Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education

Marianne N. Bloch is Professor Emerita in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beth Blue Swadener is Professor and Associate Director of the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Gaile S. Cannella is Research Professor at Arizona State University and the series editor for Rethinking Childhood and Critical Qualitative Research at Peter Lang. All are founding members of the International Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education group.

«Weaving together as well as juxtaposing theoretical perspectives, conceptual concerns and activist-oriented commitments, the editors and authors of this reader compel educators not only to ponder but also to enact new imaginaries of early childhood and child care pedagogies, research, theories, policies and curricula. Representing cross-generational, transnational and theoretically rich and yet diverse perspectives, this text is a must-read for educators concerned with the care and education of all children, especially within current education climates dominated by the rage for accountability, ‘normalization’ and standardization. Reconceptualizing early childhood care and education is an on-going commitment, one that these contributors perform in challenging and inspiring ways.» (Janet L. Miller, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Arts & Humanities, Teachers College, Columbia University)«Today when the disenchantment with the dominant discourses within the field of early childhood education is pervasive, this is a timely and important book. The editors, as the leading edge of the reconceptualizing early childhood education movement since the early 1990s, have here assembled researchers who have been influential in contesting the normalizing and universalizing processes of the mainstream discourses within the field, as well as in creating a space for new critical theories and paradigmatic positions that welcome complexity, diversity, uncertainty as well as wonder.» (Gunilla Dahlberg, Professor Emerita, Stockholm University, Sweden)«The authors draw on twenty years of research and scholarship on reconceptualizing early childhood education to push us to intensify our struggles for equity, justice, inclusion, redistributive economics and social politics. With stories and voices that are both discomfiting and inspirational, they ask hard questions about how it could be and how we can use our imaginations and our activisms to make it better for all children.» (Mara Sapon-Shevin, Professor of Inclusive Education, Faculty Member, Disabilities Studies, Women’s Studies, Programs in the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts, Syracuse University)

• Contents: Marianne N. Bloch/Beth Blue Swadener/Gaile S. Cannella: Exploring Reconceptualist Histories and Possibilities – Marianne N. Bloch: Interrogating Reconceptualizing Early Care and Education (RECE) - 20 Years Along – Shirley A. Kessler: Reconceptualizing the Early Childhood Curriculum: An Unaddressed Topic – J. Amos Hatch: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Research – Jonathan Silin: Through a Queer Lens: Recuperative Longings and the Reconceptualizing Past – Michael O’Loughlin: Still Waiting for the Revolution – Richard T. Johnson: Disciplining «Safe» Bodies in a Global Era of Child Panic: Implementing Techniques for Disciplining the Self – Susan Grieshaber/Felicity McArdle: Social Justice, Risk, and Imaginaries – Liane Mozère: What About Learning? – Cheryl Rau/Jenny Ritchie: Ki te Whai ao, ki te ao Marama: Early Childhood Understandings in Pursuit of Social, Cultural, and Ecological Justice – Affrica Taylor: Situated and Entangled Childhoods: Imagining and Materializing Children’s Common World Relations – Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw/Fikile Nxumalo: Posthumanist Imaginaries for Decolonizing Early Childhood Praxis – Chelsea Bailey: Radical Theories of Presence in Early Childhood Imaginaries – Michelle Salazar Pèrez/Cinthya M. Saavedra: Black and Chicana Feminisms: Journeys Toward Spirituality and Reconnection – Alejandro Azocar: The Use of Poststructuralist Storytelling in Early Childhood Education Research – Travis Wright: Revisiting Risk/Re-Thinking Resilience: Fighting to Live Versus Failing to Thrive – Denise Proud/Cynthia à Beckett: Our Story of Early Childhood Collaboration: Imagining Love and Grace – Gail Boldt/Joseph Michael Valente: Bring Back the Asylum: Reimagining Inclusion in the Presence of Others – Liselott Mariett Olsson/Ebba Theorell: Affective/Effective Reading and Writing Through Real Virtualities in a Digitized Society – Mathias Urban: Learning From the Margins: Early Childhood Imaginaries, «Normal Science», and the Case for a Radical Reconceptualization of Research and Practice – Gaile S. Cannella: Critical Qualitative Research and Rethinking Academic Activism in Childhood Studies – Valerie Polakow: None for You: Children’s Capabilities and Rights in Profoundly Unequal Times – Mark Nagasawa/Lacey Peters/Beth Blue Swadener: The Costs of Putting Quality First: Neoliberalism, (Ine)quality, (Un)affordability, and (In)accessibility? – Kylie Smith/Sheralyn Campbell: Social Activism: The Risky Business of Early Childhood Educators in Neoliberal Australian Classrooms – Janette Habashi: [Im]possibilities of Reinvention of Palestinian Early Childhood Education – I-Fang Lee/Nicola Yelland: The Global Childhoods Project: Complexities of Learning and Living With a Biliterate and Trilingual Literacy Policy.