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Contemporary Issues in |
ISSN 1463-9491 |
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Volume 2 Number 2 2001 |
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Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page |
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] |
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Editorial
pages 131‑133
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In this issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood we present an eclectic view of issues in the early childhood years. Once again, we are impressed by the quality of the work that is being presented from the discipline. Our current registration of almost 8,000 subscribers attests to the fact that a large number of early childhood educators are interested in new ways of thinking about early childhood practices. The critical perspectives of the early childhood special interest group at the American Educational Research Association Conference in Seattle this year were another testament to the variety and depth of work being produced, and the quality of arguments being debated. This issue, in particular, discusses topics that range from a consideration of what it means to be ‘other’ in a Norwegian context to the attitudes towards creativity of pre-school teachers in Turkey. Jeanette Rhedding Jones deconstructs the discourses around being positioned as ‘other’, in particular, being ‘white’, ‘foreign’ or ‘native’. She uses local examples from early childhood education events, sites and documents to begin the process. Rhedding-Jones links theory and practice in a new and dynamic way and begins to ‘unfix’ the modernist and colonial notion of ethnicity as a single or binary notion. Jennifer Sumsion’s counter-narrative interrogates the tensions that may occur in workplaces in Australian pre-schools. She draws on post-structural analyses to deconstruct the counter-narrative in order to problematise the current non-critical communities of care concept that is prevalent in early childhood culture. Sonja Sheridan & Ingrid Pramling examine children’s views about decision-making processes in their education. They report that children are primarily interested in making decisions about the activities that they engage in and rarely participate in and influence the overall organisation, routines, content and activities that early childhood teachers plan for them. Sheridan & Pramling maintain that in order to engage with democracy, early childhood centres need to extend opportunities for richer participation in shaping decisions about the content and structure of the curriculum. In this way, not only will they provide high quality programmes but will concur with the spirit of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child. The role of literacy in the pre-school years is explored by Raban & Ure in their article. They talked with pre-school teachers about their beliefs and understanding regarding literacy practices and discovered that the teachers were uncertain about their role in relation to growth in literacy skill. The reasons behind this uncertainty are explored in the article and some practical implications are discussed. Lennie Barblett, Rod Chadbourne & Carmel Maloney pose the question, ‘Can vignettes capture the complexity of high quality early childhood teaching?’ in their article. In this article, the teacher educators explore the ramifications of creating vignettes of exemplary practice for study. They conclude that there is a need for caution when embarking on this type of complex activity and it is difficult to capture the range of activities that manifest themselves in the matrix that represents early childhood teaching. In an interesting reflection on practices in teacher education, Susan Wright’s article explores the integration of the various aspects of the arts to create innovative teaching contexts that incorporate the use of new information technologies. She describes the Visual Arts Studio that enables her students to engage with the arts by selecting and engaging with a variety of media in which they can explore artistic concepts and processes. Wright maintains that her students made the expression coherent by developing sensitivity to the materials and their expressive possibilities, and by selecting the most appropriate techniques for communication. They did this in the context of exploring all arts media simultaneously, with the aim of integrating the musical, visual and dramatic elements, rather than allowing any one of these to become dominant. In the colloquia, the topics of toys for infants and the use of information and communications technology in the classroom are discussed. Diane Levin & Barbara Rosenquest discuss the increasing role of electronic toys in the lives of infants and toddlers and pose the question, ‘Should we be concerned?’ They contend that toys exert a powerful influence on the ways in which children play and suggest that the genre of electronic toys may limit the potential for young children to be exploratory in their play. The colloquia should cause us to reflect on the influence that such toys have on children’s lives, and Levin & Rosenquest conclude by making some suggestions for action which we hope will engage us in further dialogue. The second colloquium, from Kerem, Kamaraj & Yelland, explores the concept of creativity and the activities that were thought to develop the creativity of Turkish pre-school teachers. In an extensive study of pre-school teachers, the researchers found that Turkish pre-school teachers listed a large range of behaviours that they regarded as being creative and additionally that they primarily regarded art, drama, games and Turkish language activities as the ones that most promoted creative activity. We also extend the dialogue on the Reggio article that was presented in our first issue. Stephen Wright responds to Richard Johnson’s comments in volume 1(3). As you may have noticed, the web site now contains a discussion area. We hope to use this space for extended conversations which require more spontaneity than rejoinders. If you have an opinion on any of the ideas canvassed in articles or colloquia, we invite you to participate in the discussions or, if you wish to start a new thread, if you contact us we will endeavour to accommodate it. Finally, there are three book reviews in this edition. First, Mindy Ochsner reviews Critical Issues in Social Research: power and prejudice, edited by Hood, Mayall & Oliver, and then teachers from Rhode Island review another edited book by Nicola Yelland, entitled, Promoting Meaningful Learning: innovations in educating early childhood professionals. Finally Jeffrey Lewis reviews the book entitled Does the Village Still Raise the Child? The book was written by Beth Swadener with Margaret Kabiru & Anne Njenga. We hope that you enjoy reading the articles, colloquia and reviews in this issue as much as we did. Nicola Yelland & Sue Grieshaber
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Shifting Ethnicities: ‘native informants’ and other theories from/for early childhood education |
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This article presents and deconstructs discourses of being ‘white’, being ‘other’, being ‘foreign’ and being ‘native’, with local examples from early childhood education events, sites and documentations. Working theoretically (after Spivak) and via subjectively told anecdotes and narratives, a postmodern theory of shifting ethnicities emerges. For hybridity and diaspora in early childhoods and later adulthoods, the modernist and colonial notion of singular and even binary ethnicity is unfixed. The work begins from interview data with ‘bilingual assistants’ in pre-school day care centres in Norway. |
