Democratic practice in early childhood education: A world of possibilities for the young child

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Olivera Kamenarac ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Young Child ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Democratic Practice ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

The enactment of everyday democratic practice in early childhood settings supports children to practise being active agents in their own lives. Through learning to take action on matters of importance, practising collaboration and listening, and seeing that their ideas matter and have significance, children are positioned to become engaged citizens. This article follows the work of four teachers at one centre, sharing four episodes of their teaching where democratic practice is evident

Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-322
Author(s):  
Rachel Langford ◽  
Brooke Richardson ◽  
Patrizia Albanese ◽  
Kate Bezanson ◽  
Susan Prentice ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Care Policy ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarce public funds to early childhood education and care through a lens narrowly focused on child development outcomes. From the investment perspective, care remains a prerequisite to education rather than a public good in its own right. This chapter seeks to disrupt this neoliberal, human capital discourse that has justified and continues to position care as subordinate to education. Drawing upon the feminist ethics of care scholarship of philosopher Virginia Held, political scientist Joan Tronto, and sociologist Marian Barnes, this chapter reconceptualizes the care in early childhood education and care rooted through four key ideas: (1) Care is a universal and fundamental aspect of all human life. In early childhood settings, young children’s dependency on care is negatively regarded as a limitation, deficit and a burden. In contrast, in educational settings, older children’s growing abilities to engage in self-care and self-regulate is viewed positively. We challenge this dependence/independence dichotomy. (2) Care is more than basic custodial activities. The premise that care is focused on activities concerned with the child’s body and emotions, while education involves activities concerned with the mind, permeates early childhood education and care policy. Drawing on Held’s definition of care as value and practice, we discuss why this mind-body dualism is false. (3) Care in early childhood settings can be evaluated as promoting well-being or, in contradiction to the meaning of care, as delivering poor services that result in harm to young children. We will explore the relevancy of Barnes’s contention that parallel to theorizing about good care in social policy, “we need to be able to recognize care and its absence” through the cultivation of “ethics sensibilities and skills applied in different practices in different contexts.” (4) Care must be central to early childhood education and care policy deliberation. Using Tronto’s concept of a “caring democracy,” we discuss how such deliberation can promote care and the caring responsibilities of educators in early childhood settings, thereby redressing long standing gendered injustices. We argue that these four ideas can be framed in advocacy messages, in ways that bridge the silos of care and education as separate domains and which open up the vision of an integrated early childhood education and care system. A feminist ethics of care perspective offers new possibilities for practitioners, advocates, researchers, and decision-makers to reposition and reclaim care as integral to the politics and policies of early childhood education and care.

As we read

1968 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 395-396
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Preschool Children ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Young Child ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Primary Grade ◽  
Mathematical Education ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
The Mind

Teaching young children is an exciting experience! What the young child lacks in sophistication of response is more than compensated by his enthusiasm and his evident delight in learning. The mind of a young child is a fertile field for implanting the seeds of elegant mathematics. Sometimes neglected, never fully exploited, the possibilities for the mathematical education of our primary-grade and preschool children are endless. This issue of The Arithmetic Teacher features articles dealing with early childhood education.

scholarly journals Adopting Digital Technology in Teaching and Learning Environment in Early Childhood Education Classes in Nairobi County, Kenya

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Odundo Paul Amolloh ◽  
Ganira Khavugwi Lilian ◽  
Milimu Gladys Shaji
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Fine Motor ◽  
Digital Competence ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

Dispositions towards use of digital technologies in modern early childhood settings have dramatically transformed aspects in education sector through development and integration of technology into education policy, curriculum and practice. Digital technology as a tool in instruction benefits learner’s fine motor skills, language and communication readiness, mathematical thinking as well as positive attitudes towards learning. Conversely inadequate educational and digital competence hampers teachers in Early Childhood Education (ECE) access to digital technology. This study assessed ways in which teachers in ECE in Kenya access digital technologies. It was designed as a two-phase exploratory mixed methods study. The design allowed collection of data from two groups of ECE educators: case study and survey teachers. Case-studies of two ECE centers (low and high technology) involving 11 ECE teachers were compared in order to examine similarities and differences in access to digital technologies. Similarly, teachers (n=508) in two education zones were surveyed and drawn in terms of similarities and differences in access to digital technologies. Findings indicated that ECE teachers in Kenya have limited access to digital technologies due to non-availability in ECE teaching and learning environments. To address this challenge, the study recommends Ministry of education to put emphasis on funding technology resources in early childhood settings. Furthermore, teachers in ECE should be exposed to a variety of developmentally appropriate digital technologies in order to effectively enhance teaching and learning.

