Abstract
This first issue of the 21st volume of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood marks the beginning of the third decade of the journal, of which we are very proud! In line with the aims and scope of the journal, the articles published over these years reflect the changes that have occurred in research and scholarship in the field, and the continued use of theoretical perspectives and methodologies not traditionally associated with early childhood education. The current issue, 21(1), covers a wide range of topics that include children’s bodies and subjectivities, activism, risky and imaginative play, and preschool science education. As usual, the authors draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives. This editorial concludes with a list of those who reviewed for Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood during 2019 (however, the names of those who reviewed for special issues may not appear in this list).
In the first article, Connie M Antonsen addresses risky play by undertaking what she has called ‘Restorying the image of the child’s body in early childhood education’. Readers gain an insight into what Antonsen encountered as she grappled with letting go of some of her own and commonly held assumptions about children’s bodies. She uses a scenario to explain how she was exposed to thinking differently, noticing and attending deeply to the ways in which bodies ‘search for meaning in the world’. Post-foundational theories enabled looking from different perspectives and contributed to three unexpected surprises that Antonsen experienced, going beyond what she thought was possible.
Emotions are the focus of the second article, ‘“I felt uncomfortable because I know what it can be”: The emotional geographies and implicit activisms of reflexive practices for early childhood teachers’. Jo Albin-Clark explores how emotions are linked to reflexive processes and practices in the everyday work of early childhood teachers. The theory of emotional geography is used to show how emotion can influence the speed of change in daily practice, and how actions and gestures can be forms of activism. This article illustrates how emotions and ethical decision-making were at the core of how one early childhood teacher was able to change her practices and correspondingly alter the relationships she had with parents because of the implicit activism in her everyday interactions.
The power of small actions in everyday activity continues the theme from the previous article, with Ninni Sandvik investigating minor gestures as they occurred with very young children. In her article ‘“When the whole sky falls down”: Minor gestures towards play out of place/time in toddler groups’, Sandvik understands play as process (rather than form), which is made possible by moving beyond the idea of conceptualising play within the limits of specific temporalities and spatialities. Thinking with play as process, Sandvik worked with an actual event where children ‘latch[ed] onto minor gestures’. Minor gestures could be events that teachers tend to ignore or overlook because something more important (or major) might be happening. Drawing on Manning’s (2016) work, Sandvik explains the significance of approaches that resist ‘immediate capture by the major gesture’, and what is possible when minor gestures are foregrounded as sites where ‘events make a difference to both children and pedagogues’.
The fourth article is written by Christopher Drew and titled ‘To follow a rule: The construction of student subjectivities on classroom rules charts’. Drew takes on rules charts that can be found in classrooms by subjecting 50 of them to a critical discourse analysis. He argues that such charts produce student subjectivities by reinforcing discursive power relationships and further marginalising those who are already located on the periphery. The analysis reflects that the charts work semiotically to support dominant discourses of what constitutes the normal/ideal student and in the process exacerbate difference from the norm.
Liv Toruun Grindheim makes a case for the value of children’s imaginative play in ‘Beyond uniform production: Exploring children’s imaginative play through the lenses of their teacher’. She challenges policy that is underpinned by economic and political drivers, and aimed at increasing academic and social competence through approaches such as school readiness and early intervention. Grindheim makes the point that the voices of early childhood teachers and children are faint in discussions and decisions about the aims and goals of early childhood education. She argues that imaginative play offers children experiences that are not valued in the same way as the development of academic abilities and future academic performance.
The final article in this issue is written by Sofie Areljung and engages with questions about science education in preschool settings. Titled ‘Capturing the world with verbs: Preschool science education beyond nouns and objects’, Areljung is interested in challenging epistemological traditions of science pedagogy. She does this by using posthuman ideas about matter and concepts that are aimed at providing different ontological and epistemological perspectives on preschool science education. As Areljung explains, the use of verbs can assist educators because verbs are consistent with the idea that ‘knowing emerges in action and human–matter relations’, and because they prompt a move to seeing ‘action and non-tangible processes and phenomena in one’s surroundings’. The use of verbs means that it is possible to contest scientific ideas about objectivity and binaries such as concrete/abstract and subjective/objective.
