Abstract
This issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood is published as we are emerging from a pandemic that has reshaped our lives in such diverse ways. The articles are rich and varied, and reflect the wide range of alternative issues and methodologies that the journal has come to be known for over the past 23 years.
In the first article, Nicole Land, Cristina Delgado Vintimilla, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw and Lucille Angus propose ‘decentering the child as a critical motion in the education of pedagogists’ who work to critique child-centred and developmental pedagogies in early childhood education. They note the ways in which developmental perspectives have hindered ‘ethical and intellectual’ thinking in early childhood, and suggest two propositions with the intention of reinventing the ‘relational commons that anchor pedagogists’ in practice.
Next, Tahmina Shayan discusses providing spaces for children's culture in an article that originates from an ethnography based in an art classroom with data from children's and adults’ diverse beliefs, ideologies and culture.
Leslie Gleim, Jeanne Marie Iorio, Catherine Hamm and Kirsten Saddler view children as capable and consider how this is reflected in daily plans in a preschool community. They maintain that pedagogy situated in agency and complexity can disrupt taken-for-granted narratives and offers multiple ways of teaching, learning and meaning-making. Their article presents examples of such pedagogies as revealed in daily plans, which they regard as a process of mark-making, deep listening and engagement with children's theories of their everyday worlds.
In their article ‘Outlining play and playful learning in Finland and Brazil: A content analysis of early childhood education policy documents’, Jonna Kangas, Heidi Harju-Luukkainen, Annu Brotherus, Liam Francis Gearon and Arniika Kuusisto investigate how play and playful learning are described in Finnish and Brazilian curriculum guidelines for early childhood education. Their analyses of these two countries’ contrasting sociocultural and educational contexts where curriculum documents have emerged uncover some of the values and attitudes towards playful learning, which are important to children's agency.
Elise Hunkin, Anna Kilderry and Andrea Nolan's article, entitled ‘Affirmative discourse intervention: A framework for re-democratising engagement with education policy discourse’, notes that policy and reform discourses are increasingly politicised by the processes of neo-liberalism, with critical policy methodologies being ignored. They maintain that ‘[c]ritical policy sociologists have noted that critical commentaries rarely succeed in changing or impacting dominant education policy pathways’. Thus, they present ‘affirmative discourse intervention’ with the aim of achieving critical engagement in education policy, drawing on Foucauldian notions of governmentality.
In the final article, Seth Oppong draws on the research literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to interrogate ‘how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era’. Oppong contends that colonial institutions continue to exist even when formal colonisation has ceased via the use of de facto power. The article discusses the implications for practice and policy in the context of using decolonised early childhood education and care services to raise a new generation of confident African children.
The issue also has a colloquium by Joohi Lee, Candace Joswick, Kathryn Pole and Robin Jocius on the topic of algorithm design and a review by Flora J Harmon of Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove’s book Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades.