Books

​Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education

By Fikile Nxumalo​
​Link to Publisher

This book draws attention to the urgent need for early childhood education to critically encounter and pedagogically respond to the entanglements of environmentally damaged places, anti-blackness, and settler colonial legacies. Drawing from the author’s multi-year participatory action research with educators and children in suburban settings, the book highlights Indigenous presences and land relations within ongoing settler colonialism as necessary, yet often ignored, aspects of environmental education. Chapters discuss topics such as: geotheorizing in a capitalist society, absences of Black place relations, and unsettling unquestioned Western assumptions about nature education. Rather than offer prescriptive solutions, this book works to broaden possibilities and bolster the conversation among teachers and scholars concerned with early years environmental education.

Disrupting and Countering Deficits in Early Childhood Education

Edited By Fikile Nxumalo and Christopher P. Brown​
Link to Publisher​

​This powerful edited collection disrupts the deficit-oriented discourses that currently frame the field of early childhood education (ECE) and illuminates avenues for critique and opportunities for change. Researchers from across the globe offer their insight and expertise in challenging the logic within ECE that often frames children and their families through gaps, risks, and deficits across such issues as poverty, language, developmental psychology, teaching, and learning. Chapters propose practical responses to these manufactured crises and advocate for democratic practices and policies that enable ECE programs to build on the wealth of cultural and personal knowledge children and families bring to the early learning process. Moving beyond a dependence on deficits, this book offers opportunities for scholars, researchers, and students to consider their practices in early education and develop their understanding of what it means to be an educator who seeks to support all children.

Journeys: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Practices through Pedagogical Narration

By Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Fikile Nxumalo, Laurie Kocher, Enid Elliot, and Alejandra Sanchez
Link to Publisher

Inspired by the idea of documentation as a valuable tool for making learning visible, pedagogical narration offers an opportunity to move beyond checklists and quick answers to a more complex understanding of how children learn, and how teachers might facilitate and support that learning in innovative ways. The authors use stories they collected during a collaborative study to offer a range of possibilities for alternative childhood pedagogies. Cutting edge, yet practical; detailed in its analysis, yet inspiring, this book is a boon to the field of early childhood and primary education studies.

Book chapters

Nxumalo, F., Mate, A. & Mate, L. (2025). Mother-daughter (re)turns: Storying early childhood encounters with difference. In G. Badoni, S. Cinquemani, E. Garber, & M. McClure (Eds.), Transformative motherscholarship and art: Public pedagogies of childhood. Bloomsbury.  

Nxumalo, F. & Brant, J. (2024). Decolonizing Praxis: Thinking with pedagogical place encounters. Invited peer reviewed chapter In: Teaching as radical logic: Dialectic, analectic, and education. N. De Lissovoy, R. Olmo, F. Bailón, & A. Armonda (Eds.) Lexington Books.

Nxumalo, F. (2024). Meditation: On refusing to stay in one’s designated place. In: Walking away: Refusing and resisting reactionary curriculum movements. A. B. Pratt; K. Donley, S. Hatch, S. Tharp & F.  Calderon-Berumen (Eds). Information Age Publishing. (open peer reviewed)

Rotas, N., Nxumalo, F., Higgins, M., Madden, M. & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2024). Doing Homework: Encountering Indigenous and new materialist onto-epistemologies in educational research. In F. Colman & I. van der Tuin (Eds), Methods and genealogies of new materialisms. Edinburgh University Press. 

Nxumalo, F. & Wallace, M.F.G. (2022). In conversation with Fikile Nxumalo: Refiguring onto-epistemic attunements for im/possible science pedagogies. In M. F. G. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert (Eds). Reimagining science education in the Anthropocene (pp. 321-330). Palgrave MacMillan. 
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Nxumalo, F., Diaz-Diaz, C., Semenec, P. (2020). Interview with Fikile Nxumalo, In C. Diaz-Diaz and P. Semenec (Eds.), Posthumanist and new materialist methodologies (pp. 195-203). New York: Springer.

Nxumalo, F. & Berg, L. (2020). Conversations on climate change pedagogies in a Central Texas kindergarten classroom. In J A. Henderson & A. Drewes (Eds), Teaching climate change in the United States (pp. 44-57). New York: Routledge.  

