Bending the rules as democratic practice: Inclusive and Sustainable Post-Covid Pedagogy: exploring quality practices in ECEC post-Covid.​

We explore ECEC educators’ pandemic practice of ‘bending the rules’ within ECEC as a form of democratic pedagogical practice oriented to what is best for children, their relationships, communities, and lived experiences. From (not about) Covid-era research in Denmark, Norway and Ireland through the InSCoPe small scale Erasmus+ partnership, we analyse what we can bring forward about pedagogical practice from how educators navigated shifting regulations, policy demands and everyday resource constraints through professional judgement, initiative, and situated knowledge. We attend to the suspended moments of doubt, where pedagogical action feels paralysed. In this hesitant space before action, where ethical-moral stress and fragmentation surfaced, educators had to make choices regarding appropriate practice. Moving from doubt to pedagogical tact marks a process of pausing, weighing children’s needs, testing boundaries, and then acting, sometimes by ‘bending’ rules, as a deliberate, morally accountable pedagogical choice. In this process, we highlight the role of leadership in enabling educators’ democratic agency. Leaders who name values, hold risk, and encourage responsibility help staff traverse the hesitant moment, transforming paralysis into principled decision making. This ‘pendulum’ of responsibility supports reintegration after initial fragmentation, stabilising a shared, culture-bearing knowledge within teams.
We consider the process of moving from doubt through bounded transgression (“bending the rules”) to reflection and re-integration, in order to illuminate the space for democratic practice at educator and child level – through the pedagogical workings within and at the edges of regulatory boundaries to uphold children’s participation and relationships, sustaining democratic practice.under conditions of uncertainty.