Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education: Critical Questions, New Imaginaries and Social Activism: A Reader (Rethinking Childhood) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1433123657 ISBN 13: 9781433123658

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2014

Synopsis

Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education is a foundational text, which presents contemporary theories and debates about early education and child care in many nations. The authors selected are leading contributors in discussions about critical early childhood studies over the past twenty years; the editors are long-time scholars in the reconceptualizing early childhood movement. Audiences include students in graduate courses focused on early childhood and primary education, critical cultural studies of childhood, critical curriculum studies and critical theories that have been contested and debated and drawn from over the course of two decades.
The book is filled with recent scholarship by leading authors in the reconceptualization and rethinking of childhood studies and early childhood fields, who discuss foundational debates, new imaginaries in theory and practice and activist scholarship. A must-read for graduate students and professionals interested in beginning or continuing critical interrogations of current early childhood policy and reforms globally.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Review

«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)

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1433123657
• ISBN 13: 9781433123658
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 333
• Editor: Bloch Marianne N., Cannella Gaile S., Swadener Beth Blue