Nxumalo, F. with Villanueva, M. (2020). (Re)storying Water: Decolonial pedagogies of relational affect with young children. In B. Dernikos, N. Lesko, S. D. McCall & A. Niccolini (Eds.), Mapping the affective turn in education: Theory, research, and pedagogy (pp. 209-228). New York: Routledge.
 
Nxumalo, F. & Villanueva, M. ( 2020). Listening to water: Situated dialogues between Black, Indigenous & Black-Indigenous feminisms. In ^C. Taylor, ^C. Hughes, & J. Ulmer (Eds.), Transdisciplinary feminist research practices: Innovations in theory, method and practice (pp. 59-75). New York: Routledge.
 
Nxumalo, F. (2019). Disrupting racial capitalist formations in early childhood education. In F. Nxumalo & C.P. Brown (Eds.), Disrupting and countering deficits in early childhood education (pp. 164-178). New York: Routledge. 
 
Nxumalo, F. (2019). Presencing: Decolonial attunements to children’s place relations. In. D. Hodgins (Ed.), Feminist research for 21st-Century childhoods: Common worlds methods (pp159-168). London: Bloomsbury.
 
Nxumalo, F. & Rubin, J.C. (2018). Encountering waste landscapes: more-than-human place literacies in early childhood education. In C.R. Kuby, K. Spector & J. Johnson Thiel (Eds.), Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/Being/Doing Literacies (pp. 201-213). New York: Routledge. 
 
Nxumalo, F. (2016). Touching place in childhood studies: Situated encounters with a community garden. In H.Skott-Myhre, V. Pacini-Ketchabaw, & K. Skott-Myhre (Eds.), Youth work, early education, and psychology: Liminal encounters (pp. 131-158). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 
Nxumalo, F. (2015). Forest stories:  Restorying encounters with ‘natural’ places in early childhood education. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw, & A. Taylor (Eds), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 21-42). New York: Routledge.

Nxumalo, F. (2014). Inhabiting relational becomings in early childhood education. In H. Skott-Myhre & C. Little (Eds.), Troubling multiculturalism (pp.107-128). New York: Routledge.  

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2014). Posthumanist imaginaries for decolonizing early childhood praxis. In M. Bloch, B. Swadener, & G. Cannella (Eds.), Reconceptualizing early childhood care and education: Critical questions, new imaginaries and social activism – a Reader (pp. 131-142). New York: Peter Lang.  

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2013). Re-generating research partnerships in early childhood education: A non-idealized vision. In J. Duncan & L. Conner (Eds), Research partnerships in early childhood education: Teachers and researchers in collaboration (pp.11-26). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.  

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. & Nxumalo, F. (2012). Unpacking racialization through pedagogical documentation: Exploring nomadic practices.  In A. Fleet, C. Patterson, & J. Robertson (Eds.), Conversations about Pedagogical Documentation (pp. 259-272). Castle Hill: Pademelon Press.  

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. & Nxumalo, F. (2010). A curriculum for social change: experimenting with politics of action or imperceptibility. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw (Ed.), Flows, rhythms & intensities of early childhood education curriculum (pp. 133-154). New York: Peter Lang.

journal articles 

Sezen Barrie, A., Windschitl, M. & Nxumalo, F. (2025). Transformative climate and environmental education for a just future. Invited commentary article. Science Education., 109(3),715-721.  ​

Nxumalo, F. & Nayak, P. (2024). Propositions for anticolonial belonging in Canadian early childhood environmental education. Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/09075682241289544

Nxumalo, F. & Peers, J. (2024). Reconceptualizing early childhood education: cartographic relational stories. Global Studies of Childhood. 14(3), 306-317.  https://doi.org/10.1177/20436106241267834

Nxumalo, F., Downey, C., & Franklin, N. (2024). Thinking with Black ecologies in early childhood education. Journal of Childhood Studies, 49(2), 47-56.

Nxumalo, F. (2023). Pedagogías decoloniales del agua: invitaciones para hacer mundos negros, indígenas y negre/afro-indígenas (Trad. Anamaría Garzón Mantilla). Post(s), 9, 90-103. Quito: USFQ Press.   https://doi.org/10.18272/posts.v9i1.3123

Nxumalo, F., & Montes, P. (2023). Encountering creative climate change pedagogies: Cartographic interruptions. Research in Education https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237231207493

Nxumalo, F., & Tuck, E. (2023). Creating openings for co-theorizing. Qualitative Inquiry, 29(1), 137–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221095053 

Nxumalo, F. & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2022). Centering Black life in Canadian early childhood education. 35(2), 186-198. ​Gender & Education. DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2022.2050680

Nxumalo, F. (2021). Disrupting anti-Blackness in early childhood qualitative inquiry: Thinking with Black refusal and Black futurity. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(10), 1191-1199. 

