Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
ISSN 1463-9491

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

Scribbling away the Ghosts: a Bakhtinian interpretation of preschool writers and the disruption of developmental discourses

CASEY Y. MYERS & JANICE KROEGER Kent State University, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.297

Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptions of dialogue, monologue, and chronotope, the authors ask readers to consider how different values and actions ultimately create the teaching and learning spaces in which children are recognized as literate. Using qualitative data that focus on the relational writing practices of two preschoolers, this ethnographic work explores how authoritative monologues of development and risk commonly structure our thinking about and interaction with young writers. The article offers an alternative interpretation of children as writers engaged within a relational and dialogic writing space, wherein dominant developmental beliefs are rejected and relationships between children and teachers are reinterpreted. The authors argue for the creation of dialogic classroom spaces that afford children opportunities for multiple possible futures as whole persons.

Challenging Dominant Discourses across Geographies in Early Childhood (Response to Casey Y. Myers & Janice Kroeger)

JOYCE M. DUCKLES & JOANNE LARSON University of Rochester, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.310

Meyers & Kroeger situate two young writers in current ideologies of childhood and literacy and argue for creating dialogic classroom spaces in which children can be recognized by themselves, other children, and teachers as literate. Duckles & Larson build on the authors’ attention to the potential constraints of dominant discourses and highlight the role of researchers to uncover and document spaces in which they are being challenged. From a study of the everyday science practices of 17 families with young children, they present evidence of parents and children challenging dominant cultural autonomous models of science that dichotomize school and everyday science, that situate pathways to success only in schools, and situate young children (and many adults) as peripheral and passive participants. The contested spaces of these homes can provide insights into how to support hybrid practices and create pathways to successful engagement with science across multiple geographies and across the lifespan. The authors build on Meyers & Kroeger’s call for locating and creating spaces where dominant developmental beliefs and traditional roles are disrupted and for transforming discourses to include ideological views of science, of literacy, and of young children.

Native Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices: choosing language and cultural revitalization over uniformity and standardization

TARAJEAN YAZZIE-MINTZ American Indian College Fund, Denver, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.315

The goal of implementing a culture-based curriculum that draws upon indigenous knowledge, traditions, and language is currently in competition with demands placed on schools by high stakes educational reform to implement a standards-based curriculum in schools. Though often left out of the policy conversation, Native teachers in particular have much to contribute to understandings of how such reform discourse may derail Indigenous-centered discussions about education. This article draws from interview and observational data collected during a three-year (2005‑2008) qualitative study of Native teacher beliefs and practices. Participants in the study included nine teachers who implement a language- and culture-based curriculum. Classroom observations, interviews, and focus groups were conducted to gather information about instructional practices in one Native language immersion school (pre-kindergarten to third grade). Findings indicate the teachers’ perspectives on the ways in which their language instruction is compromised in light of pressures to teach to narrow conceptions of academic subject knowledge emergent from high-stakes policy and testing discussions. Teachers are neither passive recipients of curricular goals nor passive instructional directors of standards-based curriculum. Recommendations include cautioning tribal nations to find ways to buffer outside high stakes pressures impacting promising practices of immersion language teachers in early childhood education.

Toward ‘Our Ways of Knowing’ in the Age of Standardization (Response to Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz)

LOURDES DIAZ SOTO & SIMONE TUINHOF DE MOED Department of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.327

Current neoliberal educational policies are impacting young children and their teachers in the United States in many ways. Young children and teachers find themselves in vulnerable positions within a framework of an imperialist education in the age of standardization. Part of the struggle is to open spaces of decolonization that include home languages and cultures. This article calls for an educational transformation toward ‘our ways of knowing’ that includes liberation and emancipation.

Building on Young Children’s Cultural Histories through Placemaking in the Classroom

LENNY SÁNCHEZ Department of Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.332

This article suggests placemaking as a framework to more deeply understand how teaching and learning can take into account young children’s cultural histories. Placemaking, a form of analysis commonly found in land development literature, critically interprets the relationship between power, politics and the production of place. In this article, parallels are drawn between several tenets of placemaking, such as surveillance, self-definition, and a consciousness of solidarity, and the curricular spaces of a second-grade classroom as the children and their teacher participate in a biography project centered on the Harlem Renaissance. Through analysis of the class-wide inquiry, this article sheds light on the possibility for cultivating children’s cultural imagination through placemaking in spite of political practices attempting to define in more narrow terms how teachers and children are to participate in the schooling spaces they inhabit.

