scholarly journals Exploring the Narrative of an Early Childhood Education and Care Teacher from the Perspective of Polyphonic Time1

Author(s):  
Mahito Katsuura ◽  
Harutomo Ueda ◽  
Maki Fujii
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 284-296
Author(s):  
Alicja R Sadownik

This article uses the concept of ‘superdiversity’ as a lens through which various conceptualisations of diversity in Norwegian early childhood education and care policies and professionals’ understandings are made visible. Although Norwegian early childhood education and care is expected to highlight, value, and promote diversity and mutual respect, little has been written on how diversity is actually understood by professionals as part of early childhood education and care institutional practice. On the basis of interviews with 2 migration pedagogues, 10 early childhood education and care teachers, and 15 early childhood education and care teacher education students, the following conceptualisations of diversity were reconstructed: diversity as embodied by different children and families; diversity as a social context for every child’s becoming; and diversity as equal participation. Each of these accounts involved ways of working with children and families from minority and majority backgrounds, and ‘diversity as a social context for every child’s becoming’ seemed to be most in line with the Norwegian curriculum. The curriculum focuses on the process of formative development/becoming, which overlaps with and may be meaningfully supplemented by superdiversity. However, superdiversity as a sociological concept requires careful operationalisation in dialogue with the field and its empirics .


Author(s):  
Margarita León

The chapter first examines at a conceptual level the links between theories of social investment and childcare expansion. Although ‘the perfect match’ between the two is often taken for granted in the specialized literature as well as in policy papers, it is here argued that a more nuance approach that ‘unpacks’ this relationship is needed. The chapter will then look for elements of variation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) expansion. Despite an increase in spending over the last two decades in many European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, wide variation still exists in the way in which ECEC develops. A trade-off is often observed between coverage and quality of provision. A crucial dividing line that determines, to a large extent, the quality of provision in ECEC is the increasing differentiation between preschool education for children aged 3 and above and childcare for younger children.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146394912110101
Author(s):  
Geraldine Mooney Simmie ◽  
Dawn Murphy

The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners in Ireland, with a focus on dilemmatic contradictions between the policy reform ensemble and practitioners’ reported working conditions in a doctoral study. The critique draws from the politics of power and education, and gendered and classed subjectivities, and allows the authors to theorise early childhood education and care professionalisation in alternative emancipatory ways for democratic pedagogy rather than a limited performativity. The findings reveal the state (re)configured as a central command centre with an over-reliance on surveillance, alongside deficits of responsibility for public interest values in relation to the working conditions of early childhood education and care workers, who are mostly part-time ‘pink-collar’ women workers in precarious roles. The study has implications that go beyond Ireland for the professionalisation of early childhood education and care workers and meeting the early developmental needs of young children.


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