Feminist Thought in Childhood Research – serie

This book is a collection of feminist childhood studies stories from field research with educators, young children, and/or early childhood student-educators that explores the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of common worlds research methods for the 21st century. Grounded in a common worlding orientation, the contributing authors grapple with complex methodological understandings within postqualitative practices within settler colonial states: Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the Unites States. Each chapter presents a method the authors have put to work in their efforts to unsettle the interpretative power of Euro-Western developmental knowledges and anthropocentric frameworks to reimagine research amid the colonialist, social, and environmental challenges we face today. The research(ing) stories act as provocations for generating innovative, relational, and emergent methods to attend to the complexity of 21st-century childhoods. Just as developmental and sociological perspectives gave birth to new forms of inquiry within childhood studies in 19th-century industrialization and 20th-century urban change respectively, the 21st-century requires novel questions, practices, and methodologies to enhance the childhood studies lexicon. In the field ofchildhood studies, where settler colonial and neoliberal logics have so much clout, suchstrategies are crucial. Feminist Research for 21st-century Childhoods is an important and relevant read for anyone working and researching with children.

This open access book responds to a growing academic interest in theorizing care and care work in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. The contributors theorize a new feminist ethics of care in everyday early childhood practice, revealing its complexities and importance. Drawing on feminist theories and philosophies, the chapter authors show how the caring practices of early childhood educators involve values, emotions, decision-making, action and work. Using cutting-edge theory, authors address the social locations and the inclusion and exclusion of both care givers and care receivers. With contributions from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, the volume brings together early childhood studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and critical disability studies to offer diverse perspectives on feminist ethics of care in early childhood practice and its possibilities and dangers.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

More-Than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood draws on a long-term ethnographic research into the role of place, materiality and the body in the literacies of young children aged 12-36 months. It builds a picture of how children participate in, or become caught up in, literacies and language in the contexts of their everyday lives. Throughout the book, recognised understandings of young children are decentred in favour of experiential knowing of parents and communities, body-place knowing and ordinary affects. Abigail Hackett argues that young children’s literacies are always more-than-human, involving sounds, gestures and movements between humans and nonhuman places and things. By paying close attention to the more-than-human nature of these literacies, which rely on bodies, places, animals, humans, objects and atmospheres for their ongoingness, a case is made for the decentring of young children. The book will be of particular interest to researchers looking at feminist-new materialism, posthumanism, affect theory, and critical literacy in early childhood settings.

Engaging with feminist new materialism, Toni Ingram reveals the ways in which the school ball (or prom) can be understood as an assemblage of material objects, spaces, practices, ideas and imaginings which contribute to the process of becoming school ball-girl. The ball-girl is not a fixed identity or subject but is an intra-active becoming – a dynamic, shifting process where bodies, sexuality and femininities are relationally produced. (Re)conceptualising the school ball-girl as emergent phenomena provides openings for thinking about girls and this schooling practice beyond popular cultural narratives. Building on the social theory of Barad, Bennett, Best, Deleuze and Guattari, this book offers a new perspective on girls, sexuality, gender and schooling, while also exploring the potential of feminist new materialisms for rethinking educational practices and the human subject.

Feminists Researching Gendered Childhoods charts the evolving nature of feminist theory and research methods in childhood studies and the generative potential this holds for researchers, academics and educators to continue to push ideas and practices. The book traces the threads of affect and effect that feminist theories and methodologies have made over time to thinking more, and differently, about gender in childhood. In the wake of the ‘new materialist turn’ in feminist research, the book sought to address two pressing questions: what is especially new about feminist new materialism, and what is especially feminist about feminist new materialism. These questions are generative, troubling, unsettling and invited the contributors on an adventure that involved re-turning and reconfiguring ideas and practices about gender and childhood. Along with the editors, Jayne Osgood (UK), and Kerry H. Robinson (Australia), five key international feminist scholars, Mindy Blaise (Australia), Bronwyn Davies (Australia), Debbie Epstein (UK), Jen Lyttleton-Smith (UK), and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (Canada) collaborated on this book project. Their reflective accounts capture the contribution of their own work and that of their peers, to advancing research practices and theorisations of gender in childhood. Having all approached the study of gendered childhoods in creative and critical ways, these important feminist researchers re-engage and critically reflect on their earlier work alongside their more contemporary contributions to the field. The book is as much about the processes involved in its creation as it about the material/digital end product. The chapters work with both familiar and unfamiliar feminist methodological frameworks that bring affect, materiality and embodiment, as well as textual representations of gender and childhood, into play. The book engages with, and generates artwork, poetry, photographs as a means to grapple with how gender, childhood, family, curriculum and policy have been, and might be researched. The book captures a lively, collaborative, feminist experiment that sought to make space for fresh conceptualisations of gender in childhood. Issues addressed include: social justice and transformative methodologies in childhood research; advancing theoretical perspectives that contribute to fresh understandings of gender in young children’s lives; the ways that research into gender in childhood play out in educational agendas; and the specific gender issues perceived critical to address in contemporary childhoods lived in the post-Anthropocene.

