Pub Date : 2024-07-23DOI: 10.1177/14639491241266334
Esther Maeers
{"title":"Book Review: Children and materialities: The force of the more-than-human in children's classroom lives by Casey Y. Myers","authors":"Esther Maeers","doi":"10.1177/14639491241266334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241266334","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141785404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-25DOI: 10.1177/14639491241255054
April Stevenson
{"title":"Book Review: Rethinking Environmental Education in a Climate Change Era: Weather Learning in Early Childhood by Tonya Rooney and Mindy Blaise","authors":"April Stevenson","doi":"10.1177/14639491241255054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241255054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141149548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1177/14639491241252753
Melanie Kate Dickerson, Marianne Fenech, Tina Stratigos
Partnering with families is an explicit regulatory and role requirement for early childhood educators, yet the emotional labour involved is implicit and relatively unacknowledged. While research has found that complex work demands jeopardise educator wellbeing – resulting in unprecedented turnover and attrition in Australia and internationally – little research has investigated emotional labour and associated educator wellbeing in relation to partnering with families. This article argues that the limited research on educators’ emotional labour with families and its ensuing invisibility may pertain to both its positioning within social constructivist and interpretivist paradigms that render such work as naturally inherent and to conceptualisations of emotional labour theory that entrench this work in maternalistic discourses. The article positions emotional labour theory within a critical feminist lens and as a worthwhile line of inquiry to extend this body of research and disrupt maternalistic discourses that diminish educators’ skilful labour. The potential affordances pertaining to the illumination of this work as skilful for early childhood workforce policy are considered.
{"title":"Emotional labour while working with families: Potential affordances for supporting early childhood educators’ wellbeing","authors":"Melanie Kate Dickerson, Marianne Fenech, Tina Stratigos","doi":"10.1177/14639491241252753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241252753","url":null,"abstract":"Partnering with families is an explicit regulatory and role requirement for early childhood educators, yet the emotional labour involved is implicit and relatively unacknowledged. While research has found that complex work demands jeopardise educator wellbeing – resulting in unprecedented turnover and attrition in Australia and internationally – little research has investigated emotional labour and associated educator wellbeing in relation to partnering with families. This article argues that the limited research on educators’ emotional labour with families and its ensuing invisibility may pertain to both its positioning within social constructivist and interpretivist paradigms that render such work as naturally inherent and to conceptualisations of emotional labour theory that entrench this work in maternalistic discourses. The article positions emotional labour theory within a critical feminist lens and as a worthwhile line of inquiry to extend this body of research and disrupt maternalistic discourses that diminish educators’ skilful labour. The potential affordances pertaining to the illumination of this work as skilful for early childhood workforce policy are considered.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140883806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-20DOI: 10.1177/14639491241246121
Tünde Puskás, Anita Andersson, Virginia Slaughter
This study is part of a larger project with the general aim of developing the ability of preschool practitioners to reflect critically on their practice related to children's grief and questions about death. The article is based on six focus-group interviews and a workshop during which preschool practitioners reflected on and worked with a national crisis management tool: the crisis box. Through the theory of didactic transposition the analysis sheds light on how death education and crisis management related to death in Swedish early childhood education represents a disconnect between the practitioners’ discomfort with teaching about biologic death and the children's need of comfort and understanding of what biologic death entails. The realization of this disconnect prompted the practitioners to consider developing a child-friendly didactic tool that would better support children's emotional processing and that could also be used for proactive death education. Our findings indicate that early childhood educators are in need of training in how to teach about the biological facts of human death in terms of universality, irreversibility, nonfunctionality, causality, and noncorporeal continuation. Only this way can educators be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to engage in open and age-appropriate conversations with children about biologic death, fostering a supportive and safe environment for them to express their feelings and ask questions.
