Abstract
The topics in the first issue of our eighteenth year in production reflect how far we have journeyed as a community of educators, practitioners and professionals. The articles reflect the diversity and strength of character evident in the lives of young children, their educators and families, viewed from alternative perspectives than are usually found in the early childhood sector. Professionally and personally, last year seemed to be very much like that which Dickens wrote about in A Tale of Two Cities in his chapter 1, called simply ‘The period’, to set the context for his classic book: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only (p. 1).
What is to follow in 2017? We do not know as yet, but one of the major events on the horizon that will impact on early childhood educators was introduced to us in 2016 in the form of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Early Learning Study. Emeritus Professor Peter Moss and colleagues forewarned us about the possibility of the Early Learning Study in volume 17, issue 3 of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (CIEC). In our final issue for 2016, two responses to the OECD’s plans from New Zealand emphasised the perils of such a reductionist approach to early childhood education. As we proceed through 2017, we can prepare to be active in voicing our views based on our knowledge and expertise in the area, and present them to our respective authorities in clear and coherent dialogues.
How arguments are presented and discussions conducted in a ‘post-truth’ world is a major cause of concern for those of us who are passionate about advocacy, equity, social justice, and being critical and creative thinkers in the 21st century. The plan for the Early Learning Study seems to be grounded in a positivist view that we need data on children’s skills on school entry in order to compare it to the results of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in science, mathematics and reading so as to determine the extent to which our educational systems are ‘successful’. How PISA and other high-stakes test results have become the default for assessing the effectiveness of national education systems is both bizarre and ridiculous. The PISA test regime focuses only on three curriculum areas or competency fields; mathematics, science and reading. The OECD claims that the tests measure how these relate to, or are translated into, the everyday lives of 15-year-old students across the globe. Yet, an overview of the contents of each section of the tests seems to indicate that they are very much reflective of ‘school learning’ as opposed to how we live our everyday lives. We need to know why they are used as the baseline and be concerned about reducing education to the minutiae of simple multiple-choice answers that do not explain, or help anyone to understand, the complexities of the 21st-century world in which we live.
Our first article in this issue resonates very much with me personally, as I lived in Greece last year while on sabbatical. I came to understand the richness of the historical landscape from ancient times and realised I knew very little about it. In ‘Historical learning in early childhood: Teaching methods and children’s understanding’, Yngve Skjæveland discusses teaching history in centres and children’s understanding of history. He interviewed Norwegian teachers and found that they had positive experiences in their teaching of historical projects and noted that the children’s ability to acquire historical knowledge was high. In particular, teachers’ storytelling stimulated the children’s interest and understanding of history, and the article suggests that the approaches described have the potential to establish the foundation for historical consciousness relevant to studying history in schools.
Last year, we were confronted by images of multitudes of peoples fleeing their homes and seeking refuge, in Europe particularly. In the second article in this issue, Kris Kalkman, Marit Holm Hopperstad and Marko Valenta consider the experiences of recently arrived migrant girls in relation to social competition and relational aggression. Using data from a Norwegian childcare centre over a period of nine months, they examine the ways in which some preschool girls excluded a new (migrant) girl from participating in a sharing activity involving self-made artefacts. The article emphasises that while there is a generally accepted positive view of day care for migrant children, the presence of such ‘relational aggression’ can occur within apparently harmless activities and has implications for our pedagogical practices.
Next, we hear about ‘The social construction of the competent, self-governed child in documentation: Panels in the Swedish preschool’, by Johan Liljestrand and Annie Hammarberg. The authors have observed that the process of documentation has become an important issue for policy, practice and accountability in a variety of different national contexts. In Sweden, it is a requirement in the national syllabus. They note that ‘the documentation of children is always a social construction that focuses on certain things and excludes (possible) others’ and, further, that ‘[s]uch constructions can be linked to broader discourses of the competent and self-governed child, and the tendency to label the child as autonomous and competent in policy documents’. In their article, they explore how views of the competent and self-governed child are incorporated and represented in documentation panels in Swedish preschools.
In ‘Narratives of infants’ encounters with curriculum: Beyond the curriculum of care’, Sandra Cheeseman interrogates aspects of Australia’s National Quality Framework which deal with the responsibilities of early childhood educators who work with infants to plan for and assess the learning of young children. It suggests that they should be responsive to children’s ideas and play. Cheeseman contends that responsiveness is framed in terms of the emotional support and attention that the educators give to the child in order to create an ‘attachment relationship’. It is also encouraged in order to acquire detailed information about supporting the infant in care routines. Cheeseman incorporates Levinas’s ideas of ethical encounter in order to facilitate a consideration of infants’ learning more broadly. She suggests possibilities to see beyond traditional perceptions of infants as objects of the attachment relationship, and identifies the potential for infants to be viewed as ‘initiators’ who guide educators’ responses.
Ian Barron, Lisa Taylor, Jan Nettleton and Shabnam Amin’s article, ‘Working with the cracks in the rigging in researching early childhood professional development’, seeks to explore the relationships between a group of early childhood academics and teachers in northern England. Their work used Foucauldian notions of heterotopia to theorise an approach to professional development and to enable the research, which was concerned with examining the discourses and practices associated with provision of early learning for two-year-old children. They replaced the traditional transmission model of professional development in order to explore what might be offered by an alternative approach characterised by a broader engagement with ideas, feelings and the body, and the layering of research complexity.
In ‘Memoir of Tanzania: Learning about early childhood projects in developing countries’, Helen Penn uses memoir as a method for understanding complex early childhood issues. She reflects on her first visit to Tanzania. Her memories from the visit link to ‘changing interpretations of colonial history and early childhood interventions’, as well as considering its impact on her own academic career and work trajectory.
In this issue, we are pleased to have two colloquia. Jonathan Silin asks two questions in ‘Risking hope in a worried world’. They are: ‘How is it possible to risk hope in times like these?’ and ‘What does hope even look like in a worried world?’ By exploring three notions – ‘letting go of worry’, ‘the pleasure of forgetting’ and ‘waiting’ – we are able to come to a spot where we might hold a space for hope and let go of worry. Silin’s colloquium is timely, given the new year and being able to navigate it with renewed/new vigour.
Joohi Lee and Mohan Pant analyse children’s mathematics proficiency, a topic that seems to be continually at the forefront of educational discussion due to the prevalence of high-stakes testing and all that it implies. The authors suggest that there is a critical need for systematic efforts to improve the quality of teaching in early years mathematics.
Finally, Debra J Ackerman’s book review is of Squandering America’s Future: Why ECE Policy Matters for Equality, Our Economy, and Our Children, by Susan Ochshorn (Teachers College Press, 2015).
As we move to the eighteenth volume for CIEC in 2017, we acknowledge and thank the reviewers for volume 17 in 2016. We are always grateful for the time and expertise our reviewers give to peer-reviewing papers. Peer review is an important part of publication and the reputation of any journal. Our reviewers contribute to the quality of the journal and the way in which the journal is valued in the professional community, and we thank them very much. In 2016, CIEC had an acceptance rate of 34%. Table 1 shows acceptance and rejection rates for the past five years (2012–2016).
Acceptance and rejection percentages for CIEC, 2012–2016.
Thanks to the CIEC reviewers for 2016 (Table 2).
CIEC reviewers for 2016.