Ghosts of the material world in early childhood education: Furniture matters

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-145
Author(s):  
Jane Bone
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
The Body ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
To Come ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

This philosophically driven work is intended to trouble the position of the small chair in early childhood settings. It is theoretically driven by an aspect of sociological and cultural theory called hauntology, and by the theories of new feminist materialism. The work of Sara Ahmed influences the direction taken here. An assemblage of personal narratives, memories, works of fiction, history, conversations and media reports, along with the documentation of a performative act, is produced. The methodological approach is intra-active and diffractive. The article argues that the small chair is a contentious and ambiguous artefact, which is taken for granted in early childhood settings, but also problematic when considered from different perspectives – an apparatus that both supports and betrays the body/ies that are in contact with it. Chairs, as objects that furnish human lives, can also haunt those lives and give contradictory messages of power, comfort and suffering. Now and to come, the chair is a trace, a symbol, an instrument of torture and object of desire.

scholarly journals Wandering With Waste: Pedagogical Wonderings About Intergenerational Ecological Justice-to-Come

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 88 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Denise Hodgins
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Ecological Justice ◽  
To Come ◽  
Early Childhood Settings ◽  
Pedagogical Approaches

This article considers pedagogical approaches for dealing with waste in early childhood settings. Early childhood education is overtly complicit in the leaky wastes of fabrication and consumption, yet this complicity is rarely addressed in pedagogy in ways that move beyond anthropocentric and heroic framings buoyed by neoliberal consumerism and governmentality. Moments from two collaborative inquiries with materials, children, and educators are included to act as provocations for questioning the responsibility of early childhood education in intergenerational ecological justice-­‐to-­‐come. Theoretical insights from feminist science studies are drawn on to (re)imagine pedagogies of waste as emerging through less-­‐than-­‐seamless, often unequal, always imperfect relatings.

An Ethical Journey: Rights, Relationships and Reflexivity

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Bone
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Consent Form ◽  
Consent Forms ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Teachers And Parents ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

In this paper the process of approaching three different early childhood settings with the same consent forms is discussed. In each setting ethical procedures were viewed differently. This formed a journey of discovery and provided an opportunity to reconceptualise the ethical process. While it is always the responsibility of the researcher to conduct research in an ethical way, the field of early childhood education offers specific challenges. In this research it became obvious that perspectives on ethics include rights, relationships and reflexivity. The importance of including teachers and parents in this process is acknowledged. The consent form for children is described and, as it becomes a focus of negotiation, its influence on the attitude of the researcher becomes a narrative of ethical encounter. ‘…we deliberate not about Ends, but Means to Ends’ (Aristotle, 1947, p. 52).

scholarly journals Early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Alcock ◽  
Jenny Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Outdoor Education ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Care ◽  
Childhood Care ◽  
Forest Schools ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

© 2018, Outdoor Education Australia. Early childhood care and education services in Aotearoa New Zealand drew initially on the Fröbelian model of the kindergarten or ‘children’s garden’. Later models such as the Kōhanga Reo movement, the highly respected curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa, and the Enviroschools programme are grounded in te ao Māori, Māori worldviews, that feature a strong connectedness to place, and a deep sense of a spiritual inter-relationship with the land, mountains, rivers, and oceans. This article considers how the imported Scandinavian/European/UK models of ‘forest schools’ might fit within this context. To illustrate early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa (New Zealand) we draw upon research conducted in early childhood settings in this country that illuminates children’s experience in the outdoors. We draw upon critical early childhood scholarship to theorise this situation of forest schools emerging in Aotearoa, along with influences from the forest school movement evident in existing New Zealand early childhood services. The article suggests that traditional Indigenous Māori worldviews and knowledges give meaning and contextualised authenticity to ‘forest schools’ approaches in early childhood education in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

scholarly journals Early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Alcock ◽  
Jenny Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Outdoor Education ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Care ◽  
Childhood Care ◽  
Forest Schools ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

© 2018, Outdoor Education Australia. Early childhood care and education services in Aotearoa New Zealand drew initially on the Fröbelian model of the kindergarten or ‘children’s garden’. Later models such as the Kōhanga Reo movement, the highly respected curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa, and the Enviroschools programme are grounded in te ao Māori, Māori worldviews, that feature a strong connectedness to place, and a deep sense of a spiritual inter-relationship with the land, mountains, rivers, and oceans. This article considers how the imported Scandinavian/European/UK models of ‘forest schools’ might fit within this context. To illustrate early childhood education in the outdoors in Aotearoa (New Zealand) we draw upon research conducted in early childhood settings in this country that illuminates children’s experience in the outdoors. We draw upon critical early childhood scholarship to theorise this situation of forest schools emerging in Aotearoa, along with influences from the forest school movement evident in existing New Zealand early childhood services. The article suggests that traditional Indigenous Māori worldviews and knowledges give meaning and contextualised authenticity to ‘forest schools’ approaches in early childhood education in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Early childhood teacher cultural Otherness and belonging

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Arndt
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Early Childhood Teacher ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Teaching Team ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

Early childhood education settings are arguably places of community, togetherness and belonging. But what if they are not? What if individuals’ senses of identity, place or reality clash, do not fit or, worse, repel or offend? This article picks up on the largely under-researched area of teachers’ belonging and sense of cultural identity in early childhood settings. It argues for the critical importance of elevating and paying attention to teachers’ subject formation and identity. Drawing on some of the concerns and common conceptions of cultural Otherness in early childhood education, the article uses Kristeva’s foreigner lens and her theory on the subject in process to argue that teachers’ sense of belonging, of their own cultural identity and place, in their teaching team and in their early childhood setting is critical for an overall sense of openness and belonging throughout the setting. Teachers are commonly called on to nurture children’s and their families’ cultural identities. The sense of belonging intended through such practices depends on teacher attitudes and orientations to cultural Otherness that go beyond the surface – that allow for the difficult, complicated, unpredictable processes of becoming part of a centre community. This article offers a challenge to rethink teacher Otherness, for the (re-)elevation of their own sense of belonging in early childhood settings and teaching teams.

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