CREC withdraws from X.

X (Twitter) has been a wonderful way to reach many of our passionate and dedicated followers who share our commitment to all things early years. However, it is no longer a platform that we can justify operating on and validating through our presence.

For CREC, ethics, voice and power are fundamental concerns and principles that underpin our work. We might not always agree with each other, and we might see the world in different ways but we have always, and will continue to, promote respectful, critical dialogue as a means to develop knowledge and understanding about how we as a community can best support children’s development and enhance their lives. We are passionate about our learning community and encouraging others to adopt similar approaches in their work with colleagues, parents and children.

Social media has not always been a ‘best fit’ for these ways of working and we have always sought to tread carefully as we use this medium to reach and engage with our wider connections. We might not always have got things right but we’ve deliberately chosen not to use any online platform to attack other individuals or organisations, or to retaliate when others have sought to use the platform to engage us in a deliberately aggressive or negative public discourse. We have often put our positions forward on social media but have always avoided being directly critical of others’ positions – whilst binary positions clearly do exist there is often far more overlap and consensus that online dialogue does little to unearth. The early years sector has enough of a struggle to be seen, heard and taken seriously without warring amongst itself in a public forum.

We’ve had concerns for a number of years about the toxicity that breeds online in unchecked spaces and we’ve belatedly come to the conclusion that, despite X (Twitter) being a wonderful way to reach many of our passionate and dedicated followers who share our commitment to all things early years, it is no longer a platform that we can justify operating on and validating through our presence. We have therefore decided to henceforth cease using the platform. We will continue to utilise our other social media channels on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and hope if you are not yet following us there that you will consider doing so. We are also exploring other ways to extend our learning community into new online spaces where respectful, critical dialogue can flourish, and we will update if and when that happens.

Thank you for your ongoing support.