An expert in early years EDUCATION AND CARE

About me

Shaddai is currently a senior lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at Bath Spa University, where he is the programme leader for both the Early Childhood Studies Degree programme and the HUHST programme. Shaddai is also the International Students Lead (UG).

He is an associate lecturer at the Open University.

Shaddai created Critical Early Years in 2018 and has worked across a range of consultancy, advisory and training roles.

Shaddai is a Fellow (FHEA) and has completed the Diversifying Leadership programme with AdvanceHE. 

They serve on the international advisory committee for the Journal of Early Childhood Research and on the editorial board of Gender and Education. He contributes to the academic peer-review process.

Shaddai is a Director for the Early Education and Childcare Coalition. The coalition unites the voices of all those with a stake in the future of early education and care - children, parents, providers, the early education workforce, and the wider business community.

Shaddai is an expert advisor with the Bristol Early Years Anti-Racist Practice Forum.

Past

Shaddai was part of the working group for Birth to Five Matters Equality and Inclusion.

Until July 20026, Shaddai was also a trustee for the Fatherhood Institute, the UK’s leading think tank on fatherhood, and part of the steering group for the MITEY campaign.

Shaddai has published papers with the Journal of Early Childhood Research, Ethnicities, and Emotion, Space and Society.

He completed his PhD in 2022 at UWS. Shaddai received an MSc in Social Science Research Methods (Sociology) from the University of Bristol. His undergraduate is a BA (Hons) Education: Early Years from Bath Spa University.

Between, 2018-2022, Shaddai was a trustee for Early Education, a national charity supporting practitioners with training, resources and professional networks, and campaigning for quality education for the youngest children.

Shaddai was on the Project Advisory Group for the Comparative analysis of early years workforce policy in the four UK nations (EYW4N) project.

Shaddai was part of the systematic review advisory panel for the Froebel Trust-funded study, Froebelian Leadership in Early Years, and was part of the advisory group for the BERA-funded study, ‘Ethnicity and the Early Years Workforce’. He was on the steering group for the ESRC-funded study 'Gender Diversification in Early Years Education’.

Shaddai also co-convened the Scottish Educational Research Association (SERA) Early Years Network between 2018-2022. In October 2018, Shaddai featured on the BME Power List, showcasing Bristol's 100 most influential BME people.

He was on the leadership team for the Bristol Men in Early Years (BMIEY) Network for over three years.

Shaddai’s experience working in the early years is varied; he was part of the family support team within a children’s centre in central Bristol. He has worked as an early years practitioner in a range of PVI nurseries. During his time studying at the University of Bristol, Shaddai was a community liaison ambassador.

  • Date descending. Includes contributions and features.

    1. Tembo, S., Wilkinson, B., Blessitt, E., & Ruddick, I. (2025). What white people did next: Insights on building an anti-racist early years forum. Journal of Childhood, Education & Society, 6(3), 581–596. https://doi.org/10.37291/2717638X.202563651

    2. Tembo, S., & Jones, D. (2025). ‘Why don’t we teach loving who you are?’ Exploring the need for a positive racial literacy programme for young children . Journal of Childhood, Education & Society, 6(3), 650–665. https://doi.org/10.37291/2717638X.202563670

    3. Tembo, S., Dujczynski, M., & Sakr, M. (2024). ‘Maybe that makes a difference actually’: Attuning to praxis for anti-racist social justice leadership among nursery school head teachers in the UK. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 0(0).

    4. Tembo, S., & Bateson, S. (2024). Skin deep: A review of early childhood policy affordances for anti-racist practice in England and Scotland. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 0(0).

    5. Tembo, S., & Bateson, S. (2024). Before race: A literature review on de/colonial habits in play within early childhood. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X241241142

    6. Tembo, S. (2023) End discriminatory practices and prioritise meaningful inclusion. Early Education Journal No 101 - An agenda for the future. Available here

    7. Benham, F. and Tembo, S. (2023) Heteronormativity in early childhood: part two. Available here (Accessed 27 June 2023).

    8. Tembo, S. and Bentham, F. (2023) ‘Chapter 10: Gender and LGBTQ+ Inclusive Practice in Early Childhood’ in Nutbrown, C. (eds) Early Childhood Education: Current realities and future priorities. London. Sage.

    9. Tembo, S. (2022) Affective Sociomaterialisation: An Inquiry into Early Childhood Subjectivities within Outdoor Early Childhood Provision in Scotland, UK., University of the West of Scotland [Online] Available here (Accessed: 02 Jan 2023).

