Contemporary Issues in
Early Childhood

ISSN 1463-9491

Volume 10 Number 1 2009

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Nicola Yelland. Editorial, pages 1‑2
Christopher P. Brown. Being Accountable for One’s Own Governing: a case study of early educators responding to standards-based early childhood education reform, pages 3‑23
Fikriye Kurban & Joseph Tobin. ‘They Don’t Like Us’: reflections of Turkish children in a German preschool, pages 24‑34
Gunvor Løkken. The Construction of ‘Toddler’ in Early Childhood Pedagogy, pages 35‑42
Sue Robson & Hiroko Fumoto. Practitioners’ Experiences of Personal Ownership and Autonomy in their Support for Young Children’s Thinking, pages 43‑54
Nina Rossholt. The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer’s Gaze: focusing on the youngest children in pre-school, pages 55‑65
Michel Vandenbroeck, Tom Boonaert, Sandra Van der Mespel & Katelijne De Brabandere. Dialogical Spaces to Reconceptualize Parent Support in the Social Investment State, pages 66‑77

COLLOQUIA
Thomas L. Sweigard. Initial Impressions: reflections of pre-service educators, pages 78‑82
Amanda French. Writing Matters! Teaching Writing Development to First-Year Early Years Students, pages 83‑85

BOOK REVIEWS doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.86 VIEW FULL TEXT
Thinking and Learning through Drawing in Primary Classrooms (Gill Hope), reviewed by Lyndal O’Gorman, pages 86‑88
Children with Cerebral Palsy: a manual for therapists, parents and community workers (Archie Hinchcliffe), reviewed by Anne Petriwskyj, pages 88‑89

Editorial

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.1

VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST

This first issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood for 2009 marks a stage in the journal’s evolution past the first decade of its existence. It represents an auspicious start to the new year as we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. When we first had the idea for a journal that would support and reflect alternative visions for early childhood education, we did not find a lot of encouragement until we corresponded with Roger Osborn-King of Triangle Journals (now Symposium Journals). Not only was he our first sign of interest, he suggested an idea which was then, in 1998, almost beyond comprehension! An online journal! At that point in time, in the ‘publish or perish’ mentality of academe, online journals were derided as not being rigorous and somehow inferior to their article-based counterparts. Yet, the processes inherent to publishing the journal were exactly the same. The only difference was that Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood came in bytes not bits. We believed in what we were doing and agreed that this was an initiative, albeit ahead of its time, that was vitally necessary for encouraging alternative and new paradigms in early childhood. Last year we moved to four issues a year and this has also been a good move.

The quality of the work that we receive, like for most journals, is mixed. We work hard to support new authors and encourage contributions from all over the globe. In the final issue of last year we were pleased to publish four colloquia from the African continent. We have also had contributions from a number of emerging scholars in other parts of the world, and this has been an exciting component of our work. We could not have done this without our marvellous editorial board and company of reviewers. Our heartfelt thanks go out to them for their work and support over the last decade. We believed that change was possible a decade ago and the support of our board, reviewers and authors has enabled Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood to become one of the most respected journals in the field. Quantitatively, the number of subscriptions and downloads attests to this. The acceptance rate for 2008 was 29%, up slightly from the year before (27%). Qualitatively, the comments that we receive from the community of scholars with whom we regularly interact and talk with online are a testament to the combined efforts of those who want to see a more equitable and socially just world.

This first issue for 2009 represents the diversity, quality and global nature of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. In ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Unfortunate’, Christopher Brown maintains that reforms in early childhood education which are market-driven and reflect neo-liberal viewpoints create contexts for governing discourses that limit the work that early educators can do. In this climate, he presents a case study of the ways in which a group of educators struggled against the dominant prevailing discourse and raises questions concerning the ways in which proactive responses can destabilize the normalizing power that exists within these policies.

Next, Joseph Tobin & Fikriye Kurban document the experiences of a group of Turkish-German girls in a kindergarten in the city of Berlin. The girls’ conversations elucidate the alienation that they feel from their non-Turkish classmates, teachers and, indeed, German society. Tobin & Kurban suggest that we need to go beyond the face value of the comments and use interpretive strategies from Bakhtin’s work, interpretive frameworks used by Judith Butler, post-colonial theory and Critical Race Theory to understand them. They come to view the girls’ utterances as having a performative dimension in which they express the tensions around the issues associated with immigration in contemporary times.

Gunvor Løkken examines the construction of ‘toddler’ in early childhood pedagogy. She contends that we need to extend current views to incorporate the construction of ‘toddler’ in the context of early childhood pedagogy. She suggests that

the toddler of our time actively contributes to the construction of him- or herself, as well as of the persons, objects, surroundings and culture of the world in which he or she lives, and with which he or she interacts.

Gunvor recommends that this notion must be both transformative and transformable, and explores the Bildung tradition of pedagogy in order to describe her new ways of thinking.