Nxumalo, F., & Montes, P. (2021). Pedagogical commitments for climate justice education. Connected Science Learning, 3(5). https://www.nsta.org/connected-science-learning/connected-science-learning-september-october-2021/pedagogical
 
Nxumalo, F. (2021). Centering place in early childhood literacies: Thinking with Black geographies. Research in the Teaching of English. 56(1), 109-111. 

Nxumalo, F. (2021). Decolonial water pedagogies: Invitations to Black, Indigenous and Black-Indigenous world making. Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 45, https://www.bankstreet.edu/research-publications-policy/occasional-paper-series/ops-45/decolonial-water-pedagogies/

Murris, K., Francis, S., Babamia, S., Nxumalo, F., Bozalek, V., & Giorza, T. (2020). Decolonial orientations to place: Unsettling encounters with South African educational landscapes.  Equity and Excellence in Education, 53(3), 288-303.

Nxumalo, F. (2020). Place-based disruptions of humanism, coloniality and anti-Blackness  in early childhood education. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 8 (SI), 34-49.
 
Nxumalo, F., Cook, C., Rubin, J.C., Hendrix Soto, A.E., Cedillo, S. , & Scott, M.R. (2020). Staying with the trouble: grapplings with the more-than-human in a qualitative inquiry course. Qualitative Inquiry, 26 (1), 24–35.
 
Nxumalo, F. & Villanueva, M. (2019). Decolonial water stories: Affective pedagogies with young children. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, 7(1), 40-56. 
 
Nxumalo, F. & ross, k.m. (2019). Envisioning Black space in environmental education for young  children. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 22 (4,)502-524.

Nxumalo, F., Vintimilla, C.D, & Nelson, N. (2018). Pedagogical gatherings in early childhood    education: Mapping interferences in emergent curriculum. Curriculum Inquiry, 48 (4), 433-453.
 
Nelson, N., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2018). Rethinking nature-based approaches in early childhood: Common worlding practices. Journal of Childhood Studies, 43 (1), 4-14.

Nxumalo, F. (2018). Stories for living on a damaged planet: Environmental education in a preschool classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 16 (2), 148–159.

Nxumalo, F. & Rotas, N. (Eds., 2018). Editorial: Interdisciplinary dialogues in environmental early childhood education. Journal of Childhood Studies, 43 (1), 1-3.
 
Nxumalo, F. & Cedillo, S. (2017). Decolonizing ‘place’ in early childhood studies: Thinking with Indigenous onto-epistemologies and Black feminist geographies. Global Studies of Childhood, 7 (2), 99-112.
 
Nxumalo, F. & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2017). “Staying with the trouble” in child-insect-educator common worlds. Environmental Education Research, 23(10), 1414-1426.

Article reprinted as book chapter In: Urban nature and childhoods (2019). Eds. K. Malone, I. Duhn & M.Tesar. New York: Routledge.
 
Nxumalo, F. (2017). Geotheorizing mountain-child relations within anthropogenic inheritances. Children’s Geographies, 15(5), 558-569.

Nxumalo, F. (2016). Storying practices of witnessing: Refiguring quality in everyday pedagogical encounters. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17 (1) 39-53.

Nxumalo, F. (2016). Towards ‘refiguring presences’ as an anti-colonial orientation to research in early childhood studies.  International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29 (5), 640-654.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. & Nxumalo, F. (2015). Unruly raccoons and troubled educators: Nature/culture divides in a childcare centre. Environmental Humanities, 7, 151-168. 
 
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., di Tomasso, L., & Nxumalo, F. (2014). Bear-child stories in late liberal colonialist spaces of childhood. Canadian Children, 38 (3), 26-55.
 
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Nxumalo, F., & Rowan, C. (2014). Researching neoliberal and neocolonial assemblages in early childhood education. International Review of Qualitative Research, 7 (1), 39–57.
 
Nxumalo, F. (2012). Unsettling representational practices: Inhabiting relational becomings in early childhood education. Child & Youth Services Journal, 33 (3-4), 281-302.

