Call for Papers: Emergent Strategy in Early Childhood Care and Education

We invite completed papers for our issue that will showcase work that engages with, is inspired by, or aligns with the ideas explained in adrienne maree brown’s (2017) Emergent Strategy, as well as related work grounded in intentionality, relationality, interdependence, decentralization, and justice and equity, with a focus on what we are working towards. Aligning with the Emergent Strategy framework, we alsoopen up possibilities and welcome papers that do not explicitly name their frameworks as ‘Emergent Strategy,’ but are engaging in similar work that explores how these ideas live in early childhood care and education (ECCE) and/or teacher education.

Moving beyond ‘anti’ or deficit-based approaches, this issue highlights work that is responsive and grounded in desire-based (Tuck, 2009) approaches, not just critique. To ground us in this work, we ask: what becomes possible when the principles of Emergent Strategy meet Early Childhood Care and Education and/or Teacher Education? We are particularly interested in work that engages in the intersections of ECCE and activism, social justice, and community-based work. We also recognize that this work has existed long before brown’s (2017) Emergent Strategy was published, especially within Black and Indigenous-led, and countless grassroots social justice-oriented movements and research. This issue seeks to honour and make visible these histories of activism in education, while bringing together these ideas to showcase the possibilities of anchoring our work in Emergent Strategy. Therefore, although your work may not name ‘Emergent Strategy’ as its framework, we welcome any related manuscripts that engage with questions, such as:

How do Emergent Strategy principles inform relational, loving, justice-oriented work with children and educators?

How are educators, families, and communities enacting relational, purposeful pedagogies, policies, and/or collective care that challenge white settler colonialism, racism, and neoliberal logics in ECCE?

How can decolonial, desire-based, and emergent approaches help reimagine ECCE and/or teacher education beyond critique and towards liberatory possibilities?

What tensions, challenges, or incongruities arise when activism meets institutional, policy, and/or everyday ECCE or teacher education contexts?

How can research methodologies in ECCE reflect the values of Emergent Strategy, including reciprocity, accountability, and relationality?

We welcome theoretical or conceptually based papers, empirical research, collaborative community-engaged projects, and creative or multi-modal work. We encourage work that highlights how we do research is just if not more important than what we’re researching.

This issue does not aim to define Emergent Strategy within ECCE, but to open up possibilities of bridging the ideas in brown’s (2017) work with the many ways educators, researchers, and communities are already doing this work, most often in small, relational, and powerful ways. We invite you to reimagine ECCE and create multiple possibilities through small actions that might ‘trickle up’ to the larger systems through fractals, intentional adaptation, interdependence, decentralization, nonlinear iterative change, resiliency, transformative justice, and creating more possibilities (brown, 2017).

Submission Details:

Submit full, completed work by December 1, 2026, on the JCP website

Maximum 8000 words (including references)

For traditional manuscripts, please use this template (including the abstract, keywords, and completed anonymous manuscript)

For more information about formatting and APA 7 requirements, please see our submissions page

Submissions will be sent for double-blind peer review and authors will be contacted with results and/or more information following that stage. For more information, please feel free to contact Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Shawna M. Carroll at shawnacarroll (at) capilanou.ca.

References

brown, a. m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press. 

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409-427. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15