{"title":"From a crisis management tool to proactive death education in Swedish preschools","authors":"Tünde Puskás, Anita Andersson, Virginia Slaughter","doi":"10.1177/14639491241246121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241246121","url":null,"abstract":"This study is part of a larger project with the general aim of developing the ability of preschool practitioners to reflect critically on their practice related to children's grief and questions about death. The article is based on six focus-group interviews and a workshop during which preschool practitioners reflected on and worked with a national crisis management tool: the crisis box. Through the theory of didactic transposition the analysis sheds light on how death education and crisis management related to death in Swedish early childhood education represents a disconnect between the practitioners’ discomfort with teaching about biologic death and the children's need of comfort and understanding of what biologic death entails. The realization of this disconnect prompted the practitioners to consider developing a child-friendly didactic tool that would better support children's emotional processing and that could also be used for proactive death education. Our findings indicate that early childhood educators are in need of training in how to teach about the biological facts of human death in terms of universality, irreversibility, nonfunctionality, causality, and noncorporeal continuation. Only this way can educators be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to engage in open and age-appropriate conversations with children about biologic death, fostering a supportive and safe environment for them to express their feelings and ask questions.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140628959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-11DOI: 10.1177/14639491241246120
Raija Raittila, Mari Vuorisalo, Niina Rutanen
This article examines how the space of transition is constructed within and linked to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) pedagogical environment during a child's first transition to ECEC. In many studies, this transition has been characterised as a stressful situation in which to cope successfully with the demands of the new environment. In this study, the focus is on the construction of the space of transition and, particularly, on children's active involvement in this process. The data include video recordings from children's first days in ECEC. We focus on children's resources and discuss how the pedagogical environment enabled newcomers’ active positions, which they used to reshape daily practices in ECEC. The emerging space of transition was constructed on the basis of the relations that the newcomers enabled in the situation. The results shed new light on the strengths of the newcomers as co-constructors of daily practices of the ECEC pedagogical environment, even on the first day of the transition. In addition, the space of transition as a new conceptual way to explore educational transitions is discussed.
{"title":"Constructing the space of transition within the early childhood education and care pedagogical environment: A child's resources and positions","authors":"Raija Raittila, Mari Vuorisalo, Niina Rutanen","doi":"10.1177/14639491241246120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241246120","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how the space of transition is constructed within and linked to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) pedagogical environment during a child's first transition to ECEC. In many studies, this transition has been characterised as a stressful situation in which to cope successfully with the demands of the new environment. In this study, the focus is on the construction of the space of transition and, particularly, on children's active involvement in this process. The data include video recordings from children's first days in ECEC. We focus on children's resources and discuss how the pedagogical environment enabled newcomers’ active positions, which they used to reshape daily practices in ECEC. The emerging space of transition was constructed on the basis of the relations that the newcomers enabled in the situation. The results shed new light on the strengths of the newcomers as co-constructors of daily practices of the ECEC pedagogical environment, even on the first day of the transition. In addition, the space of transition as a new conceptual way to explore educational transitions is discussed.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"298 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140591532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-16DOI: 10.1177/14639491241229228
Angela Molloy Murphy, Will Parnell, Larisa Callaway-Cole, Elizabeth Quintero
We believe that our most powerful approach to defy the erasure of people, knowledges, and open ways of living and being is generative storying together with children and families, educators, and the more-than-human. Storying takes many forms and is about more than overcoming coloniality or the earthly survival of humans. It is about taking a stance with a “citizenship of strangers” to compose more equitable, care-filled, and relational ways of living, especially with young children and their families. Thinking with storying as a liberatory and transformative process, we believe the perspectives of our human and more-than-human co-collaborators—the people, places, and materialities that collectively co-create these stories—are urgently required to offer satellites of hope amid the darkness and to practice living in radical relationality and a project of love.
{"title":"Polyphonic storying with human and more-than human co-collaborators","authors":"Angela Molloy Murphy, Will Parnell, Larisa Callaway-Cole, Elizabeth Quintero","doi":"10.1177/14639491241229228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241229228","url":null,"abstract":"We believe that our most powerful approach to defy the erasure of people, knowledges, and open ways of living and being is generative storying together with children and families, educators, and the more-than-human. Storying takes many forms and is about more than overcoming coloniality or the earthly survival of humans. It is about taking a stance with a “citizenship of strangers” to compose more equitable, care-filled, and relational ways of living, especially with young children and their families. Thinking with storying as a liberatory and transformative process, we believe the perspectives of our human and more-than-human co-collaborators—the people, places, and materialities that collectively co-create these stories—are urgently required to offer satellites of hope amid the darkness and to practice living in radical relationality and a project of love.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139956628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-27DOI: 10.1177/14639491231222510
Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, Alan Pence
In this colloquium, the authors of Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care, which was published 25 years ago, reflect on the book's core arguments about the ‘problem with quality’, the neoliberal origins of ‘the age of quality’ and the book's impact.
