Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education

CONTENTS

List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Against the Tide: New way in Early Childhood Education
Nicola Yelland and Anna Kilderry

PART I CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND TEACHING

Chapter 2
Reconceptualizing the field (of early care and education): If ‘western’ child development is a problem, then what do we do?
Gaile S. Cannella

Chapter 3
Developmental theory and early childhood education: Necessary but not sufficient
Daniel J. Walsh

Chapter 4
How ‘bad’ can it be?: Troubling gender, sexuality and early childhood teaching
Mindy Blaise and Yarrow Andrew.

Chapter 5
Preschool children’s portrayals of their male teacher: A poststructural analysis
Jennifer Sumsion

Chapter 6
Who Can Speak? Silence, Voice, and Pedagogy
Jonathan Silin

PART II RETHINKING EARLY CHILDHOOD PRACTICES

Chapter 7
Freedom to choose: Examining children’s experience in choice time
Sharon Ryan

Chapter 8
Learning to be a child: Cultural diversity and Early Years ideology
Liz Brooker

Chapter 9
Questioning diversity
Jeanette Rhedding-Jones

Chapter 10
Secret children’s business: Resisting and redefining access to learning in the early childhood classroom
Sheralyn Campbell

Chapter 11
‘Civilization and replicas’: Disrupting multicultural pretend play props
Richard Johnson

PART III THE EMERGENCE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND LITERACIES

Chapter 12
Digikids: Young children, popular culture and media
Jackie Marsh

Chapter 13
Literarily Lost: the quest for meaningful literacy agendas in early childhood education
Leonie Rowan and Eileen Honan

Chapter 14
Curriculum, pedagogies and practice with ICT in the information age
Nicola Yelland

Chapter 15
Postmodernism, passion and potential for future childhoods
Nicola Yelland and Anna Kilderry

INDEX

"This book is a valuable contribution to the creation of a more critical and theoretically diverse approach to early childhood policy and practice. Through many vivid examples and a varied cast-list of authors, both academics and practitioners, it shows the potential of this approach for pedagogical work in early childhood institutions and the education of the early childhood workforce."
Professor Peter Moss, Institute of Education, University of London, UK.

“In the era of No Child Left Behind in the U.S., you might think that the landscape of educational research and practice has been transformed into a row of ‘scientific’ models and unvarying curricular scripts. Nicola Yelland's volume will persuade you that, in contrast, the landscape in early childhood education is varied and full of unconventional angles. The authors examine virtually every significant aspect of curricular practice and postmodernist theory, while challenging readers to be skeptics themselves – to engage with risky ideas on the way to transformative actions.”
Celia Genishi, Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA.

This book challenges long-established beliefs about early childhood education. It offers readers the opportunity to think about the aspects of their profession that are fundamental to providing effective and equitable educational opportunities for young children in the 21st century. Well-known contributors explore issues that are not only ‘critical’ in terms of being fundamental to early childhood education, but also ‘critical’ in that they present alternative ideas and use frameworks that are not traditional to the field. Organized in three parts, the book considers:

• Contemporary views of early childhood education and teaching
• The rethinking of early childhood practices
• The emergence of new technologies and multiliteracies

The chapters in the book focus on aspects of early childhood education that have for a long time been accepted as truisms, or have been too hard to deal with and thus often ignored. For example, they include a consideration of issues that range from examining play that might be sexual in focus or learning how to cope with traumatic events in young children’s lives, to the ways in which popular culture and new literacies impact on what young children are interested in and how they can be engaged in learning with information and communications technology.

Essential reading for students in all early childhood studies programmes, as well as early childhood practitioners who want to engage in more reflective practices around their work.

Contributors
Yarrow Andrew, Chelsea Bailey, Mindy Blaise, Elizabeth Brooker, Sheralyn Campbell, Gaile Cannella, Richard Johnson, Anna Kilderry, Jackie Marsh, Jeanette Rhedding Jones, Leonie Rowan, Sharon Ryan, Jonathan Silin, Jennifer Sumsion, Daniel Walsh, Nicola Yelland