    10. Heywood, S. and Adzajlic, B. (2022) Challenging Gender Stereotypes in the Early Years. London. Routledge. (I contributed toward a section on men in the early years)

    11. Sakr, M. and Tembo, S. (2022) Ethnicity and the early years workforce in maintained nursery schools across England. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022)

    12. Benham, F. and Tembo, S. (2022) Heteronormativity in early childhood. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

    13. Tembo, S. (2022) Affective sociomaterialisation: An inquiry into early childhood subjectivities within outdoor early childhood provision in Scotland, UK. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

    14. Thomas, A. (2022) Representation Matters. London: Bloomsbury (I contributed a 1000-word section on racism in the early years).

    15. Tembo, S and Bateson, S. (2022) ‘Liminal relationalities: on collaborative writing with/in and against race in the study of early childhood.’ International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Available here

    16. Petrie, C. (2022) When should my child start doing chores? When they’re two, is the surprising answer from the experts. Available here

    17. Tembo, S. (2021). ‘Bodies out of place: Affective encounters with whiteness.’ Emotion, Space and Society. Availahle here

    18. Tembo, S. (2021). More work to do: thinking through equalities with young children in Scotland. Play is the Way. S. Palmer. Paisley, CCWB Press: 186-196.

    19. Gaywood, D., Collies, S., Tembo, S., Hutchin, V., and Bradbury, A. (2021) Developing a positive sense of self. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

    20. Dinnie, K. (2021) The MITEY UK and other methods: how to get more men to join the EYFS: An Interview with Early Education Expert Shaddai Tembo. Available here Accessed 10 Oct 2022)

    21. Latto, L. and Tembo, S. (2022) Posthumanism in Early Childhood: Implications for Practice. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

    22. Tembo, S. (2020). "Black educators in (white) settings: Making racial identity visible in Early Childhood Education and Care in England, UK." Journal of Early Childhood Research 19(1): 70-83. Available here

    23. Tembo, S. (2020). "‘Hang on, she just used that word like it’s totally easy’: Encountering ordinary racial affects in early childhood education and care." Ethnicities. Available here

    24. Pemberton, L. and Tembo, S. (2020) Foregrounding racial equalities in the Birth to 5 Matters guidance. Available at: https://www.criticalearlyyears.org/writing/2020/12/14/foregrounding-racial-equalities-in-the-birth-to-5-matters-guidance-dec-20. (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

    25. Nursery World. (2020) What does the early years sector want for the coming year?. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2020)

    26. Russell, MJ., (2020) Nursery Management: Diversity - In the minority. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2020)

    27. Tembo, S. (2018) We need to talk about racism. Available here (Accessed 10 Oct 2022).

My doctoral research

My PhD explored how young children come to form a sense of self through their encounters with people, materials, spaces, affects and social expectations within fully outdoor early childhood provision.

  • My PhD began with a question that still runs through my work: how do young children come to form a sense of self through the worlds they inhabit?

    The study took place at Wood Fire, a fully outdoor early childhood setting in Scotland. I followed the ordinary encounters through which children’s subjectivities took form: gathering around a tyre hill, dwelling in mud and puddles, moving in waterproofs, competing for dumper trucks, making friendships, and encountering weather, animals, sounds, bodily postures and spatial arrangements.

    These encounters affected what children could do, how they related to one another and which desires gathered force. The thesis explores experimental puddle-body subjectivities, the prestige attached to particular materials, the production of masculinity, the affective force of friendship and the care cultivated through relations with the more-than-human world.

    The child is understood as continually produced within social and material, natural and cultural assemblages. Subjectivity emerges through encounters among bodies, things, affects, spaces and inherited social expectations. Wood Fire generated distinctive possibilities for movement, relation and becoming, while wider social and cultural determinacies continued to orient children’s desires. Pink waterproofs, superhero figures, construction sounds and dumper trucks all participated in the formation of gendered subjectivities.

    I developed the term affective sociomaterialisation to name this process: the continual production of subjectivity through social and material assemblages that affectively augment or diminish capacities to act. The concept approaches identity as always in-formation, shaped through the felt and relational force of encounters before settling into recognisable forms.

    My doctoral research continues to inform how I approach early childhood practice, social justice and environments. Spaces, materials, routines and expectations participate in what becomes possible for children. The thesis moves towards knowing-otherwise: resisting the urge to know in advance what children, materials and environments can do, and developing greater response-ability towards the relations through which children become.

  • The thesis advances a sociomaterial metaphysics for understanding children’s subjectivity in-formation within fully outdoor early childhood provision. Its conceptual framework is assembled through Spinozist monism, process philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and affect, and Barad’s posthuman performativity. Subjectivity is approached as processual, relational and ontogenetic, produced through social and material, natural and cultural assemblages and never given fully in advance.

