Contemporary Issues in
Early Childhood

ISSN 1463-9491

Volume 3 Number 3 2002

CONTENTS

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

Editorial, pages 313‑314
Susan Howard & Susan Roberts. Winning Hearts and Minds: television and the very young audience, pages 315‑337
Elizabeth Graue, Janice Kroeger & Christopher Brown. Living the ‘Gift of Time’, pages 338‑353
Tom Lowrie. Designing a Framework for Problem Posing: young children generating open-ended tasks, pages 354‑364
Gail Boldt. Oedipal and Other Conflicts, pages 365‑382
Libby Lee. Young Gifted Girls and Boys: perspectives through the lens of gender, pages 383‑399
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw & Sandra Schecter. Engaging the Discourse of Diversity: educators’ frameworks for working with linguistic and cultural difference, pages 400‑414
Kerry H. Robinson. Making the Invisible Visible: gay and lesbian issues in early childhood education, pages 415‑434
COLLOQUIA
Peter Moss. Time to Say Farewell to ‘Early Childhood’?, pages 435‑438
Amos Hatch, Barbara Bowman, Jamilah Jor’dan, Christina Lopez Morgan, Craig Hart, Lourdes Diaz Soto, Sally Lubeck, Marilou Hyson. Developmentally Appropriate Practice: continuing the dialogue, pages 439‑457
BOOK REVIEWS VIEW FULL TEXT
Starting School: young children learning cultures (Liz Brooker), reviewed by Anna Kilderry, page 458
Beginning Teaching: beginning learning in primary education (J. Moyles & G. Robinson, Eds), reviewed by Gloria Latham, page 460

Editorial

As we reach the end of the third year of the journal, it is evident that we have made significant impact on the field since our first year of publication at the dawn of the new century. The articles in this edition reflect the broad range of material that we have been privileged to present to our readers and they complement the special editions that we have published this year and last year.

In the first article, entitled ‘Winning Hearts and Minds: television and the very young audience’, Susan Howard & Susan Roberts address the lack of research undertaken in examining the responses of young viewers to media texts. The article provides an overview of the development of a unique technique for observing and recording the responses of very young children to a television text – Teletubbies. Their findings provide insights into children’s attentional abilities and demonstrate their diverse responses, including: pleasure, parasocial and cognitive responses.

The next article, by Elizabeth Graue, Janice Kroeger & Christopher Brown, entitled ‘Living the “Gift of Time”’, examines the notion of ‘readiness for school’, which is a concept adopted in the USA to ascertain the likelihood of school success. This article describes the reactions of parents and teachers towards children who are seen as having readiness risks. The article presents a case study that examines the process of kindergarten entry decisions.

In ‘Designing a Framework for Problem Posing: young children gener-ating open-ended tasks’, Tom Lowrie describes the type of problems six year-old children generated in problem-posing contexts. It was found that, with appropriate support, the children developed increasingly sophisticated problems. These problem-solving situations gave children the opportunity to offer problems they took pleasure in solving and in turn produced a richer learning environment. The findings demonstrated that the problem-solving skills of children can be heightened by teacher support and encouragement.

Gail Boldt writes about ‘Oedipal and Other Conflicts’ and advocates the value of utilising psychoanalytic perspectives in better understanding the gender and sexual development of a child. She argues that they are particularly instructive in demonstrating how adults utilise dominant discourses about normal development to ‘bring children into being as gendered and sexualised subjects’. She contends that an important aspect of parenting for the majority of heterosexual Western parents is the expectation that children experience in some way the Oedipal conflict.

In the article entitled ‘Young Gifted Girls and Boys: perspectives through the lens of gender’, Libby Lee examines how teachers’ conceptions of student ability in mathematics and science in early childhood are influenced by their beliefs about gender. A model of teachers’ conceptions of giftedness is offered. It is found that teachers’ conceptions of giftedness are gendered, which in turn directly disadvantages female students.

In ‘Engaging the Discourse of Diversity: educators’ frameworks for working with linguistic and cultural difference’, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw & Sandra Schecter explore teacher commitment to working within ethnically and linguistically diverse settings. This is examined through an interpretative framework of discussions on discourse and subjectivity which includes an examination of: ‘difference as deficit; preparing minority students and families to facilitate the school’s agenda; intercultural sensitivity as a pedagogic tool; and diversity as curriculum’. It was found that different understandings and practices regarding the above templates had impacts on the classroom curriculum, students’ socialisation within the school, and the relationship between school, home, and community.

The last article, by Kerry H. Robinson, entitled ‘Making the Invisible Visible: gay and lesbian issues in early childhood education’, promotes the introduction of gay and lesbian equity issues in approaches used in early childhood education. The discussion includes an examination of the presence of the dominant discourses of childhood and sexuality; entrenched attitudes regarding compulsory heterosexuality and the assumed absence of gay and lesbian families or significant gay and lesbian adults in children’s lives; and homophobia and heterosexism in early childhood settings. This article highlights important issues for practice and policy development in early childhood education.

In the first colloquium, ‘Time to Say Farewell to Early Childhood’, Peter Moss suggests that it may now be time to take a broader perspective than early childhood, ‘looking across childhood, or even sometimes across the life course’. This is followed by a further colloquium, ‘Developing Appropriate Practice: continuing the dialogue’, by a group of early childhood educators: Amos Hatch, Barbara Bowman, Jamilah Jor’dan, Christina Lopez Morgan, Craig Hart, Lourdes Diaz Soto, Sally Lubeck & Marilou Hyson. This is comprised of edited versions of articles presented at the Annual Conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Anaheim, USA, 2 November 2001. The articles seek to address issues related to ‘developmentally appropriate practices’ within diverse communities and cultures.

Two book reviews complete this issue. Anna Kilderry writes about Starting School: young children learning cultures by Liz Brooker (2002), and Gloria Latham reviews J. Moyles & G. Robinson (Eds) Beginning Teaching: beginning learning in primary education (2002).

NICOLA YELLAND & YASMINE FAUZEE, RMIT University, Australia

Winning Hearts and Minds: television and the very young audience

SUE HOWARD University of South Australia, Underdale, Australia
SUSAN ROBERTS Macquarie University, Australia

Although we know that very young children watch television and indicate preferences for favourite programmes, very little research has been undertaken exploring the responses of such young viewers to media texts. Reasons for this are probably largely methodological – one cannot use the usual methods associated with social research with children who are in the early stages of language acquisition. In this article, the authors describe how they devised a unique technique for observing and recording the responses of 20 under two year-olds to a television text – Teletubbies. Faced with a large amount of rich textual data, they then developed a set of analytical criteria. The subsequent analysis revealed that very young children’s responses to the chosen text were very diverse and included pleasure, parasocial and cognitive responses. In addition, new insights into very young children’s attentional abilities were revealed.

Living the ‘Gift of Time’

ELIZABETH GRAUE, JANICE KROEGER & CHRISTOPHER BROWN University of Wisconsin Madison, USA

Readiness for school is a US concept that is thought to depict the likelihood of school success. A combination of physical, cognitive, and emotional maturity, it provides a foundation for responding to school expectations. When there are readiness concerns, some advocate giving what is called the ‘gift of time,’ additional time to mature. This article describes the decision-making and reactions of parents and teachers who support the development of children who might be seen as having readiness risks. Children who delay kindergarten entry, those who go to kindergarten on time, and children who repeat kindergarten, their teacher and parents were the focus of a case study that addressed the process of kindergarten entry decisions and the evaluation of their success.

Designing a Framework for Problem Posing: young children generating open-ended tasks

TOM LOWRIE Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia

This article describes the type of problems young children (aged six) generated in problem-posing contexts. With support, the children began to generate increasingly sophisticated problems that were open-ended in nature. The problem-solving situations provided opportunities for the children to pose problems they enjoyed solving and promoted both a more complex and motivating learning environment. The results indicate that the problem-posing actions of students can be nurtured by teachers’ actions.

Oedipal and Other Conflicts

GAIL BOLDT University of Iowa, USA

In this article, the author offers a reading of the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipal conflict, taking into account a post-structural or cultural studies’ theorizing of subjectivity and the constructed nature of childhood. It is taken for granted that what are typically seen as natural gendered behaviors or natural sexual preferences are instead performative expressions of dominant discourses. Working from this stance, it is proposed that it likewise makes sense to understand the psychoanalytic perspectives on a child’s gender and sexual development as tremendously instructive descriptions of how adults work through dominant discourses about normal development to bring children into being as gendered and sexualized subjects. The author argues that a major facet of parenting for most contemporary, heterosexual Western parents involves the demand that our children experience the Oedipal conflict. Using stories of the author’s own parenting, she describes some of the ways that she participated in provoking outcomes that at least consciously she thought she did not intend.

