A reflection on Jason Arday, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, and what happens when a person becomes a surface onto which much larger arguments about race, merit and academia are projected.

What can professional guidance really change? This Note reflects on the revised Birth to 5 Matters guidance, exploring its stronger commitments to equity, social justice, anti-racism, neurodiversity and belonging, and asking how educators can put those principles to work in everyday practice.

What if childhood helps us think differently about conformity and freedom? This Note explores the idea of aberrance through philosophy, social life and play, asking how young children wander, surprise and sometimes exceed the pathways prepared for them.

Note #4 is a short reflection on the early days of fatherhood. Drawing loosely on Deleuze’s idea of becoming, I think about what it means to be changed through relation: through holding, staying, listening, and learning how to be/come.

Note #3 reflects on complicity and critique in anti-racist education, drawing together critical race theory, decolonial debate, philosophy, and professional practice to explore the tensions of working within institutions shaped by the very systems such work seeks to challenge.

Note #2 reflects on mothering at the margins, social justice, assessment, and children’s creativity, drawing together reading, policy, theory, and fieldwork to sit with the complexities of care, education, and becoming in the early years.

Note #1 introduces Critical Early Years Notes and its reflective ethos, while weaving together reflections on Childish Literature, family music-making, social mobility policy, and experiences in Zambia to explore how childhood, care, and power are shaped across reading, practice, and place.