Abstract
As we begin the twenty-third year of publishing Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, the world continues to struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic and some countries in eastern Europe are experiencing heightened border tension. In early childhood education, teacher shortages (like education generally) are real and posing significant problems. Government incentives to remedy the situation in Australia are yet to have the desired effect, and the field is having difficulty keeping up with the demand for teachers. Like the teacher shortage, some issues remain ongoing challenges for the profession and feature in this issue; they include citizenship for children, teacher preparation programs, professional learning, racism, quality and the power of developmental narratives. At this time, we also thank the reviewers, who so generously contribute by providing informed and edgy feedback for authors. Securing reviewers has been more challenging during the pandemic, with many people experiencing very different daily lives from pre-pandemic times.
We begin this issue with an empirical article by Dag Nome titled ‘Toddlers as ignorant citizens: An explorative study of conflicts and negotiations involving toys in kindergarten’. Set in Norway, Nome draws on Chantal Mouffe's ideas of democracy as ‘agonistic pluralism’ and Gert Biesta's concept of the ‘ignorant citizen’ to investigate how toys affect interactions among very young children. Using two examples, Nome argues for the importance of children's experiences of small, everyday and unresolved conflicts as ways to express citizenship, and for the important place of material objects in these ‘agonistic encounters’.
The second article is a conceptual contribution. In ‘Black skin, White theorists: Remembering hidden Black early childhood scholars’, Anthony Broughton issues a timely reminder of what is missing from early childhood teacher preparation programs in the USA. The article resonates piercingly with one of the four pandemics named recently by Ladson-Billings (2021): the pandemic of systemic racism. But this one has existed much longer than the other three (the COVID-19, climate and economic crises). The article digs into aspects of Broughton's own story and uses critical race theory, literature, oral stories and inquiry circles with pre-service teachers to provide a range of alternatives for the way things could be. It does not shy away from the enormity of the task in that it acknowledges tasks for policymakers related to standardised testing, as well as identifying possibilities closer to the coalface for teacher educators and practitioners.
Re-imagining and explaining ways in which things can be done differently is a feature of several articles in this issue. ‘Communing to re-imagine figured worlds’ focuses on how educational leaders re-imagined and redesigned early childhood education learning communities. The authors – Jamie Huff Sisson, Victoria Whitington, Anne-Marie Shin, Jaye Johnson Theil and Barbara Comber – problematised the notion of ‘community’ to investigate how this seemingly inclusive term can conceal difference. A state-supported and statewide program to re-imagine schools as learning communities provided the context to explore the experiences of leaders in this work. Adopting cultural models theory enabled the researchers to address how leaders re-envisioned their identities and participated in ways that were outside the bounds of what was typical or the ‘norm’. Challenging taken-for-granted practices revealed viable alternatives but, like many innovations, sustainability remains the challenge.
Weipeng Yang and Hui Li address the role of local culture in school-based curriculum development in two kindergartens in ‘The role of culture in early childhood curriculum development: A case study of curriculum innovations in Hong Kong kindergartens’. The balance between local and imported curricular practices is pertinent in places like Hong Kong SAR because of the history of colonisation and continued inward migration. A cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) approach was used to reveal evidence of curricula mixing, with attention to a balance between traditional and imported approaches. The operation of a moral purpose was also apparent in both kindergartens, maintaining the presence of fundamental Chinese values in the curricula.
The fifth article, by Marianne Fenech and Samantha King – ‘Problematising early childhood teacher registration as a mechanism to improve quality early childhood education and care’ – reports findings from a small-scale study in the state of New South Wales, Australia, where participants rejected ‘discursive truths’ about the need for and benefits of teacher registration. These ‘truths’ included the idea that requiring registration to be able to teach improves teacher quality and professional status. The participants reported a negative impact on job satisfaction caused by increased paperwork, and pressure to match the standards rather than attend to the needs and interests of children.
In a unique approach, the final article by Nicole Land – ‘Tending, counting and fitting with post-developmental fat(s) in early childhood education’ – troubles developmentalism by disrupting dominant understandings of fat(s) discourses related to obesity and health. Land proposes dealing with post-developmental fat(s) as pedagogical problems by crafting pedagogical provocations that construct fat(s) as complex, and as accountable for ethical, political and pedagogical concerns in early childhood education.
The colloquium is contributed by Peter Moss and Guy Roberts-Holmes, and focuses on neo-liberalism: ‘Now is the time! Confronting neo-liberalism in early childhood’. And Alexander Sabine, from the University of Portsmouth, UK, reviews Roberts-Holmes and Moss’s book, Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education: Markets, Imaginaries and Governance (Routledge, 2021).
Thank you 2021 reviewers
We sincerely thank the reviewers who contributed their mentoring skills by providing informed and insightful feedback during the peer-review process in 2021. As far as I know, we have listed all the reviewers for the issues in 2021, but please let us know if we have mistakenly omitted anyone. Special thanks to those of you who review regularly, as your input is highly valued:
Jo Ailwood Jo Albin-Clark Lena Aronsson Sharon Bessell Mindy Blaise Gail Boldt Bronwen Cowie Tamara Cumming Karen Dooley Iris Duhn Julie Dunn Angela Eckhoff Suzy Edwards Sue Elliott Nikki Fairchild Amy Farndale Nuria Galende Pérez Megan Gibson Beth Graue Alex Gunn Amita Gupta Abigail Hackett Heidi Harju-Luukkainen Linda Henderson Rachel Holmes Jeanne Iorio Audrey Juma Mina Kim Susan Krieg Arniika Kuusisto Tove Lafton Hillevi Lenz Taguchi Liang Li Samara Madrid Akpovo Eva Mikuska Zsuzsa Millei Lynette Morris Joce Nuttall Fikile Nxumalo Nina Odegard Maiju Paananen Amy Parks Katja Repo Corine Rivalland Kerry Robinson Sharon Ryan Jonathan Silin Kylie Smith Turre Tammi Christine Marmé Thompson Mathias Urban Jospeh Valente Sarah Windred Joe Winston Liz (Elizabeth) Wood Chris Woodrow Weipeng Yang
Of the papers submitted to Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood in 2021 (excluding book reviews and colloquia), nearly 9% were accepted, approximately 16% are still in process and just under 75% were rejected. In 2022, we look forward to another year of bringing readers thought-provoking articles, colloquia and book reviews.