Young Gifted Girls and Boys: perspectives through the lens of gender

LIBBY LEE Murdoch University, Australia

In contemporary society we have become highly dependent on a technological, scientific and mathematically literate population. There has been considerable debate for many years about the lack of talented people entering professions associated with these literacies and about the level of understanding of science and technology in the general community. Since perceptions of and interest in mathematics, science and technology begin in early childhood, teachers of very young children play an important role in fostering and supporting these interests. The research problem investigated in this article emerged when the researcher became aware that teachers in Brisbane, Australia nominated as many as five times more boys than girls for a mathematics and science enrichment programme for gifted young children. Hence, teachers’ conceptions of what it means to have high ability in mathematics and science in early childhood appeared to be influenced by teacher beliefs about gender. Single in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 early childhood teachers who nominated children for the above mentioned enrichment programme. Based on interview data, a model of teachers’ conceptions of giftedness was developed, comprising seven categories of description or ways that teachers see the phenomenon of giftedness in relation to young children. A latter interpretative analysis of this model found that teachers’ conceptions of giftedness are indeed gendered and that each of the seven categories of giftedness guides teacher behaviours or actions that directly disadvantage girls. This article explores this latter analysis and concludes that gender is a significant influence on teachers’ conceptions of giftedness in young children.

Engaging the Discourse of Diversity: educators’ frameworks for working with linguistic and cultural difference

VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW University of Victoria, Canada
SANDRA SCHECTER York University, Canada

Although plurality and diversity are often taken as givens in the ongoing conversation on the role of public schooling, practitioners do not necessarily share the same understandings of these sociological facts. This article explores ways in which teachers who are committed to working within ethnically and linguistically diverse settings make sense of their professional missions. We examine these ways through the lens, or interpretative framework, of scholarly discussions on discourse and subjectivity. We present four discourses for understanding diversity that we encountered in our professional development work with teachers in two urban school settings in Ontario, Canada. To represent the core narratives associated with these discourses, we use the following templates: difference as deficit; preparing minority students and families to facilitate the school’s agenda; intercultural sensitivity as a pedagogic tool; and diversity as curriculum. The respective different understandings and rhetorical practices aligning to these templates impacted classroom curriculum, students’ socialisation within the school, and the relationship between school, home and community.

Making the Invisible Visible: gay and lesbian issues in early childhood education

KERRY H. ROBINSON University of Western Sydney, Australia

This article, based on empirical qualitative data gained from a survey and interviews with a group of early childhood educators, argues for the inclusion of sexual differences, or more specifically, gay and lesbian equity issues, in approaches to anti-bias. The article examines the discourses that prevail in the field, that perpetuate the perceived irrelevance, invisibility and exclusion of lesbian and gay issues in early childhood settings and education generally. The discussion focuses on several main areas, including: the prevalence of the dominant discourses of childhood and sexuality that intersect to constitute sexuality as irrelevant to children; the pervasiveness of the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality and the assumed absence of gay and lesbian families in settings; or the assumed absence of significant gay and lesbian adults in children’s lives; the presence of homophobia and heterosexism in early childhood settings; and the perceived irrelevance of broader social, political and economic issues to the ‘child’s world’. This article highlights some crucial issues for practice and policy development in the area of anti-bias education concerned with sexual differences.

Time to Say Farewell to ‘Early Childhood’?

PETER MOSS Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom

The time may have come for adopting a broader perspective than early childhood, looking across childhood, or even sometimes across the life course: early childhood services should be seen in relation to other provisions for children and young people, including compulsory school. One consequence might be to find a new and shared way of thinking about these services, for example, as ‘children’s spaces’. To adopt a wider perspective entails risks for early childhood, but there are, equally, risks from not changing.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice: continuing the dialogue

AMOS HATCH University of Tennessee, USA
BARBARA BOWMAN Erikson Institute, Chicago, USA
JAMILAH R. JOR’DAN Chicago Accreditation Partnership, USA
CHRISTINA LOPEZ MORGAN DeAnza College, Cupertino, USA
CRAIG HART Brigham Young University, Provo, USA
LOURDES DIAZ SOTO Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA
SALLY LUBECK University of Michigan, USA
MARILOU HYSON National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), USA

The papers in this Colloquium were prepared for a session sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Governing Board Committee on Professional Practice. The session was designed to engage members in dialogue concerning issues related to ‘developmentally appropriate practices’ within diverse communities and cultures.

© SYMPOSIUM JOURNALS
a division of wwwords Ltd
PO Box 204, Didcot, Oxford OX11 9ZQ, United Kingdom
info@symposium-journals.co.uk
www.symposium-journals.co.uk