Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood |
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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| Editorial,
pages 1‑3
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| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST | The year 2005 marks the sixth year of publication of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and it seems like only yesterday that we were writing the prospectus to try to interest publishers in a new early childhood journal! We appreciate the support from our readers and those who submit papers for publication, as it is you who have made the journal so widely read. The work of refereeing papers is a time-consuming responsibility but we have built up a group of professionals who provide detailed and focused feedback, which contributes significantly to the reputation of the journal. In terms of publication, we have been fortunate to be able to work with Symposium Journals, who keep ahead of technological developments and ensure that the finished product is always of a high standard. The first issue of 2005 covers a broad range of topics, some of which look from different perspectives at enduring matters in the field, while others introduce novel ideas associated with life in the twenty-first century. Empirical data of children’s experiences of starting school form the basis of the first article by Sue Dockett & Bob Perry (‘‘You Need to Know How to Play Safe’: children’s experiences of starting school’). This article continues and extends recent work that focuses on children as research participants in their own right and uses children’s conversations, drawings and photographs to describe their understandings and experiences of starting school. Children from four schools in two states of Australia were involved in the project, which asked the children to share their expertise with those who were soon to begin school. The four schools reflect a cross-section of socio-economic, rural, urban, isolated and religious characteristics, and some of the photographs taken by the children are included. This article recognises the knowledge children have about their own lives in regard to starting school, and aims to use their expertise to improve transition programs and experiences associated with beginning school. Sexuality, children and early childhood education are three words that do not occur together very often in the same sentence. ‘Children’ and ‘early childhood education’ are frequently associated but the addition of ‘sexuality’ adds a dimension that some consider not to be the domain of early childhood educators. Nicola Surtees makes use of social constructionism, queer theory and discourse analysis to take a look at this combination in ‘Teacher Talk about and around Sexuality in Early Childhood Education: deciphering an unwritten code’. She laments the omission of sexuality in the inclusive aims of New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, Te Whäriki, and observes that children are sexual beings and that early childhood centres are ‘sexualized sites’. Data from individual interviews with three teachers and a group interview with the same three teachers are used to conclude that there is a ‘metaphorical and unwritten code of practice’ that guides teacher talk about sexuality in early childhood education. Surtees contends that this code strengthens ‘narrow and heteronormative views of children and childhood’, and makes it difficult to celebrate ‘difference and diversity in relation to sexuality’. Many of us are bombarded daily with media of all types and the relentless advertising that often accompanies it. Although some critique has occurred about various media and young children, little has been published about the latest market – those under the age of three. Patrick Hughes takes on international capital and the youngest members of society in his article ‘Baby It’s You: international capital discovers the under threes’. Hughes concentrates on the multinational companies that have cornered the under threes market and shows how many of the products are aimed specifically at parents of young children, and unashamedly create the desire to raise ‘brainy babies’ or ‘Baby Einsteins’. Questions that confront us after reading this article include who and what are commodities (media? entertainment? infotainment? parents? babies?), who are the consumers (babies? parents?), and what are the implications for family relationships of this new wave of technological gadgets that claim to be able to ‘mind baby’ and develop infants’ cognitive capacities at the same time? Childcare is the focus of two articles in this issue, one from Canada and one from Australia. Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (‘The Meanings Embedded within Childcare Regulations: a historical analysis’) draws on early twentieth-century history to investigate the childcare regulations in Ontario, Canada and the implications they have for children and families in these early years of the twenty-first century. Pacini-Ketchabaw traces three distinct discourses: medical supervision of children attending centres; the relationship between centres and ‘families in need’, and requirements for programming and behavioural guidelines. One of the main points of the article is the way in which children and families have been regulated over time as a result of legislation, particularly in relation to factors such as gender and class. Another is how children have been constructed as ‘other’ because they have been perceived as needy and requiring intervention and control. The upshot of this article is that there are many lessons to be learned from history, but perhaps more instructive are the questions Pacini-Ketchabaw poses about the benefits and limitations of new practices, including who is able to speak and who is silenced, and the ethical relationships that are both possible and desirable. In the second article that takes up the issue of childcare, Joy Goodfellow (‘Market Childcare: preliminary considerations of a ‘property view’ of the child’) writes about the paradox that exists in childcare in Australia between commercial for-profit childcare providers and the needs of families for childcare. Goodfellow contrasts a humanistic ideal with economic rationalist perspectives, drawing for the former on a recent study of grandparents who were caring for their grandchildren, and social, moral and ethical domains of caring. She locates childcare services, government support of the workforce, and parents as consumers of childcare services in the latter category of economic rationalist perspectives, and sets the whole phenomenon in the current economic, sociocultural and political context of Australian society. Goodfellow argues for a mix between the humanistic ideal and economic rationalist approaches, which, she says, should occur at the level of government if societal regeneration is valued. Three articles in this issue deal with matters related to curriculum and pedagogy. In the first, Helen Hedges & Joy Cullen (‘Subject Knowledge in Early Childhood Curriculum and Pedagogy: beliefs and practices’) investigate subject knowledge beliefs and practices of a small group of early childhood educators. This article is timely as early childhood practitioners around the world continue to grapple with differences in philosophical orientations between play-based and content or subject based approaches to early childhood education. Hedges & Cullen argue that although content knowledge in early childhood education has been disregarded by many professionals, knowledge of subject matter is essential to extend and enhance young children’s learning. They report data from one kindergarten in New Zealand, where the beliefs and practices of staff about subject knowledge were explored. Using a sociocultural perspective, Hedges & Cullen make a case for strengthening the place of content knowledge in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy. Continuing the focus on curricula and enhancing children’s cognitive development, Margaret Brooks (‘Drawing as a Unique Mental Development Tool for Young Children: interpersonal and intrapersonal dialogues’) uses Vygotsky’s social constructionist framework and examples of children’s drawings from a year one classroom in Australia to show how drawing can help make children’s ideas visible. Brooks contends that drawing can have a unique role in the construction and development of children’s knowledge if the focus is the meanings represented through drawing, if they engage in interpersonal drawing dialogues, and if these are extended to include children’s intrapersonal dialogic engagement with their drawing. The processes of ‘revisiting, revising and dialoguing through and with their drawings’ enable children to investigate and ‘represent increasingly complex ideas’. The drawings themselves serve as powerful records of children’s thinking, growth and development. The last of the articles dealing with curriculum issues also focuses on the early years of schooling: specifically, a teacher of a multi-age class of children aged 6‑9 years in the Midwest of the USA. In ‘Moral Reflections from a Primary Classroom: one teacher’s perspective’, Cary Buzzelli adds to the evidence about the complexity of teaching by exploring some of the ambiguities and dilemmas involved in the daily work of teaching, which, he says, is ‘both pedagogical and moral in nature’. As a participant observer in the classroom for one year, Buzzelli and Joan, the teacher, engaged in some lengthy conversations about the ways in which she addressed the ambiguities and dilemmas with which she was confronted daily. Buzzelli lays out some of these in the content areas of mathematics and language arts. In the process of ongoing reflection, Joan came to look at some of her dilemmas and ambiguities differently, causing her to re-evaluate her ‘fundamental beliefs and values about teaching’. Colloquia in this issue come from Eleni Loizou in Cyprus and Ni Chang in the USA. Loizou contemplates what it means for early childhood educators in Cyprus after the country became part of the European Union in 2004. Perspectives from a parent, early childhood teacher, and early childhood teacher educator indicate a general welcoming of the change but some concern about identities and preservation of the self. Chang relates a personal experience as an early childhood educator about the use of drawing to enhance children’s knowledge of science. Knowing the meanings children attach to their drawings is a skill that requires teachers to interact effectively with children to understand the stories that accompany their drawings. In book reviews, Barbara Chancellor gives her impression of Supporting Inclusion in the Early Years, authored by Caroline A. Jones (2004) and published by the Open University Press. Leigh O’Brien considers Cynthia Wallat’s (2002) Family-Institution Interactions: new refrains, which was published by Peter Lang (New York). We hope that you find this first issue of 2005 appealing and provocative. Sue Grieshaber & Katrina
Weier |
‘You Need to Know How to Play Safe’: children’s experiences of starting school |
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| Children have long been ‘objects of inquiry’, that is, research has been ‘done’ on children. Research into starting school is but one example, where children have been observed, tested and assessed at various points, as a means of evaluating their adjustment to the school environment. The Starting School Research Project aims to record and report the realities of life for children as they start school through their engagement in the research process. It aims to find out from them, what starting school is like for children and, based on this, how what is done within transition programs can be improved. This aim recognises children as experts on their own lives, and acknowledges that adults often have a limited understanding of children’s lives and experiences. This article highlights children’s expertise about their own experiences and expectations as they start school. It draws upon children’s conversations, drawings, and photographs to describe their understandings and experiences. |
| Teacher Talk about and around Sexuality in Early Childhood Education: deciphering an unwritten code |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
| This article highlights initial findings from a qualitative research study in Aotearoa/New Zealand exploring the discursive production of children’s sexuality in early childhood education. The article draws attention to teacher talk about and around sexuality. Drawing from heteronormative, developmentalist and biological discourses and discourses of children as asexual and innocent, this article shows that such talk acts to normalize or minimize children. Teacher resistance towards and silencing of sexuality, the functions the silences serve and the ways in which silences mark the borders of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are uncovered. The article suggests that the marking of borders jeopardizes teacher acknowledgement and celebration of difference and diversity. Gaps between the rhetoric of celebrating difference and diversity and the reality of practice are emphasized. |
| Baby, It’s You: international capital discovers the under threes |
