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The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authorsùfrom first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others. Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.
In this fascinating new book, Affrica Taylor encourages an exciting paradigmatic shift in the ways in which childhood and nature are conceived and pedagogically deployed, and invites readers to critically reassess the naturalist childhood discourses that are rife within popular culture and early years education.Through adopting a common worlds fram
Challenging dominant discourses in the field of early childhood education, this book provides an accessible introduction to some of the alternative narratives and diverse perspectives that are increasingly to be heard in this field, as well as discussing the importance of paradigm, politics and ethics. Peter Moss draws on material published in the groundbreaking Contesting Early Childhood series to introduce readers to thinking that questions the mainstream approach to early childhood education and to offer rich examples to illustrate how this thinking is being put to work in practice. Key topics addressed include: dominant discourses in today’s early childhood education – and what is meant by ‘dominant discourse’ why politics and ethics are the starting points for early childhood education Reggio Emilia as an example of an alternative narrative the relevance to early childhood education of thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and of theoretical positions such as posthumanism. An enlightening read for students and practitioners, as well as policymakers, academics and parents, this book is intended for anyone who wants to think more about early childhood education and delve deeper into new perspectives and debates in this field.
This book identifies the gaps needing to be bridged to achieve a more inclusive and ‘just’ early childhood education, in relation to class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, disabilities and age, and explores various ways of bridging these gaps.
This book explores the contribution of and art and creativity to early education, and examines the role of the atelier (an arts workshop in a school) and atelierista (an educator with an arts background) in the pioneering pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. It does so through the unique experience of Vea Vecchi, one of the first atelieristas to be appointed in Reggio Emilia in 1970. Part memoir, part conversation and part reflection, the book provides a unique insider perspective on the pedagogical work of this extraordinary local project, which continues to be a source of inspiration to early childhood practitioners and policy makers worldwide. Vea’s writing, full of beautiful examples, draws the reader in as she explains the history of the atelier and the evolving role of the atelierista. Key themes of the book include: • processes of learning and knowledge construction • the theory of the hundred languages of childhood and the role of poetic languages • the importance of organisation, ways of working and tools, in particular pedagogical documentation • the vital contribution of the physical environment • the relationship between the atelier, the atelierista, the school and its teachers This enlightening book is essential reading for students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers in early childhood education, and also for all those in other fields of education interested in the relationship between the arts and learning.
What should be the relationship between early childhood and compulsory education? While it's widely assumed that the former should prepare children for the latter, there are alternatives. This book contests the 'readying for school' relationship as neither self-evident nor unproblematic, and explores some alternative relationships.
Drawing on work from within the developing field of childhood studies, this text examines theoretical and policy driven understandings of the current position of children in society. Through an analysis of policy reforms and professional initiatives within educational child care and legal contexts, the author examines different, potentially competing viewpoints of childrens social position. Chapters are devoted to a number of related themes, including child policy and moral ambiguity, the limits to child protection, the individualization of schooling and childhood and citizenship.
This book contests a tradition and convention in educational thinking that dichotomises children and curriculum, by developing the notion of re(con)ceiving children in curriculum. By presenting an innovative research project, in which she worked with children to share their understandings of the internationally renowned Te Whāriki curriculum, Marg Sellers explores what the curriculum means to children and how it works, as demonstrated in games they played. In generating different ways for thinking, the author draws upon her work with the philosophical imaginaries of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, whose ideas shape both the content and the non-linear structure of this book. Topics covered include: Rhizomes, rhizo-methodology and rhizoanalysis; Plateaus; De~territorialising lines of flight; Dynamic spaces; The notion of empowerment. This assemblage of Deleuzo-Guattarian imaginaries generates ways for thinking differently about children’s complex interrelationships with curriculum, and opens possibilities for re(con)ceiving – both reconceiving and receiving – children’s understandings within adult conceptions of how curriculum works for young children. This book will be of interest to early childhood students, scholars and practitioners alike, also appealing to those interested in philosophical, theoretical and practical understandings of curriculum in general.
Through a series of exquisite encounters with children, and through a lucid opening up of new aspects of poststructuralist theorizing, Bronwyn Davies opens up new ways of thinking about, and intra-acting with, children. This book carefully guides the reader through a wave of thought that turns the known into the unknown, and then slowly, carefully, makes new forms of thought comprehensible, opening, through all the senses, a deep understanding of our embeddedness in encounters with each other and with the material world. This book takes us into Reggio-Emilia-inspired Swedish preschools in Sweden, into the author’s own community in Australia, into poignant memories of childhood, and offers the reader insights into: new ways of thinking about children and their communities; the act of listening as emergent and alive; ourselves as mobile and multiple subjects; the importance of remaining open to the not-yet-known. Defining research as diffractive, and as experimental, Davies’ relationship to the teachers and pedagogues she worked with is one of co-experimentation. Her relationship with the children is one in which she explores the ways in which her own new thinking and being might emerge, even as old ways of thinking and being assert themselves and interfere with the unfolding of the new. She draws us into her ongoing experimentation, asking that we think hard, all the while delighting our senses with the poetry of her writing, and the stories of her encounters with children.