{"title":"CIEC colloquium: Reflections on Beyond Quality at 25 years","authors":"Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, Alan Pence","doi":"10.1177/14639491231222510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231222510","url":null,"abstract":"In this colloquium, the authors of Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care, which was published 25 years ago, reflect on the book's core arguments about the ‘problem with quality’, the neoliberal origins of ‘the age of quality’ and the book's impact.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"1 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139154723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-25DOI: 10.1177/14639491231222650
M. Zaenal Abidin
{"title":"English for Young Learners in Asia: Challenges and Directions for Teacher Education","authors":"M. Zaenal Abidin","doi":"10.1177/14639491231222650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231222650","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"11 s5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139157758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-18DOI: 10.1177/14639491231220363
M. Azarmandi, Andrea Delaune, Nicola Surtees, Kari Moana Te Rongopatahi
Racism is pervasive in education in Aotearoa New Zealand, including in early childhood education. The preparedness of early childhood teachers to respond to the Ministry of Education's current anti-racism policy direction is a pressing concern. This is particularly the case, given the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa offers little guidance to support early childhood teachers to develop anti-racism pedagogies. This primarily theoretical article seeks to contribute to dialogue with early childhood teachers about both racism and anti-racism pedagogies. The theoretical arguments advanced in the article focus on document analysis of Te Whāriki. Analysis includes consideration of the themes of inclusion, equity and social justice. It also includes consideration of what these themes might imply about expectations for early childhood teachers’ uptake of anti-racism approaches in their practice. Document analysis is supplemented by limited preliminary survey data drawn from the initial findings of the Anti-racism Commitment in Early Childhood Education: Pathways to Inclusion, Equity and Social Justice (ARC-ECE) study. Drawing from race-critical scholarship to further advance the theoretical arguments, the article highlights tensions in early childhood teachers’ understandings about racism. The limits of narrow definitions of racism that explain it as the result of ‘cultural difference’ are explored. In making a case for thinking beyond cultural competence and culturally responsive practice, the article calls for an immediate rethinking of racism in (and beyond) the sector.
在新西兰奥特亚罗瓦的教育中,包括在幼儿教育中,种族主义无处不在。幼儿教师是否准备好响应教育部当前的反种族主义政策方向,是一个亟待解决的问题。鉴于幼儿课程 Te Whāriki 的情况,情况尤其如此:He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa》在支持幼儿教师发展反种族主义教学法方面几乎没有提供任何指导。这篇文章以理论为主,旨在促进幼儿教师就种族主义和反种族主义教学法开展对话。文章提出的理论论点侧重于对 Te Whāriki 的文献分析。分析包括对包容、公平和社会正义等主题的思考。还包括考虑这些主题可能意味着幼儿教师在实践中采用反种族主义方法的期望。文件分析辅以有限的初步调查数据,这些数据来自于 "幼儿教育中的反种族主义承诺 "的初步调查结果:幼儿教育中的反种族主义承诺:通往包容、平等和社会公正之路(ARC-ECE)研究的初步结果中提取的有限的初步调查数据对文件分析进行了补充。为了进一步推进理论论证,文章借鉴了种族批判的学术成果,强调了幼儿教师对种族主义理解的紧张关系。文章探讨了将种族主义解释为 "文化差异 "结果的狭隘定义的局限性。文章提出了超越文化能力和文化反应实践的思考,呼吁立即重新思考该部门(和部门以外)的种族主义问题。
{"title":"Anti-racism commitment in early childhood education: The limits of cultural competency","authors":"M. Azarmandi, Andrea Delaune, Nicola Surtees, Kari Moana Te Rongopatahi","doi":"10.1177/14639491231220363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231220363","url":null,"abstract":"Racism is pervasive in education in Aotearoa New Zealand, including in early childhood education. The preparedness of early childhood teachers to respond to the Ministry of Education's current anti-racism policy direction is a pressing concern. This is particularly the case, given the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa offers little guidance to support early childhood teachers to develop anti-racism pedagogies. This primarily theoretical article seeks to contribute to dialogue with early childhood teachers about both racism and anti-racism pedagogies. The theoretical arguments advanced in the article focus on document analysis of Te Whāriki. Analysis includes consideration of the themes of inclusion, equity and social justice. It also includes consideration of what these themes might imply about expectations for early childhood