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Teachers’ Beliefs and Understandings of Literacy in the Pre-school: Pre-school Literacy Project Stage 1 |
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The role of literacy during the pre-school years is argued from evidence found in the international research literature and provides the starting point for exploring the beliefs and understandings of staff in 38 sessional pre-schools and two long-day childcare centres that included sessional pre-school programmes in Victoria (Australia). These professionals were found to be uncertain about their role with respect to young children’s early literacy development, but they were keen to increase their knowledge and develop appropriate practice within the contexts of their centres. Reasons for these findings are explored. In particular, the distinction between literacy as social practice and literacy as reading and writing skill demarcated the understandings and practical implications for these pre-school teachers. |
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Children’s Conceptions of Participation and Influence in Pre-school: a perspective on pedagogical quality |
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The United Nations Convention and the Swedish curriculum for pre-school clearly state the right of children to express their views in all matters of concern to them. It is imperative, therefore, that an evaluation of the quality of early childhood education includes the voices of children. Without these, an essential part of how children experience quality within various childcare settings as well as an overall understanding of quality in early childhood education is missing. In a study carried out in a small community in Sweden, the quality of various pre-school settings was evaluated both by an external evaluator and by self-evaluations. From the results of the external evaluations, three pre-school units evaluated to be of low quality and three of good quality were selected for in-depth studies. Thirty-nine 5 year-old children from these pre-school units were interviewed about their conceptions of decision-making and how they experienced the opportunities for them to exercise influence in their pre-school setting. The results show that it is vital for the children to participate in decision-making and the meanings given by the children to the concept ‘to decide’, have been grouped into five qualitatively different categories. |
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Workplace Violence in Early Childhood Settings: a counter-narrative |
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The article begins with a counter-narrative that focuses on the workplace tensions experienced by an Australian pre-school teacher. Drawing on Van Soerst & Bryant’s conceptualisation of violence, the author deconstructs the counter-narrative to identify a range of forces (individual, organisational, structural-cultural) that may contribute to workplace violence in early childhood settings. The author’s underlying assumption is that we need to problematise prevailing non-critical constructions of early childhood settings as exemplifying communities of care if we are to work more effectively towards realising this ideal. |
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Can Vignettes Capture the Complexity of High Quality Early Childhood Teaching? |
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This article discusses the results of a project charged with writing vignettes that exemplify high-quality early childhood teaching. It outlines the process used to write the vignettes and three approaches for validating whether they capture the complexity and sophistication of early childhood teachers’ work, namely: ratings from external reviewers, comparisons with other types of vignettes, and comparisons with professional standards that tell rather than show what exemplary teaching looks like. The article concludes with three contentions. First, advocates of vignettes need to be cautious about promising more than vignettes can deliver. Second, writing ‘standards vignettes’ is more difficult than writing ‘teaching vignettes’. Third, by themselves, vignettes are hard pressed to provide an adequate representation of high-quality early childhood teaching; they need to be supplemented by other approaches. |
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Guiding Learning Processes in the Integration of the Arts |
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This article introduces the importance of the arts in contemporary society and how people learn how to learn through music, dance, drama/play and the visual arts. It describes how the arts can involve ways of knowing about the world through thought, emotion and action, providing a window into the past and allowing people to express views of the future. These ways of knowing are considered in relation to processes of active learning and inquiry, and ways to enhance play-like qualities through teaching-learning partnerships. Finally, an example of an integrated arts workshop for pre-service students illustrates ways in which a supportive learning environment can enhance learners’ sense of ownership through cooperation, while providing them with opportunities to experience high-standard, artistic processes that apply to the teaching of young children. |
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Seeking Dialogue: a response and an invitation to Richard Johnson |
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The author briefly makes several points in response to Richard Johnson’s colloquium in the last issue of CIEC (Vol. 2, No. 1, 2001). In this, Johnson was responding to the author’s criticism (Wright, 2000) of his article in this journal, ‘Imperialism and Cargo Cults in Early Childhood Education: does Reggio Emilia really exist?’(Johnson, 2000). |
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The Increasing Role of Electronic Toys in the Lives of Infants and Toddlers: should we be concerned? |
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In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of electronic toys and toys linked to electronic media that are being marketed for infants and toddlers. This article explores what this latest trend might mean for the development, behaviour and play of very young children. It concludes that these toys can be harmful in both the short and long term and recommends strategies for counter-acting the potential problems. |
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An Analysis of Turkish Pre-school Teachers’ Ideas about the Concept of Creativity and the Activities that can Foster Creativity in Young Children |
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The most critical period of a human being’s life takes place between the years from birth to 6 years of age. It is thought that we all posses creative potential and need opportunities for it to be nurtured and displayed. Early childhood centres are one of the most important sites in which there are opportunities to expose and extend a child’s creativity. In this way, the role of the pre-school teacher is critical if we desire to promote creativity in individuals so that they are able to function in new situations in dynamic ways as they progress through their school career and lives. In this research, the authors asked pre-school teachers their opinions about aspects of creativity. The teachers worked in early childhood centres in Istanbul. |
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