Time to Think: Enacting Slow Pedagogy

The impact of Covid-19 on ECEC

The findings of early studies on pandemic impacts on Irish ECEC, including implications for policy relating to children and young people, identified the lockdowns as challenging for both children and ECEC providers (Darmody, Smyth and Russell, 2020). While more vulnerable groups of children were most adversely effected (ibid.), research suggests that young children’s wellbeing was generally challenged due to lockdown measures and implications for ECEC practice (Early Childhood Ireland, 2020).

Covid-19 posed a unique challenge (United Nations, 2020) and forced educators to rethink learning provision (Timmons, Cooper, Bozek and Braund, 2021). Initially, remote learning platforms emerged as a way to stay connected, yet these platforms equated to the great unknown for educators of young children, who had little confidence in their ability to utilise technology as a learning tool (OECD, 2019), with research recommending training to enhance the technological competencies of educators (Chand Dayal and Tiko, 2020). Furthermore, remote initiatives are proven not to be as beneficial for learning as in-person engagement (Levickis, Murray, Lee-Pang, Eadie, Page, Lee and Hill, 2023), especially considering the deeply relational nature of young children’s learning. Despite these challenges, educators remained determined and sought ways to stay connected with children and families, necessarily through mostly virtual means. The partnership between educators and parents took on a particular significance in these early stages of the pandemic also, collaborating to support the learning of young children under unique circumstances (Chen and Rivera-Varnazza, 2023) as educators adapted their pedagogical practices (Bassok et al., 2020; Hallows, Haals Brosnan and O’Donnell, 2026).

Later, during phased reopening, new challenges emerged. Adult social distancing requirements remained in place, resulting in drop-off and pick-up protocols shifting to a system which ensured parents did not enter the ECEC setting. For parents, this resulted in increased reliance on educators for insight into their child’s day. The emergence of digital communication platforms such as WhatsApp, more typical amongst friends than the education landscape, shifted the relationship between educators and parents into a new space (cf. Hallows, Haals Brosnan and O’Donnell, 2026). Indeed, in research by See et al. (2020), parents expressed a preference for text messaging over more formal digital communication, such as email or setting-parent communication apps. Furthermore, concerns regarding potential outbreaks resulted in stringent reopening guidelines (Tusla, 2020; GoI, 2020), including reduced group sizes, reduction of resources and restrictions of activities. Physical spaces, daily routines and relationships, staples of ECEC, all suddenly required careful deliberation (Gomes, Almeida, Kaveri, Mannan, Gupta, Hu and Sarkar, 2021).

In considering the impact of the pandemic on educational practice, research on emergency education is relevant to consider. One of the core priorities of emergency education is the minimisation of risk to children. Where children’s education, care, routines and lives have been drastically interrupted by crisis, such as Covid-19, paramount is to provide them with a safe space, a return to normality, where they can build social relationships with other children and adults and learn to cope with what is happening (Winthrop and Kirk, 2008). Such an approach provides children with a sense of routine, stability and structure and, where possible, hope for the future (Bourn, 2021). It is evident in Irish educators’ reflections on the initial reopening of the ECEC settings that this was their intuitive goal of practice; intuitive because they did not label it as intentionally emergency education. In this intuitive prioritisation, educators challenged some of the most problematic Covid-19 specific regulations to provide the care and education for children they believed most appropriate in the context of the crisis. This application of the rules and regulations located ECEC settings as sites of resistance where Covid-19 rules were bent in subtle ways to re-empower children through responsive involvement, nurturing, care and joy.

The Irish context

ECEC in Ireland is an evolving landscape of policy and practice; often referred to as being in a state of flux and disarray (French et al., 2022; Hayes, 2021; Matson, 2020; Urban, 2020). The recent history of Irish ECEC paints a picture of chronic underfunding and bric-a-brac convolutions in policy development and implementation. Late arrival of the state in regulating and steering competent quality monitoring and development systems has been credited with negatively impacting the mixed provision of pedagogy and the lack of recognition of the unique nature of the professional work of ECEC educators in Ireland (Stallard, 2022; Urban, 2020). ECEC settings thus differ significantly in terms of organisation, management and adherence to regulations and guidelines. For this reason, Covid-19 impacted settings in different ways and prompted diverse responses, levels of reflection and interrogation of practice. However, true for many settings prior to the pandemic was a heightened attention to enacting a play-based approach responsive to children’s emergent interests, prioritising children’s agency and holistic learning although the extent to which this impacted on children’s daily lives and routines within settings was tied in with the type of setting and how it was set up. Common to many settings is a continued focus on structure and adult-led activities and navigating often ambiguous and difficult rules set out by the regulatory body and inspectorates.

The introduction of yet more guidelines through the Covid-19 prevention measures proved a difficult terrain for ECEC settings to navigate. Increasingly demanding policy expectations have led to ECEC educators reporting a sense of burnout, stress, confusion and disappointment with the current Irish ECEC system (Blackburne and Oke, 2022; Matson, 2020; Urban, 2020). This system operates under several, poorly streamlined regulatory, funding and inspection protocols, with settings accountable to several government departments and agencies and stringent demands arguably weakening quality (OECD, 2021).

