Creating spaces called hope: the critical leadership role of owner/managers in developing outdoor pedagogies for infants and toddlers

There is increasing concern about the ways in which neoliberalism is impacting Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), particularly in relation to infants and toddlers. The neoliberal agenda positions the outdoors as risky and a place to be physically active, potentially excluding the youngest children from these spaces. Drawing upon case study data from a larger project exploring outdoor provision for infants and toddlers in England, we demonstrate the critical leadership role owner/managers can play. They do this by creating different kinds of pedagogic spaces (cultural, physical, and reflective) for practitioners to develop their outdoor practices. We argue that the creation of such spaces involves what Freire (1970) terms ‘conscientization’ and requires explicit acts of resistance and disruption to neoliberal understandings about the place of infants and toddlers outdoors. Our research demonstrates the potential for owner/managers to act as critical pedagogues creating ‘spaces called hope’ (Christensen and Anderson 2012).