Seeking the Otherwise: Attending to the Complexities of Listening

This article presents our attempt to move beyond both developmental and Reggio Emilia guidelines for listening. We situate our efforts within our wounded colonial context—what is now called Victoria, British Columbia. Our effort is to begin to consider listening within unequal spaces of power, and to wonder what ethics such arrangements might require. In our engagements with clay and stones with the children, we noticed the sound the stones and clay made. In this article, we work with several stories of our investigations into sound, which have helped us to think about the complexities of listening in childcare spaces.