    Affective sociomaterialisation names the process through which these assemblages augment or diminish capacities to act and affectively orient desire. The concept places epistemological knowledges alongside ontological and ontogenetic forces, expanding inquiry beyond human-centred accounts grounded primarily in cognition, language, discourse or representation. Social and cultural determinacies remain active within this framework, feeding back into encounters and habituating bodies in recognisable ways.

    The fieldwork traces these processes through encounters including mud-child-waterproof assemblages, plank-child-wind-air assemblages and dumper-truck-boy assemblages. It examines experimental puddle-body subjectivities, the affective prestige of particular materials, the sociomaterial production of masculinity, the spatial formation of friendship and the possibility of becoming-with the world. Fully outdoor provision generated novel material and spatial relations while remaining caught within normative gendered and cultural tendencies.

    Methodologically, the thesis develops a multisensory sociomaterial ethnography informed partly by postqualitative inquiry. Textual, visual and cinematic research-creation were used to decentre spoken language, trouble the separation of researcher and researched, and attend to subjectivity across bodies, things, spaces, sound, movement and duration. The assemblage becomes the unit of analysis, allowing agency to be understood as distributed and relational.

    The thesis contributes an expanded account of how outdoor environments participate in children’s subjectivity in-formation. Wood Fire afforded experimental, care-full and more-than-human ways of becoming, alongside the continuing force of social and cultural determinacies. Its practical orientation is towards knowing-otherwise and an affirmative commitment to not knowing in advance the capacities of the child. This unsettles developmentalist curricula that tether children to ages, stages and predefined outcomes, opening early childhood practice towards indeterminacy, the use-less and the not-yet-known.

  • Description text goes hereMy thesis, Affective Sociomaterialisation: An Inquiry into Early Childhood Subjectivities within Outdoor Early Childhood Provision in Scotland, UK, was completed at the University of the West of Scotland between 2018 and 2022, in collaboration with Early Years Scotland.

    It is available to download from the British Library and ResearchGate.

    Please get in touch directly if you are unable to access the thesis.

    For academic citation

    Tembo, S. (2022) Affective Sociomaterialisation: An Inquiry into Early Childhood Subjectivities within Outdoor Early Childhood Provision in Scotland, UK. PhD thesis. University of the West of Scotland.

  • "Specifically, I am coming away from this training with a clear understanding of where and how racism exists for children under 5 and the adults that interact in their learning environment."

  • "You have inspired the students by acting as a role model for resilience and dedication as well as demonstrating first hand alternative routes into the sector."

  • "Sharing your research and personal experiences added a unique depth and perspective to the discussion, making it a remarkable learning experience for everyone involved."

  • "Listening to Shaddai carefully explain key concepts with examples was brilliant. The openness of everyone taking part, including shaddai, made the course a safe place to discuss racism."

  • "I was captivated by your words and your goal to champion diversity in early years and directly face discrimination and how it can be dealt with."

  • "It was so great to have you on the panel and you really seamlessly move through the different layers of your content in a nuanced yet accessible way."

  • "I firstly wanted to say how amazing and inspirational you are. I am a class teacher at X School and I came away so inspired. I have been sharing lots of the messages from the day with staff since being back in school."

  • "I like the interactive style and the way in which the presenter makes the session accessible. Really thought provoking and interactive."

  • "You say it is better to try and get it wrong than not try at all, this has stuck in my head since seeing you, and I would like the staff and I to try to do our best for the children we take care of."

  • "I felt expertly facilitated to contribute to conversations and particularly appreciated Shaddai’s promotion of the importance of “listening spaces” as well as conversation spaces."

  • "I think the mix of talking from our personal experiences, the historical and theoretical context, and practical exercises and discussion was really brilliant."

  • "Speaking from own background and practitioner experience, very informative on social issues. Really thought-provoking, really enjoyed the handouts to take away and focus on in more detail."

  • "Shaddai’s warmth and openness, the way he kindly challenged us to look both inward and outward so as we could reflect as individuals and take practical steps in interactions with the children in setting."

  • "The training was so well-structured and tailored to our work specifically, and it felt like you provided a really open and caring space for talking and thinking about such complicated and difficult things."

  • "I really liked how you emphasised the self-care needed in anti-racist work while also not letting us off the hook - gently pushing us to confront our roles and privileges in racist structures."

  • "I definitely feel more comfortable talking about anti-racism and taking action to identify, react to and work against racism in my working life and my personal life as a result of this training."

  • "made me think about how important it is to have conversations with children and staff within my setting. Feel empowered by new knowledge to be confident with challenging adaptations to practice."