Abstract
The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, third edition, is a book as critical and influential as it was when first published in 1995 and revisited as a second edition in 2001. Elizabeth Dau and Barbara Creaser initiated the first edition of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, a book that left its mark on the Australian early childhood landscape. The second edition was edited by Dau, continuing the anti-bias dialogue—challenging educators to critique practices. Editor of this third, current edition, Red Ruby Scarlet, has curated a series of 32 chapters, culminating in a text that offers educators provocations and new ways to think across important social justice issues. This review outlines the key structural, content, and stylistic elements of this book, and woven throughout are insights and reflections on key aspects that personally resonated with me as an early childhood educator.
To provide a context to the current edition of the Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, over the past decade Australia has been part of a Federal Government Early Years Reform Agenda. The Agenda has included attention to investment in the early years, quality, curriculum, and staff qualification. Key elements of the Early Years Reform Agenda included a National quality assurance program with National Quality Standards and National Quality Framework and notably the first National early years curriculum, Belonging, being & becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia, referred to as the EYLF (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), 2009). These documents underpin the current regulatory and curriculum landscape for early childhood education and care programs in Australia and are referred to within the book.
The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood includes three Acknowledgments of Country—at the beginning, mid-way, and end point—each beautifully written by Jessica Staines, Annette Sax, and Priscilla Reid-Loynes. This structure provides depth to the intentions behind acknowledging the richness of Indigenous Australians and their lands and acts as poignant re-reminders to the reader. Indigenous knowledge and ways of thinking are not, however, isolated to these Acknowledgments of Country, and engagement with Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander perspectives is embedded across many of the chapters. For example, in Chapter 2, Scarlet and Fargher acknowledge Indigenous knowledge and make the point that “Country has been a ‘teacher’ for hundreds of thousands of years” (p. 23). Arthur and D’Warte, in Chapter 7, examine the linguistic diversity in Australia, and outline Aboriginal languages, with historical accounts and note the decline in the number of languages (p. 81). In Chapter 9, Miller and Mascadri draw on a number of studies that draw on “whiteness” theory and examine issues of Aboriginality. In drawing on a review of cultural competence by the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), they outline cultural competence framework (p. 117). In Chapter 12, Atkinson examines the challenges and successes of Indigenous parents as decolonizers of mainstream early childhood spaces in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The introductory sections of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, particularly the Foreword and Introduction, provide historical and contextual accounts of earlier editions. The Foreword, three separate pieces authored by Jill Huntley, Glenda MacNaughton, and Christine Woodrow, provides poignant connections with Elizabeth Dau and Barbara Creaser’s work, echoing their commitment to social justice and a “more socially just world in and beyond early childhood” (MacNaughton, p. xi).
This third edition of the text engages with goals in Louise Derman-Sparks’ work: “to construct a knowledgeable, confident self-identity; to develop critical thinking; and to develop the skills for standing up for oneself and others in the face of injustice” (Derman-Sparks and the ABC Task Force, 1989: x in Scarlet, 2016: xxxii). Notions of fear, risk, commitment, and courage are threaded through the book, and Red Ruby Scarlet, as Editor, has worked with authors to share thinking, ideas, and provocations across diverse topics (e.g. celebrations, language diversity, gender, art, families, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender)). Notable is the focus on relationships: “Having open and critical relationships appears to be a constant in the sage advice in past editions and they are well ensconced in this volume” (p. xxxii). Relationships across and between educators, families, children, and communities are acknowledged as key in the text. Bias is countered and challenged through considerations of, for example, culture, gender, and religion, with taken-for-granted assumptions questioned and challenged.
In developing this new volume of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, the authors of chapters in the second edition were located, where possible, and invited to revisit their earlier work. These chapters include updates and new thinking. This device acts as a further reminder to the reader that the work in the anti-bias space is ongoing, and as contextual elements shift and change, so too does thinking, theorizing, and contesting ideas. The authors of this current volume include people who share enthusiasm and principles on issues of inclusion, acceptance, rights, and humanity within the early childhood space. The inclusion of a revised chapter by Elizabeth Dau from the earlier second edition, “Exploring families: the diversity and the issues” (pp. 99–112), provides another beautiful bridge between this current volume, and previous volumes and work in the anti-bias and social justice space.