This book is a collection of feminist childhood studies stories from field research with educators, young children, and/or early childhood student-educators that explores the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of common worlds research methods for the 21st century. Grounded in a common worlding orientation, the contributing authors grapple with complex methodological understandings within postqualitative practices within settler colonial states: Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the Unites States. Each chapter presents a method the authors have put to work in their efforts to unsettle the interpretative power of Euro-Western developmental knowledges and anthropocentric frameworks to reimagine research amid the colonialist, social, and environmental challenges we face today. The research(ing) stories act as provocations for generating innovative, relational, and emergent methods to attend to the complexity of 21st-century childhoods. Just as developmental and sociological perspectives gave birth to new forms of inquiry within childhood studies in 19th-century industrialization and 20th-century urban change respectively, the 21st-century requires novel questions, practices, and methodologies to enhance the childhood studies lexicon. In the field ofchildhood studies, where settler colonial and neoliberal logics have so much clout, suchstrategies are crucial. Feminist Research for 21st-century Childhoods is an important and relevant read for anyone working and researching with children.

This open access book responds to a growing academic interest in theorizing care and care work in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. The contributors theorize a new feminist ethics of care in everyday early childhood practice, revealing its complexities and importance. Drawing on feminist theories and philosophies, the chapter authors show how the caring practices of early childhood educators involve values, emotions, decision-making, action and work. Using cutting-edge theory, authors address the social locations and the inclusion and exclusion of both care givers and care receivers. With contributions from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, the volume brings together early childhood studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and critical disability studies to offer diverse perspectives on feminist ethics of care in early childhood practice and its possibilities and dangers.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

More-Than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood draws on a long-term ethnographic research into the role of place, materiality and the body in the literacies of young children aged 12-36 months. It builds a picture of how children participate in, or become caught up in, literacies and language in the contexts of their everyday lives. Throughout the book, recognised understandings of young children are decentred in favour of experiential knowing of parents and communities, body-place knowing and ordinary affects. Abigail Hackett argues that young children’s literacies are always more-than-human, involving sounds, gestures and movements between humans and nonhuman places and things. By paying close attention to the more-than-human nature of these literacies, which rely on bodies, places, animals, humans, objects and atmospheres for their ongoingness, a case is made for the decentring of young children. The book will be of particular interest to researchers looking at feminist-new materialism, posthumanism, affect theory, and critical literacy in early childhood settings.

Engaging with feminist new materialism, Toni Ingram reveals the ways in which the school ball (or prom) can be understood as an assemblage of material objects, spaces, practices, ideas and imaginings which contribute to the process of becoming school ball-girl. The ball-girl is not a fixed identity or subject but is an intra-active becoming – a dynamic, shifting process where bodies, sexuality and femininities are relationally produced. (Re)conceptualising the school ball-girl as emergent phenomena provides openings for thinking about girls and this schooling practice beyond popular cultural narratives. Building on the social theory of Barad, Bennett, Best, Deleuze and Guattari, this book offers a new perspective on girls, sexuality, gender and schooling, while also exploring the potential of feminist new materialisms for rethinking educational practices and the human subject.

This open access book brings together the disciplines of childhood studies, literary studies, and the environmental humanities to focus on the figure of the child as it appears in popular culture and theory. Drawing on theoretical works by Clare Colebrook, Elizabeth Povinelli, Kathryn Yusoff, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour the book offers creative readings of sci-fi novels, short stories and films including Frankenstein, Handmaid’s Tale, The Girl with All the Gifts, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and The Broken Earth trilogy. Emily Ashton raises important questions about the theorization of child development, the ontology of children, racialization and parenting and care, and how those intersect with questions of colonialism, climate, and indigeneity. The book contributes to the growing scholarship within childhood studies that is reconceptualizing the child within the Anthropocene era and argues for child-climate futures that renounce white supremacy and support Black and Indigenous futurities.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

