhood teacher education program and shares ways in which the framework can be utilised in multiple contexts and disciplines.

This article shares two research projects in the United States and Australia where children and teachers lead their local communities towards living well in precarious times. Rooted in the image of ‘children as citizens of the now’, the research projects offer innovative pedagogies as a way for children to generate meaningful relationships with community and local places. Specifically, children, families, teachers and researchers bring questions and curiosities from their everyday lives that activate teaching and learning with and from the world through the concepts of slowing down, noticing and engaging with multiple perspectives.