The 32 chapters in this volume are sole or co-authored by a wide range of 50 scholars. Contributing Australian and International authors include practitioners, academics, managers, and members of the EYLF pirate community (a group of early childhood educators who appeared in an online community to challenge and contest contemporary constructions of early childhood education and care curriculum, policy, and practice). The inclusion of 6-year-old Liv, included as an author, acknowledges children’s rights, voice, and thinking. The biographies of all contributing authors create a collective portrait of people committed to anti-bias work and in doing so convey messages of a socially just and inclusive world. The chapters each draw on literature, research, and theory to explore issues and add layers of understanding. Each chapter includes questions for reflection, inviting readers to engage more deeply with key ideas in early childhood philosophy, programming, and practice, including, for example, gender, inclusion, celebrations, and family diversity. Theory is threaded through the chapters as authors engage with contemporary worldviews and challenge readers to think anew and differently.
The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood has relevance and application for all early childhood educators. It is a book that questions taken-for-granted assumptions around, for example, culture, gender, and religion. While the book has a focus on early childhood, and in particular prior to school years, it has applicability across education and each chapter can be contextualized within, for example, primary or secondary education. The book contests dominant ways of thinking and calls the reader to engage deeply with issues of rights. The writing style makes this book accessible across early childhood, for practitioners, educators, academics, preservice teachers, students, and beyond into a wider audience and readership. For early childhood educators, there is immense scope to draw on the book in professional conversations, staff meetings, reading groups, preservice teacher courses, vocational training, and professional development and learning programs. Indeed, I would recommend that educators and early childhood centers have a copy in their professional library, as barometer for decision-making that engages authentically with issues of social justice and anti-bias.
Each chapter in this third edition of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood offers richness in thinking about anti-bias approaches. In the final part of this review, I turn to just a few examples of chapters that have deeply touched me at this point in time, though all did, and will continue to touch me and make me think in different ways.
The inclusion of Odes draws on a genre perhaps not often found in a text and includes The Ode to Elizabeth sounded by Red Ruby Scarlet (pp. xxvii–xxx), Ode to Anarchy and The EYLF Pirates Sounded by Red Ruby Scarlet (2016) (pp. 186–195). A notable example of an Ode is included as part of “Reimagining anti-bias education as worldly entanglement” (Chapter 15, pp. 183–202). Here, the reader is invited to think differently, creatively, metaphorically and innovatively about early childhood, and the chapter focuses on curricula, including the EYLF.
Chapter 11 “Revisiting celebrations with young children” by Elizabeth Dau and Kerryn Jones (pp. 135–144) resonated with me, as I had drawn heavily on the book Who’s in Charge of the Celebrations? when I worked in long day care in Brisbane, Australia. This book (and now the chapter in the current edition of The Anti-Bias Approach) challenges educators to create celebrations in early childhood that are inclusive and responsive to diversity. The Questions for reflection in this chapter provide key considerations that “honour the joyous and wonderful experiences of being a child” (p. 144).
I was particularly struck by Leanne Gibbs’ eloquent writing about families in Chapter 13 “Whose family is this? Looking in the rear view mirror?” (pp. 157–168) and focuses on the development of partnerships between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous partners, families, and communities. The chapter challenges dominant images of families (e.g. two parents—mother, father, children), decision-making, collaboration, and Indigeneity.
Chapter 20 “In sickness and in death” by Jill Huntley (pp. 253–254) provides insights into the love, care and compassion that surrounded her partner, Elizabeth Dau, in her sickness and dying. It is powerful and raises humanitarian issues of equality and rights.
This third edition, The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, is a book that challenges and provokes, and in doing so opens new ways of thinking, new possibilities, and hope. May we, as a field, continue to think through both the simple and the complex together.