In a small village in the Ecuadorian Andes called Racar, plastics are intimately woven into social and ecological structures. These entanglements move beyond human control and generate toxic dependencies between humans, plastics, and others. This requires a pedagogical shift in how early childhood educators understand and respond to plastics.…

In an inquiry with young children at a small river beside a school in Cuenca, Ecuador, romanticizations of harmonious childhoods and pristine, even magical, river natures are in abundance. Using common worlds framings, this article interrupts purity in child-nature pedagogies. We argue that encountering the river as a site of contradiction, and as…