Making Space for Place-Making Pedagogies: stretching normative mandated literacy curriculum (Response to Lenny Sánchez)

BARBARA COMBER Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.343

In an era of normative standardised literacy curriculum continuing to make space for culturally responsive literacy pedagogy is on ongoing challenge for early childhood educators. Collaborative participatory research and ethnographic studies of teachers who accomplish innovative and inclusive early childhood education in culturally diverse high poverty communities is urgent for the profession. Such pedagogies involve complex understandings of the cultural and political histories, and the dynamic potential, of the places in which school communities are located. By incorporating the study of local histories and biographies and researching neighbourhood changes teachers adapt mandated curriculum to maintain community knowledges and allow for positive identity work at the same time as they meet the authorised systems objectives. When teachers work with children as co-researchers through the study of people’s lives in particular places and times, the community and its complex histories become a rich resource for young people’s literacy repertoires.

A Contested Space: the dialogic intersection of ICT, multiliteracies, and early childhood

SANDRA HESTERMAN School of Education, Murdoch University, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.349

If students are to be equipped with skills necessary to meet the challenging and diverse demands of different forms of communication brought about by the introduction of new technologies, then a broader definition of literacy is required. A pedagogy of multiliteracies recognises that there are multiple modes of representation that communicate meaning beyond language alone. As debate on information and communication technology (ICT) integration and literacy definition intensifies, early childhood teachers contemplate how they will accommodate these changes. How will early childhood education facilitate young children’s use of ICT to support multiliteracies learning? This study investigated how two Western Australian teachers integrated ICT to support multiliteracies learning in early childhood classrooms. Two case studies, constructed over a nine-month period and employing ethnographic methodology, illustrated how different curricular, pedagogical, and classroom designs impact on children’s early literacy experiences. An analysis across the two cases illuminated how different pedagogy, definitions, support, resources and curriculum shaped the dialogic intersection of ICT and multiliteracies in early childhood education.

On the Human Challenges of Multiliteracies Pedagogy (Response to Sandra Hesterman)

ROB SIMON Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.362

Drawing on examples from classroom practice, this article explores implications of regarding multiliteracies pedagogy in early childhood settings as relationally and culturally situated. The author argues that investigating human dimensions of multiliteracies pedagogy involves interrogating assumptions about children and their capacities–viewing their cultural legacies and languages as powerful resources for teaching and learning, embedded in social contexts and relationships–as well as teachers–considering their positions in classrooms as sites from which theories of literacy learning can not only be applied, but also developed.

Contextual Worlds of Child Art: experiencing multiple literacies through images

MARNI BINDER School of Early Childhood Education, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.367

This article draws from a larger study that examines the multiple literacies inherent in children’s drawings. The author discusses a qualitative research project conducted with a split grade one and two classroom in Toronto, Canada. She argues that pictorial images can be read as a form of literacy, where thought is made public through visual narratives. The author’s prime focus was to interpret the children’s artwork as communication on a par with other semiotic modes and to explore the images as an important vehicle for teaching and learning.

Multimodality and Immigrant Children (Response to Marni Binder)

GERALD CAMPANO & DAVID LOW University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.381

This response to Marni Binder reflects upon two examples of (im)migrant children’s artwork and challenges the dominant notion that (im)migration experiences ­– and their subsequent portrayals – can be fit into neat slots. The authors position multimodal composing opportunities as affording children a vital instrument for deploying their full semiotic repertoires to defy stereotypes and capture the complexities of experience.

Accessing Pedagogical Territories that Can’t Be Put into Words: using video to build understandings of children’s multimodal meaning-making

MAGGIE HAGGERTY Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.385

This article outlines ways in which video can further our understanding of how different modes of communication and meaning-making shape learning and learners in the early years. It focuses on a dramatic play and writing episode videoed during a three-year action research study investigating children’s use of different semiotic modes in the curriculum of a New Zealand kindergarten. It highlights the capacity of video to enable closer attention to be paid to the pedagogical significance of modes such as the visual, gestural, mimetic, spatial and kinaesthetic as well as the verbal. It explores how differences in media (e.g. computer, video, book, screen) interact with differences in mode, and the ways in which the collaborative viewing of video recordings of ‘everyday’ episodes in early childhood settings, by teachers, researchers and parents, can serve as a platform for inquiry about children’s meaning-making processes.

Early Childhood Inclusion: a postcolonial analysis of pre-service teachers’ professional development and pedagogy in Ghana

JOSEPH SEYRAM AGBENYEGA & SUNANTA KLIBTHONG Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2011.12.4.403

The purpose of this qualitative study is to make the case for organizing teaching and learning in early childhood around the concept of inclusion rather than transmission of pedagogy through fear and domination. The study explored final-year early childhood pre-service teachers’ curriculum planning and evaluation processes, professional education experiences and pedagogical practices, including teacher-child relationships in three kindergartens in Cape Coast, Ghana. A blend of critical postcolonial discursive and framework analysis of data produced three themes: ‘curriculum visibility and invisibility’, ‘children as colonized bodies’ and ‘pre-service teachers as voiceless identities’. The article concludes that by clarifying and establishing a realistic postcolonial identity for teacher education, positive concepts of teaching and a new image of teachers and outcomes can emerge.

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