Contesting Early Childhood
About the Book Series
This groundbreaking new series questions the current dominant discourses surrounding early childhood, and offers instead alternative narratives of an area that is now made up of a multitude of perspectives and debates.
The series examines the possibilities and risks arising from the accelerated development of early childhood services and policies, and illustrates how it has become increasingly steeped in regulation and control. Insightfully, this collection of books shows how early childhood services can in fact contribute to ethical and democratic practices. The authors explore new ideas taken from alternative working practices in both the western and developing world, and from other academic disciplines such as developmental psychology. Current theories and best practice are placed in relation to the major processes of political, social, economic, cultural and technological change occurring in the world today.
Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy
1st Edition
By Andrea Delaune
November 07, 2025
What relevance does the philosophy of Iris Murdoch have to offer to our understanding of early childhood education? In “Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education”, Andrea Delaune establishes the importance of attention, moral imagination, and moral vision for early childhood pedagogy. The book ...
The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia: Voices and Ideas for a Dialectic Educational Experience
1st Edition
By Stefania Giamminuti, Paola Cagliari, Claudia Giudici, Paola Strozzi
November 30, 2023
The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and ...
Becoming Pedagogue: Bergson and the Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics of Early Childhood Education and Care
1st Edition
By Liselott Olsson
March 31, 2023
Returning to the origins of education, Becoming Pedagogue explores its role in today’s society by reuniting philosophy with pedagogy. It investigates the aesthetics, ethics and politics of childhood, education and what a teacher really does, enabling educators to define and perform their profession...
Slow Knowledge and the Unhurried Child: Time for Slow Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education
1st Edition
By Alison Clark
December 30, 2022
This book explores the relationship with time in early childhood by arguing for the valuing of slow pedagogies and slow knowledge. Alison Clark points to alternative practices in Early Childhood Education and Care that enable a different pace and rhythm, against the backdrop of the acceleration in ...
The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism
1st Edition
By Michel Vandenbroeck, Joanne Lehrer, Linda Mitchell
December 30, 2022
The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism explores how processes of marketisation and privatisation of ECEC have impacted understandings of children, childcare, parents, and the workforce, providing concrete examples of resistance to commodification from ...
Rethinking Environmental Education in a Climate Change Era: Weather Learning in Early Childhood
1st Edition
By Tonya Rooney, Mindy Blaise
December 23, 2022
As the impact of climate change has become harder to ignore, it has become increasingly evident that children will inherit futures where climate challenges require new ways of thinking about how humans can live better with the world. This book re-situates weather in early childhood education, ...
In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, Researching and Learning
2nd Edition
By Carlina Rinaldi
October 29, 2021
Reggio Emilia’s educational services for 0-6 year olds are widely acclaimed as one of the best systems in the world. Now in an updated second edition, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia offers a collection of the most important articles, lectures and interviews given by Carlina Rinaldi, who was ...
Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education: Markets, Imaginaries and Governance
1st Edition
By Guy Roberts-Holmes, Peter Moss
April 28, 2021
Neoliberalism, with its worldview of competition, choice and calculation, its economisation of everything, and its will to govern has ‘sunk its roots deep’ into Early Childhood Education and Care. This book considers its deeply detrimental impacts upon young children, families, settings and the ...
Revisiting Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Issues and Challenges in Early Childhood Education
1st Edition
Edited
By Michel Vandenbroeck
September 29, 2020
This reflection on Paulo Freire’s seminal volume, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, examines the lessons learnt from Freire and their place in contemporary pedagogical theory and practice. Freire’s work has inspired ground-breaking research which Vandenbroeck has collated, demonstrating the ongoing ...
Young Children's Community Building in Action: Embodied, Emplaced and Relational Citizenship
1st Edition
By Louise Gwenneth Phillips, Jenny Ritchie, Lavina Dynevor, Jared Lambert, Kerryn Moroney
July 15, 2019
Rethinking the concepts of citizenship and community in relation to young children, this groundbreaking text examines the ways in which indigenous understandings and practices applied in early childhood settings in Australia and New Zealand encourage young children to demonstrate their care and ...
'Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible': A Memoir of Work in Childcare and Education
1st Edition
By Helen Penn
August 08, 2018
An astute exploration of the complexities of working and learning in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care, Professor Helen Penn tells of her experiences of working as a teacher, social worker, campaigner, researcher and writer, and so reflects on the perennial and complex issues which ...
Alternative Narratives in Early Childhood: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners
1st Edition
By Peter Moss
July 04, 2018
Challenging dominant discourses in the field of early childhood education, this book provides an accessible introduction to some of the alternative narratives and diverse perspectives that are increasingly to be heard in this field, as well as discussing the importance of paradigm, politics and ...