Next, Sue Robson & Hiroko Fumoto, in their article ‘Practitioners’ Experiences of Personal Ownership and Autonomy in their Support for Young Children’s Thinking’, report on the third phase of a broader project called ‘The Voice of the Child: ownership and autonomy in early learning’. The work described in this article involved examining early years practitioners’ experiences of supporting young children’s thinking in relation to personal ownership and autonomy. They found that three themes emerged from their data which related to dealing with constraints, the importance of flexibility based on shared understandings amongst the team of practitioners, and the centrality of interpersonal relationships to practitioners’ views about concepts of ownership and autonomy.

Nina Rossholt, in ‘The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer’s Gaze: focusing on the youngest children in preschool’, discusses the theoretical, methodological and analytical strategies for researching the material subject (Foucault, 1980). Her contemplations are with regard to the discursive practices of preschool children of one and two years of age. The material subject includes both bodily and discursive practices. Using critical ethnography research, Nina’s main focus is related to the complex and multiple ways in which children at this age relate to each other. In her article, she deconstructs two events. They show possibilities of how actions and movements are situated not only in language, but also in bodily practices amongst the children. Nina contends that the body is a site for negotiation with pleasure, pain, other bodies, space and visibility, and that working with bodily practices can transform the ways in which power is performed, and whose interests are silenced, marginalized or excluded.

In the final article, entitled ‘Dialogical Spaces to Reconceptualize Parent Support in the Social Investment State’, Michel Vandenbroeck, Tom Boonaert, Sandra van der Mespel & Katelijne De Brabandere interrogate some of the dominant assumptions of parent support policies and programs. In an action-research-based project in Belgium, they suggest new possibilities for the conceptualization of the relations between parents and such policies, inspired by the possibilities of dialogical spaces and ‘relational citizenship’.

There are two colloquia in this issue, both of which pertain to undergraduate teacher education programs. We have always valued publishing colloquia since not only do they represent an opportunity for scholars to present their work, but they also stimulate discussion around contemporary issues.

Thomas Sweigard discusses the initial impressions and reflections of pre-service teachers as they embark on the practical or field experience component of their program. Thomas maintains that an important aspect of learning to become a better teacher is the pre-service educators’ experience and ability to reflect on their teaching experiences. His research project focused on the first-day entries of 36 students and highlights their initial impressions of the setting in which they were located.

In ‘Writing Matters! Teaching Writing Development to First-year Early Years Students’, Amanda French describes an action research project which was designed to enrich the writing experiences of pre-service students in innovative and proactive ways. She describes the activities conducted with first-year students that were designed to stimulate discussions about writing in higher education and provide the students with opportunities to write and receive feedback about their writing. The research discusses the rationale for such activities and describes the reactions of staff and students to the activities.

Nicola Yelland
School of Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Reference
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972‑1977. Brighton: Harvester.

Being Accountable for One’s Own Governing: a case study of early educators responding to standards-based early childhood education reform

CHRISTOPHER P. BROWN Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Texas at Austin, USA

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.3

As early childhood education continues to gain prominence on the agendas of policy makers across the globe, members of the field of early childhood education are concerned that these reforms will create new governing discourses that restrict how early educators are defined and limit their work with young children. While these neo-liberal policies tend to alter traditional conceptions of early education and learning, opportunities do arise for early educators to formulate responses to these policies in a way that might expand these neo-liberal conceptions of early education. Through an instrumental case study of standards-based education reform in a large urban early childhood program in the USA, the author examines one such opportunity, in which a collection of pre-kindergarten stakeholders responded to a set of particular policies that emphasize a uniform conception of learning and student performance. This article provides insight into the struggles of early childhood stakeholders as they attempt to address these governing discourses of reform, and it raises questions as to whether proactive responses can destabilize the normalizing power that exists within these policies.

‘They Don’t Like Us’: reflections of Turkish children in a German preschool

FIKRIYE KURBAN & JOSEPH TOBIN Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.24

In this article, the authors present multiple interpretations of a transcript of a discussion with a group of Turkish-German girls in a kindergarten in Berlin, Germany. These five-year-old girls make statements suggesting they experience alienation from their non-Turkish classmates and teachers, and the wider German society. The authors argue that the meanings of these statements should not be taken at face value. Instead, they employ interpretive strategies borrowed mostly from Mikhail Bakhtin and interpretive frameworks taken from Judith Butler, and post-colonial theory and Critical Race Theory to suggest that the girls’ utterances can be usefully seen as having a performative dimension and as expressing tensions around immigration that can be found in the larger society.