Internationally, in public discourse, Covid-19 positioned ECEC as an essential public service to an extent not seen previously in many national contexts, including Ireland (Arndt et al., 2021). Covid-19 lockdowns significantly increased the demands of childcare within the home, met disproportionately by women (Craig and Churchill, 2021), thus reviving traditional gender roles (Arntz et al., 2020). The pandemic thereby highlighted the lack of appreciation for care, indicating that capitalist politics, which has long devalued the role of women (Molyneux, 1979), still plays a significant role in Irish society, care still considered the work of women (Lynch, 2022). This is evident when we consider Irish ECEC working conditions, despite improved quality, as deeply tied to the conditions and status afforded to educators (Sims et al., 2018). A decade ago, Moloney and Pope (2015) expressed concerns that still stand regarding working conditions and status. Their research drew attention to the stark reality that graduates felt ashamed of their qualifications, either leaving the sector or remaining disheartened and frustrated (ibid.). Concerningly, so many years on and despite growing appreciation for the role of ECEC, discussions regarding the professionalisation of the ECEC workforce are ongoing (Mooney Simmie and Murphy, 2021). While Covid-19 brought about a renewed appreciation for the importance of care and showcased the importance of ECEC for children and families, it has not elevated the status of educators longer-term. Amidst ongoing marketisation, government parties campaigning for reduced costs for parents (Fine Gale, 2024), the sector remains in the throes of a recruitment and retention crisis. As discussion of a public model emerges (O’Toole, Downing and McElheron, 2023), the one apparent certainty is that we have reached a crucial juncture for the future of ECEC in Ireland (Urban, 2025).

A stutter in the narrative

Clark (2023) writes of a ‘stutter’ instigated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused pause for reflection in a particular narrative about ECEC as profoundly neoliberal in nature. Similarly, Torres (2022: 6) writes: ‘this virus is revealing to us the limits of an abusive capitalistic ideology and its attendant political rationalities. As a result of this revelation, a reweaving of our current social and physical landscapes is taking place’. During the pandemic, our lives were immersed in ethical and political questions that had no clear answers or directions for action (Phelan and Hansen, 2021). This was as true for education as it was for society at large. Educators at all levels from early childhood to tertiary education had little steer and few clear answers regarding how to ‘pivot’ as educational settings closed. Few educators properly knew how to engage appropriate pedagogies in such times of ‘suspension’ of normal educational practices. Pedagogical innovation had to take place in the context of yet-unknown pandemic trends and profound uncertainties regarding length of closures, processes of reopening and necessary pandemic prevention measures. Innovation in such uncertain times is difficult and, because hereof, even more important. And innovation(s) took place. Glover, Myers and Collins (2024: 724) emphasise

times of crisis are often framed as fraught and challenging, impacting on professional identity and feelings of precarity via fear, anxiety, and doubt, previous studies on extreme work situations also highlight positive outcomes from overcoming difficulties, e.g. self-determination and a growth mindset.

Pandemic-induced critical reflection on practice encouraged, or forced, educators to rethink their practice and adapt to an ever-changing landscape (Haals Brosnan, Stallard and O’Donnell, 2025). Inadvertently and paradoxically, Covid-19, in all its rush, gave space for educators to find some autonomy and creativity, a common quality of liminal times and spaces. Land, Thomas, Todorovic and Sanders (2024) propose ‘crafting pedagogies with(in) suspension’ as a way to capture the complex pedagogical work that took place in the disruption and discontinuities brought by the pandemic. What did this process of ‘crafting pedagogies’ look like in the pivot time and subsequent reopening? Through educators’ reflections back on such a period, through their interrogation, reflection and innovation, we can learn lessons about early childhood education and care values and pedagogy and how we can employ these in preparing for and handling future crises, whether health, war or other crises. In the words of Phelan and Hansen (2021:16),

As human beings, we live paradoxically between ‘opposing forces’ that try ‘to take possession of our thoughts and actions’ (Kishik, 2012: 69). […] we should not rush to resolve the matter in either direction but pause to revisit and reappraise our guiding beliefs and values; it is in the absence of such reconsideration that a crisis becomes a catastrophe. […] we must, as Badiou (2001) argues, take time to open up and learn from the particular situation in which we find ourselves and not act as if we already know how it should be interpreted and handled. As educators, we ask: What might be the role of education in these viral times? How might we, as educators, keep the gravity of life bearable but also ‘thought-full’?

The ethico-political aspect (Phelan and Hansen, 2021) of such direction is significant. According to Clark (2023), the Covid-19 ‘stutter’ has potential to divest ECEC of its neoliberal torments and return it to its foundation in an ethics of care where children are given time and space to develop and learn in a holistic and nurturing manner, rather than for purely economic and human capitalist gains. Such change would certainly prevent a crisis turning to catastrophe, indeed, it may resolve the pre-pandemic ‘quality crisis’. In such a context, the stutter, the pedagogy through ‘suspension’, becomes an ethico-political activity resisting certain influences and taking charge of an uncharted territory. Torres (2022) invites us to consider the pandemic as a ‘great teacher’, an opportunity to decolonise teaching practice, positioning the pandemic as a tool for liberation and healing. This confounds our call to consider the pandemic a catalyst for a new radical and critical care-full pedagogy of slowness. Professional activity with potential for such resistance requires particular pedagogical knowledge and tact, or intuition, and happens in close tandem with the ecological landscape of pandemic interventions, political systems and educators’ delicate navigation of such for the children in their care.

Focus of the book

In this book, we formulate the theoretical foundations of slow ECEC pedagogy, as recently conceptualised by French et al (2022) and Alison Clark (2023). We do so through a deep empirical interrogation of practice in the Irish ECEC context and beyond, captured at a very specific moment in time when educators had to respond to the unprecedented crisis (in modern times) of Covid-19. We do this to provide a much needed and viable, sustainable, alternative formulation of quality ECEC in the face of the quality crisis caused by neoliberal influences on ECEC practice.