Nxumalo, F., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Rowan, C. (2011). Lunch time at the child care centre: neoliberal assemblages in early childhood education. Journal of Pedagogy, 2 (2),195-223.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Nxumalo, F., & Rowan, C. (2011). Nomadic research practices in early childhood: interrupting racisms and colonialisms. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 2 (1), 19-33.

Journal special issues

McKenzie, M., Henderson, J. & Nxumalo, F., (2023). Climate change and educational research: mapping resistance and futurities. Research in Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237231203

​Nxumalo F., Nayak, P & Tuck, E. (2022). Education and ecological precarity: Pedagogical, curricular & conceptual provocations. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(2), 97-107.

Nxumalo, F. & Gitari, W. (2021). Introduction to the Special Theme on responding to anti-Blackness in Science, Mathematics, Technology and STEM Education. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-021-00160-8

Nxumalo, F. & Vintimilla, C.D. (2020) Explorations of the tensions and potentials of de-centering the human in early childhood education research. Equity & Excellence in Education, 53(3), 271-275.  
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Nxumalo, F. & Rotas, N. (Eds., 2018). Interdisciplinary dialogues in environmental early childhood education. Journal of Childhood Studies, 43(1), 1-3.

Public Scholarship

University of Toronto Magazine (Autumn 2024). Gardens for Change.

Nxumalo, F. (August 2024). Interview with Fikile Nxumalo on Black ecologies in early childhood education by Amira Babeiti, University of Toronto, School of Cities.

Nxumalo, F. & Tan, S. (August 2024). Designing for climate justice education: Learning with Black ecologies. University of Toronto School of Cities, City Research Insight Volume 3, Issue 4. 

Nxumalo, F. (May 2024). Absenting. 

Nxumalo, F. & Knology Team at BlackRep4Kids (May 2024) Black ecologies and interdisciplinary climate storytelling. BlackRep4Kids Research Project Newsletter. 

Nxumalo, F. & Greene, E. (2024). Black ecologies in early childhood education: storytelling for livable futures. Podcast episode for: Black Representation: Authoring STEM stories for climate risk preparedness (BlackRep4Kids). 

Nxumalo, F. & Pacini-Ketchabaw (2023). Studying: An invitation to early childhood education. (Editorial) PNO Magazine. Editorial for Issue 5 

Nxumalo F. (2022). Thinking with Black ecologies in educational research. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK). Issue 13-Wading.  Blackwood gallery. University of Toronto Mississauga.

Fikile Nxumalo’s Decolonizing place in early childhood education.
Interview by Roberto Sirvent for the Black Agenda Report Book Forum. 01/29/20    

What can flooding events teach about multispecies interdependencies and relationality? 
By Berg, L. Nxumalo, F. & Odim, N. 2018
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​How climate change education is hurting the environment
By Nxumalo, F., The Hill. 12/24/18

Handbook ​chapters

Craig, JP. & Nxumalo, F. (2025). Anti-colonial theories. Invited chapter In J. Prioletta, A. Davies & K. Smith (Eds.) Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Early Childhood. Bloomsbury Publ.  

Nxumalo, F., Pérez, M. S., Barces, A., Castillo, J., Doherty, M., Holmes, Z., Nah, J. & Phillips, I. (2024). Insights on feminist transdisciplinarity and Dr. Fikile Nxumalo’s ‘Decolonizing place in early childhood education.’ In J. B. Ulmer, C. Hughes, M. S. Pérez, & C. A. Taylor (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of transdisciplinary feminist research and methodological praxis (pp. 350-355). Routledge. 

Nxumalo, F., Odim, N, & Smith, A. (2021). Black geographies in early childhood studies. In Yelland, N.J., Peters, L., Fairchild, N., Tesar, M., & Perez, M. (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of global childhoods.  London, UK: SAGE.
 
Nxumalo, F., Gargliadi L-M. & Won, H.R, (2020) Inquiry-based curriculum in early childhood education. In: Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1064 
 
Nxumalo, F. & Adair, J.K. (2019). Social justice and equity in early childhood education. In C.P. Brown, M. McMullen, & N. File (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood care and education (pp. 661-682). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Blackwell Publishing.
 
Nxumalo, F. (2018). Situating Indigenous and Black childhoods in the Anthropocene. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie, K. Malone, & E. Barratt Hacking (Eds.), International research handbook on childhoodnature: Assemblages of childhood and nature research (pp. 1-22). New York: Springer.

If you would like a PDF copy of any of my articles or chapters, please contact me.