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| Well-established international entertainment firms such as Disney and Fisher-Price are joining new start-up firms such as Baby Einstein to create a ‘Baby’ market of products (including toys, games and videos) specifically targeted at children aged 0‑3 years. Despite its novelty, the ‘Baby’ market mirrors older markets that these firms have created around other demographic groups (e.g. older children, adolescents and adults) – it redefines its target demographic group around specific commodities and promotes its redefinition as ‘common sense’. The ‘Baby’ firms redefine babies solely as early learners whose potential to learn can be released by these firms’ brand-name ‘educational’ or ‘developmental’ products. Many adults buy these products because they accept the firms’ redefinition of babies, but other adults ignore the firms’ promotional messages and buy the products to give themselves some time apart from their babies. The ‘Baby’ market is significant for children and adults because it changes young children’s relationships with adults and because it subordinates local cultural differences to a children’s culture that purports to be ‘global’ but has, in reality, extremely narrow foundations in class, race and gender. |
| The Meanings Embedded within Childcare Regulations: a historical analysis |
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| In response to current discussions about a universal Canadian childcare system (affordable childcare for all families), this article deconstructs the position that childcare occupies in the province of Ontario through the examination, from a historical perspective, of a document that outlines regulations for childcare programs: the Day Nurseries Act. Three discourses are analyzed by tracing them to social and demographic conditions during the early twentieth century: discourses related to the need for medical supervision of children attending childcare centres; discourses that emphasize the relationship between childcare centres and ‘families in need’; and discourses that refer to the need to follow strict programming and behavioural guidelines. |
| Market Childcare: preliminary considerations of a ‘property view’ of the child |
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| A recent study of grandparents who were caring for their young grandchildren on a regular basis has prompted an examination of what appears to be a paradox surrounding the provision of childcare services within Australia. The paradox reflects concerns surrounding the balance between a commitment to high-quality childcare services for children and families and the means by which this may be achieved. The choice that grandparents made to care for their grandchildren in caring and loving environments reflects a humanistic perspective. However, some grandparents raised concerns about what may be considered to be a property view of the child that places childcare within the context of a competitive marketplace. This article explores these issues using terminology drawn from the marketplace to traverse what appears to be an abyss between a business orientation and more humanistic approaches to early childhood education. Following the introduction of the paradox and an examination of market characteristics, the article concludes with questions about who the childcare consumer is, a consideration of approaches to consumer protection and reflections on childcare provision. |
| Subject Knowledge in Early Childhood Curriculum and Pedagogy: beliefs and practices |
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| The concept of ‘subjects’ has posed a philosophical dilemma and polarised debate within early childhood education. Consequently, little attention has been paid to teachers’ and children’s subject knowledge and the role these might play in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy to extend and enhance children’s learning. This article reports on a study that explored beliefs and practices about subject knowledge in one kindergarten in New Zealand. The study’s findings are analysed from two contrasting perspectives: categories of teacher knowledge and sociocultural theory. The article argues that a contemporary sociocultural view of knowledge has potential within the existing philosophy underpinning early childhood curriculum and pedagogy to recognise and strengthen the position of subject knowledge. Implications for curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education are discussed. |
| Drawing as a Unique Mental Development Tool for Young Children: interpersonal and intrapersonal dialogues |
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| Using examples from children drawing in a year one classroom, this article examines firstly, how drawing operates as a unique mental tool, and secondly, the role of drawing in the construction and development of knowledge. Young children utilize prior knowledge and experience to negotiate and construct meaning through their interactions with people and artifacts in the learning community. Using a Vygotskian, social constructionist framework, a detailed analysis of interpersonal drawing dialogues is extended to include children’s intrapersonal dialogic engagement with their drawing. When these children were encouraged to revisit, revise and dialogue through and with their drawing, they were able to explore and represent increasingly complex ideas. |
| Moral Reflections from a Primary Classroom: one teacher’s perspective |
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| Teaching is by nature a complex activity filled with ambiguities and dilemmas. Teaching also is fundamentally a moral activity, making the dilemmas and ambiguities both pedagogical and moral in nature. This article describes one teacher’s reflections on her efforts to resolve the dilemmas and ambiguities presented to her by the competing values of her school system and her own values as a teacher in a multi-age primary class. As a participant observer in her classroom over the course of one school year, the author examined how she addressed the moral ambiguities and dilemmas of the competing demands. These demands were exemplified in the way she taught mathematics and language arts lessons. The differences in the role she played in each lesson were subtle, but indicative of different values and beliefs about teaching and learning and, importantly, came to be seen by her as reflecting a moral stance. By reflecting upon the moral nature of the differences as they emerged, she re-examined her fundamental beliefs and values about teaching. |
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