The Construction of ‘Toddler’ in Early Childhood Pedagogy

GUNVOR LØKKEN Queen Maud College of Early Childhood Education, Trondheim, Norway

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.35

The theoretical construction in this article rests on one constitutive pillar of seeing the toddler within the view of Merleau-Pontyan philosophy, combined with a second pillar of empirical toddler peer studies, from both of which an emerging toddler ‘style’ of socializing is read. ‘Style’ in this analytical context should be viewed as a phenomenological and hermeneutical construct. To enable the construction of ‘toddler’ in early childhood pedagogy to stand, the necessary third pillar deals with the inquiry of a pedagogical notion proper to this context. Such a notion must accord with the view that the toddler of our time actively contributes to the construction of him- or herself, as well as of the persons, objects, surroundings and culture of the world in which he or she lives, and with which he or she interacts. To be at all noteworthy in the changeable plurality of post- or late modern times, this notion must be both transformative and transformable. A look at the Bildung tradition of pedagogy, whilst considering postmodern ‘hypertransformation’ as well as the ancient root of pedagogy, forwards a conclusion that changeability goes side by side with durability, as does uniqueness with universality.

Practitioners’ Experiences of Personal Ownership and Autonomy in their Support for Young Children’s Thinking

SUE ROBSON & HIROKO FUMOTO Early Childhood Research Centre, School of Education, Roehampton University, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.43

This article reports the third phase of the Froebel Research Fellowship Project: ‘The Voice of the Child: ownership and autonomy in early learning’. Building on the first and second phases of this study, this phase examined early years practitioners’ experiences of supporting young children’s thinking in relation to the personal ownership and autonomy they felt in their practice. Thirteen early years practitioners (1 male, 12 female) working in private, voluntary and local authority nursery schools and reception classes in England took part in the informal one-to-one semi-structured interview study. Themes such as (1) dealing with constraints, (2) the importance of flexibility based on shared understandings amongst the team of practitioners and (3) interpersonal relationships emerged as central to practitioners’ views about concepts of ownership and autonomy, and the ways in which practitioners endeavour to exercise agency in directing the course of their practice in extending children’s thinking.

The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer’s Gaze: focusing on the youngest children in preschool

NINA ROSSHOLT Norwegian Centre for Child Research, Trondheim and Faculty of Education, Vestfold University College, Norway

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.55

This article discusses theoretical, methodological and analytical strategies for researching the material subject. The discussion relates to discursive practices in a preschool setting with children of one and two years of age, where the material subject includes both bodily and discursive practices. Using critical ethnography research, the author follows studies of lived life connected to body/place relations. When the body is the main focus in writing, it may be possible to understand how children at this age relate to each other in complex and multiple ways. From observations, the author deconstructs two events. These relate to how actions and movements are situated not only in language, but also in bodily practices amongst children. The body is a site for negotiation with pleasure, pain, other bodies, space and visibility. Working with bodily practices transforms how power is performed, and whose interests are silenced, marginalized or excluded. From a Foucauldian perspective, this is about knowledge/power relations. From a Deleuzean perspective, body/place relations transform how we may see, feel and think otherwise.

Dialogical Spaces to Reconceptualize Parent Support in the Social Investment State

MICHEL VANDENBROECK, TOM BOONAERT & SANDRA VAN DER MESPEL Department of Social Welfare Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
KATELIJNE DE BRABANDERE Training Centre for Childcare and Education (VCOK), Ghent, Belgium

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.66

The study from which this article derives investigated some dominant assumptions of parent support policies and programmes, and suggests new possibilities for the conceptualization of the relations between parents and such policies, inspired by the possibilities of dialogical spaces and ‘relational citizenship’. Parent support programmes are increasingly conceptualized within a prevention paradigm, underpinning the individualization of social problems in the social investment state. Early childhood is consequently instrumentalized as the place where early socialization needs to be shaped. In this vein, socialization is understood as the adaptation of children as well as their parents to the prevailing societal norms and values. In an action research project involving researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the city of Brussels (Belgium), the authors explored new possibilities in understanding and conceptualizing work with parents of young children. The project consisted of three parts: the creation of a dialogical space where practitioners and policy makers discussed research, policy and practice; a survey of the parenting conditions in Brussels; and the exploration of the possibilities for new initiatives for parents and children, with a focus on social support. The focus in this article is on a report of the second component (the study), however, elements of the first and third components are included to highlight the dialogical dimensions of the project and possible future developments.

Initial Impressions: reflections of pre-service educators

THOMAS L. SWEIGARD Cedarville University, USA

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.78

Preservice early childhood educators responded in daily reflection journals on their field experience in local elementary classrooms. These journal entries were categorized according to the frequency of the responses. The focus of the study became the nature of the initial impressions that these preservice educators had of their cooperating teachers. We know that first impressions many times are very important. Much can be learned about how these cooperating teachers handled the first few minutes of interaction with the preservice educators.

Writing Matters! Teaching Writing Development to First-Year Early Years Students

AMANDA FRENCH School of Education, University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/ciec.2009.10.1.83

This article reports on a current piece of action research designed to explore how the writing skills of first-year early childhood students can be developed in proactive and innovative ways. It describes how the research/tutor team worked with colleagues to produce and deliver a series of activities which were embedded in first-year core modules on the Early Childhhod Studies degree. The activities were designed to stimulate discussions about writing in higher education and provided students with opportunities to write and receive feedback about their writing throughout the first year of their programme. The research discusses the rationale for such activities and describes the reactions of staff and students to the activities.

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