The colloquium for this issue comes from Lesley Anne Evans and Lindsay A Gold and is titled ‘Pre-mathematical skills in infants: Numerosity as a game’. The book review is contributed by Yeojoon Yoon, who reviewed Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children, by Candace R Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker.
Finally, our sincere thanks to the reviewers who provided feedback to authors during 2019. We have listed the 2019 reviewers below and sourced these from the ScholarOne system that the journal uses (however, the names of those who reviewed for special issues may not appear in this list). We highly value the expertise of our reviewers and the informed comments provided for our authors – your work helps make the journal what it is!
Footnotes
Reviewers 2019
Jo Ailwood, The University of Newcastle, Australia
Maarit Alasuutari, Jyväskylä University, Finland
Jim Anderson, University of British Columbia, Canada
Lorna Arnott, University of Strathclyde, UK
Lena Aronsson, Stockholm University, Sweden
Ian Barron, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Mindy Blaise, Edith Cowan University, Australia
Gail Boldt, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Jane Bone, Monash University, Australia
Christopher Brown, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Marilyn Campbell, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Verity Campbell-Barr, University of Plymouth, UK
Eun Cho, University of New Hampshire, USA
Caroline Cohrssen, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Tamara Cumming, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Mary Curran, Rutgers University, USA
Emilia Djonov, Macquarie University, Australia
Karen Dooley, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Iris Duhn, Monash University, Australia
Katarina Elfström Pettersson, Linköping University, Sweden
Sonya Gaches, University of Otago, New Zealand
Megan Gibson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Beth Graue, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA
Liv Grindheim, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
Jennifer Guevara, Dublin City University, Ireland
Abigail Hackett, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Linda Henderson, Monash University, Australia
Eileen Honan, Fiji National University, Fiji
Alison Hooper, University of Alabama, USA
Sandy Houen, The University of Queensland, Australia
Brittany Huber, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Pam Jarvis, Leeds Trinity University, UK
Christine Jones-Diaz, Western Sydney University, Australia
Rachna Joshi, University of Roehampton London, UK
Mina Kim, San Francisco State University, USA
Linda Knight, RMIT University, Australia
Rachel Langford, Ryerson University, Canada
Joohi Lee, The University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Libby Lee-Hammond, Murdoch University, Australia
Christina MacRae, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Eve Mayes, Deakin University, Australia
Zsuzsa Millei, Tampere University, Finland
Emilie Moberg, Stockholm University, Sweden
Heather Morris, Middlesex University, UK
Julie Nicholson, Mills College, USA
Joce Nuttall, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Fikile Nxumalo, University of Toronto, Canada
Jayne Osgood, Middlesex University, UK
Ann Merete Otterstad, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Maiju Paananen, Tampere University, Finland
Jane Page, University of Melbourne, Australia
Will Parnell, Portland State University, USA
Emma Pearson, University of Sheffield, UK
Jan Peeters, Ghent University, Belgium
Lydia Plowman, University of Edinburgh, UK
Pamela Raburu, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya
Jyrik Reunamo, University of Helsinki, Finland
Corine Rivalland, Monash University, Australia
Kerry Robinson, Western Sydney University, Australia
Sharon Ryan, Rutgers University, USA
Andi Salamon, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Jonathan Silin, University of Toronto, Canada
Margaret Sims, University of New England, Australia
Nathalie Sinclair, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Prasanna Srinivasan, Monash University, Australia
Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Evgenia Theodotou, University of East London, UK
Joseph Tobin, University of Georgia, USA
Holli Tonyan, California State University, USA
Joseph Valente, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Radhika Viruru, Texas A&M University, USA
Kerryann Walsh, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Victoria Whitington, University of South Australia, Australia
Debora Wisneski, University of Nebraska, USA
Karen Wohlwend, Indiana University, USA
Travis Wright, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Shirley Wyver, Macquarie University, Australia
Faridah Yunus, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Kaili Zhang, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR