Iris Berger

Dr. Iris Berger

Associate Professor of Teaching

she / her / hers

Biography

Dr. Iris Berger has been involved in the field of early childhood education as a classroom teacher, researcher, community organizer, policy consultant, and university instructor since the mid 1990s. At the centre of her pedagogical inquiries lies the abiding notion that matters pertaining to education and childhood are entangled with question of ethics and politics. To this end, Dr. Berger has developed a special interest in rethinking leadership in early childhood education with an interest in storytelling as a form of participation and political action.

In her teaching, Dr. Berger focuses on creating pedagogical spaces that convey a sense of welcoming and possibilities for collaborative thinking, dialogue, and engagement; while at the same time, provoking intellectual ‘restlessness’ and questioning that invite an experience of ‘awakening’ to new ideas and perspectives. She strives to convey that knowledge is dynamic, always situated and incomplete and thus each one of us has something unique to contribute to the ongoing (necessary) conversations about the purpose(s) and form(s) of education

Projects

Doing Sustainable Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education
https://blogs.ubc.ca/doingsustainablepedagogies/about/

Awards & Honours

Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies’ Virtual Roundtables Award 2020-2021

UBC Sustainability Office Grant (2015, with Dr. Hartley Banack)

Dissertation Award. Awarded by the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society (2014)

Selected Publications

Berger, I. (2024)

Intimately Situated Stories of Place: Activating Place-Centered Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education. Palgrave Macmillan.

Berger, I., Ashton, E., Lehrer, J., Pighini, M. (2022)

Slowing, Desiring, Haunting, Hospicing, and Longing for Change: Thinking With Snails in Canadian Early Childhood Education and Care. in education, Vol. 28 No. 1b (2022). https://doi.org/10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.658

Ashton, E., Berger, I., Maeers, E., Paquette, A. (2022)

Editorial: Sketching Narratives of Movement in Early Childhood Education and Care. in education, Vol. 28 No. 1b (2022). https://doi.org/10.37119/ojs2022.v28i1b.682

Berger, I. & Argent, A. (2020)

Life as a pedagogical concept. In W. Kohan & B. Weber (Eds.) On Childhood, Thinking and Time: Educating Responsibly. Lexington Books.

Berger, I., & van Groll, N. (May, 2020)

Health and Outdoor Environments in Early Childhood Education: Dwelling in Complexities. The Early Childhood Educator of BC.

Banack, H. & Berger, I. (2019).

The emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia: A meandering story. Children’s Geographies. DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2019.1590527

Vintimilla, C. & Berger, I. (2019).

Colaboring: Within collaboration degenerative processes. In D. H. Hodgins (Ed.). (2019). Feminist Research for 21st-century Childhoods: Common Worlds Methods. (pp. 187-196). Bloomsbury Publishing.

Banack, H., Beattie, E., Berger, I., Montague, A., & Strich, D. (2018).

Acts of reading and gathering in place: “Our stories so Far…” Eco-Thinking, 1.

Berger, I. (2015). Educational leadership with an ethics of plurality and natality. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 34(5), 475-487.

Berger, I. (2015). Pedagogical narrations and leadership in early childhood education as thinking in moments of not knowing. Journal of Childhood Studies, 40(1), 130-147.

Berger, I. (2010). Extending the notion of pedagogical narration through Hannah Arendt’s political thought. In V. Pacini Ketchabaw (Ed.) Flows, Rhythms, and Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum (pp.57-76). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.