This open access book brings together the disciplines of childhood studies, literary studies, and the environmental humanities to focus on the figure of the child as it appears in popular culture and theory. Drawing on theoretical works by Clare Colebrook, Elizabeth Povinelli, Kathryn Yusoff, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour the book offers creative readings of sci-fi novels, short stories and films including Frankenstein, Handmaid’s Tale, The Girl with All the Gifts, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and The Broken Earth trilogy. Emily Ashton raises important questions about the theorization of child development, the ontology of children, racialization and parenting and care, and how those intersect with questions of colonialism, climate, and indigeneity. The book contributes to the growing scholarship within childhood studies that is reconceptualizing the child within the Anthropocene era and argues for child-climate futures that renounce white supremacy and support Black and Indigenous futurities.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Across the globe the work of early childhood educators, who are predominantly women, is misunderstood, underpaid and undervalued. Perspectives on early childhood educators are highly contentious: are they child development experts, oppressed workers, maternal substitutes, technicians, facilitators of early learning, or something else? This volume features chapter authors from Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the USA and New Zealand, examine a range of contemporary feminist theories in relation to the early childhood educator. The feminist theories covered include materialist feminism, poststructural feminism, decolonizing feminisms, posthumanist feminism, new materialist feminism, feminist ethics of care, womanist feminism, postcolonial feminism, femme theory and feminist queer theory. The editors of the volume offer an introduction and commentaries that explore solidarities and tensions between the feminisms to generate critical conversations about the work, lived experiences, and agency of early childhood educators. The volume contributes to shifting understandings of the early childhood educator in the contexts of culture, practice, policy and politics.

Across the globe the work of early childhood educators, who are predominantly women, is misunderstood, underpaid and undervalued. Perspectives on early childhood educators are highly contentious: are they child development experts, oppressed workers, maternal substitutes, technicians, facilitators of early learning, or something else? This volume features chapter authors from Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the USA and New Zealand, examine a range of contemporary feminist theories in relation to the early childhood educator. The feminist theories covered include materialist feminism, poststructural feminism, decolonizing feminisms, posthumanist feminism, new materialist feminism, feminist ethics of care, womanist feminism, postcolonial feminism, femme theory and feminist queer theory. The editors of the volume offer an introduction and commentaries that explore solidarities and tensions between the feminisms to generate critical conversations about the work, lived experiences, and agency of early childhood educators. The volume contributes to shifting understandings of the early childhood educator in the contexts of culture, practice, policy and politics.

This book considers the identity of the motherscholar, a mother who draws from their practice of mothering to inform their art and scholarship and from their scholarship to inform how they mother. By considering the identity of the motherscholar the contributors from Canada, Finland, India, New Zealand, and the USA work to reconceptualize feminist approaches to childhood research and uncover formerly invisibilized public pedagogies of childhood. Through theoretical research, visual art, stories and oral histories, the contributors explore how their fused identities affect and multiply structural and interpersonal transformation in homes, in communities, and in pedagogical spaces. They describe a mother as a self-identifying or non-binary person with caregiving responsibilities including but not limited to biological mothers, adoptive mothers, stepmothers, alloparents, grandmothers, mothers who are childless, mothers who are grieving, and mothers who are experiencing infertility.

This book considers the identity of the motherscholar, a mother who draws from their practice of mothering to inform their art and scholarship and from their scholarship to inform how they mother. By considering the identity of the motherscholar the contributors from Canada, Finland, India, New Zealand, and the USA work to reconceptualize feminist approaches to childhood research and uncover formerly invisibilized public pedagogies of childhood. Through theoretical research, visual art, stories and oral histories, the contributors explore how their fused identities affect and multiply structural and interpersonal transformation in homes, in communities, and in pedagogical spaces. They describe a mother as a self-identifying or non-binary person with caregiving responsibilities including but not limited to biological mothers, adoptive mothers, stepmothers, alloparents, grandmothers, mothers who are childless, mothers who are grieving, and mothers who are experiencing infertility.

This book draws on feminist and more-than-human approaches to re-imagine gender in the early childhood workforce. Debates, policies and practices around gender in the early childhood workforce have predominantly focused on the under-representation of men and the recuperative outcomes promised through the inclusion of men. Mohandas’ research is, however, concerned with the ways a gendered workforce can be re-imagined when the boundaries of research are stretched beyond mere human inclusion and attention is paid to ordinary objects and unassuming relations that constitute everyday life in the nursery. Through an attunement to the atmospheric, a gendered workforce is re-conceptualised as gendered forces that work across bodies (human and nonhuman), spaces, places and temporalities. Through vignettes from the nursery, Mohandas makes visible how each encounter is composed of gendered and more-than-gendered (i.e. racialised, classed and casted) forces, relations, stories and worlds. By employing feminist theorisations that foreground materiality, affect, discourse, place and temporalities, the book offers new ways to deepen conversations and practices around gender in the early childhood workforce.