Abstract
This edition marks the beginning of a new era for Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (CIEC) with our move to SAGE Publishing. This first edition, published by SAGE, represents the quality that we have striven to maintain over the past 15 years and the wonderful diversity of papers that we have published, which have meant that we are now regarded as one of the most read and relevant early childhood journals globally.
In the first paper, Bone and Blaise interrogate Uneasy assemblage: Prisoners, animals, asylum-seeking children and posthuman packaging. Deploying Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) posthuman performative methodology with ideas generated by the work of Haraway (2008), Wolfe (2003, 2010) and Barad (2007), Bone and Blaise examine the media, the internet, human and animal rights research to considers what it means to be packaged, commodified and de-humanized/de-animalized in refugee scenarios. They argue that ‘…following the flows that circulate around the packaged animal or human everything changes and becoming part of the assemblage invites active engagement with the unease that emerges’.
Next, Dachyshyn implores us to reflect on our origins to guide, inspire and challenge our work in the early years. The articles proposes that a consideration of the role of self and others, and examining our core beliefs of humility, compassion and empathy can be viewed as a pedagogical alternative for doing our work. Ways of achieving this are described and examined in the article.
Masoumi identifies the use of new technologies in preschool contexts in Sweden with a view to moving towards a typology of practice. He observed and interviewed preschool teachers as they used ICT to ‘enrich and transform’ their programmes. The research project reveals that there are different types of use of ICT in early years preschools in Sweden. They include being used to enrich existing practices, as a cultural mediator, as a way to entertain young children and as a communication and for documentation. The data also provide important information about some teachers’ reluctance to use ICT.
In Assemblages of desire: Infants, bear caves and belonging in early childhood education and care, Tina Stratigos explores one of the concepts that form the basis of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in Australia: Belonging. She does this by studying an episode that occurred between an infant, a group of older children and an educator. She then applies Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage to problematize the episode. Stratigos discusses the ‘complex and unresolved nature of belonging and infants’ roles and capacities within the politics of belonging’. Her work encourages the reader to think about the ways in which belonging operates for infants and considers ways of theorizing this from an alternative standpoint using Deleuze and Guattari’s notion.
Gooey stuff, intra-activity and differential obesities: Foregrounding agential adiposity within childhood obesity stories enters the discussions around obesity factors related to children living in contemporary times. Using Barad’s ‘agential realist ontology’ Nicole Land uses images from three children’s picture books to explore the issues and imagines how ‘novel orientations toward childhood obesity might be made possible if we populate the adiposity of obese bodies such that we might engage with the intra-activity of agential adiposity’.
The final paper in this edition is entitled 1–3 Year Old Children’s Experience of Subjective Wellbeing in Day Care. Seland, Beate, Sandseter and Bratterud gathered phenomenological observations of 18 children, regarding their experiences of subjective wellbeing in day care contexts, in Norway. Their work reveals that theses infants are able to express their sense of wellbeing and pleasure in play contexts, as they interact with others. Further, the caregivers are able to create an ‘…inter-subjective space dominated by high sensitivity and responsivity’. They note that this is an important factor for infants’ wellbeing and discuss how the infants’ intentions, needs and preferences act to enable and facilitate their participation in the everyday life of the centre.
Since our first edition we have included colloquia and book reviews as part of most editions. With regard to colloquia we wanted to give emerging researchers the opportunity to publish shorter pieces of work that might act as a catalyst for conversation, or as a stimulus for new ways of thinking about contemporary issues. In this edition we have a colloquium by Jiles Tywanda. For book reviews, not only did we want to showcase new works with our readers, but we wanted to do this in a thorough way, so that again it represented an opportunity for young scholars to write and share the overview and potential of the book being reviewed. Here, Richard House reviews Narratives from the Nursery: Negotiating Professional Identities in Early Childhood by Jayne Osgood (2012).