teachers’ uptake of anti-racism approaches in their practice. Document analysis is supplemented by limited preliminary survey data drawn from the initial findings of the Anti-racism Commitment in Early Childhood Education: Pathways to Inclusion, Equity and Social Justice (ARC-ECE) study. Drawing from race-critical scholarship to further advance the theoretical arguments, the article highlights tensions in early childhood teachers’ understandings about racism. The limits of narrow definitions of racism that explain it as the result of ‘cultural difference’ are explored. In making a case for thinking beyond cultural competence and culturally responsive practice, the article calls for an immediate rethinking of racism in (and beyond) the sector.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"69 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139175044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-11DOI: 10.1177/14639491231217068
E. Sevón, Marianne Notko, Eija Salonen, Maria Lahtinen
In peer culture, children develop social and moral orderings that justify exclusion of one or more peers – an area that has sparked debate among early childhood education groups. Therefore, the present study employed the idea of the power order or social and moral ordering of belonging to explore young children's narratives of social exclusion. We asked what story types can be identified in these narratives and how exclusion is reasoned in them. The data consisted of 25 narratives produced by 12 children, aged 4–6 years, via the Story Magician's Playtime method in early childhood education and care in Finland. Four story types were identified (repulsion, hierarchy, adult as mediator and conciliation), in which the moral reasoning for and conclusion of the exclusion differed. The diverse story types manifested complex negotiations, meaning-makings and diversity of emotions, in which children transcended dichotomous, black-and-white moral reasoning. Children's narratives illuminate how they negotiate social orders in situational interactions. Rules prescribed for children from adults are reproduced, modified and reinterpreted in these interactions. The narratives imparted the contradictions between preserving specific rules and members for ongoing play and the altruistic all-can-participate rule. The study highlighted the importance of addressing exclusion situations in ECEC. If social exclusion is not reflected on with children, they are left alone to solve these situations, which may cause a vicious cycle for repeatedly excluded children.
{"title":"Young children's narratives of exclusion in peer relationships in early childhood education and care","authors":"E. Sevón, Marianne Notko, Eija Salonen, Maria Lahtinen","doi":"10.1177/14639491231217068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231217068","url":null,"abstract":"In peer culture, children develop social and moral orderings that justify exclusion of one or more peers – an area that has sparked debate among early childhood education groups. Therefore, the present study employed the idea of the power order or social and moral ordering of belonging to explore young children's narratives of social exclusion. We asked what story types can be identified in these narratives and how exclusion is reasoned in them. The data consisted of 25 narratives produced by 12 children, aged 4–6 years, via the Story Magician's Playtime method in early childhood education and care in Finland. Four story types were identified (repulsion, hierarchy, adult as mediator and conciliation), in which the moral reasoning for and conclusion of the exclusion differed. The diverse story types manifested complex negotiations, meaning-makings and diversity of emotions, in which children transcended dichotomous, black-and-white moral reasoning. Children's narratives illuminate how they negotiate social orders in situational interactions. Rules prescribed for children from adults are reproduced, modified and reinterpreted in these interactions. The narratives imparted the contradictions between preserving specific rules and members for ongoing play and the altruistic all-can-participate rule. The study highlighted the importance of addressing exclusion situations in ECEC. If social exclusion is not reflected on with children, they are left alone to solve these situations, which may cause a vicious cycle for repeatedly excluded children.","PeriodicalId":46773,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139010538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}