Time to Think: Enacting Slow Pedagogy: What Covid-19 taught us about time, pace and pedagogy in ECEC

This book presents how slow pedagogy emerged in ECEC during the Covid‑19 pandemic, showing how educators’ everyday responses reshaped pedagogical practice. It examines the core elements of slow pedagogy in action and explores how organisations may be enabled to expand slow pedagogy beyond the pandemic, realizing sustainable ECEC into the future. Amid the ruptures of the Covid‑19 pandemic, early childhood educators were compelled to rethink their pedagogical practice. This book uncovers how the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic created time and space for slow pedagogy to emerge, embracing presence, connectedness and a slower pace. Drawing on rich empirical insights from two longitudinal qualitative ECEC research projects, it traces how intuitive responses to safety measures reshaped daily routines and interactions with children and revealed a slow ‘less is more’ approach to pedagogical practice, focused on fun and connecting with nature. The book then widens its lens to explore how organisations learned from this; examining what it takes to sustain and expand slow pedagogy beyond times of crisis. Thoughtful and timely, it offers a framework for re‑imagining early childhood education through the power of slowing down.