Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education

Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education

Author: Hillevi Lenz Taguchi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1135217858

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Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education focuses on the use of pedagogical documentation as a tool for learning and transformation. Based on innovative research, the author presents new approaches to learning in early childhood education, shifting attention to the force and impact which material objects and artefacts can have in learning. Drawing upon the theories of feminist Karen Barad and philosophers Gille Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Hillevi Lenz Taguchi discusses examples of how pens, paper, clay and construction materials can be understood as active and performative agents, challenging binary divides such as theory/practice, discourse/matter and mind/body in teaching and learning. Numerous examples from practice are explored to introduce an intra-active pedagogy. 'Methodological' strategies for learning with children in preschools, and in teacher education, are brought to the fore. For example: the neighbourhood around the preschool and children's homes is explored, using drawing and construction-work on the floor; mathematics is investigated in teacher education, using the body, dance and music to investigate mathematical relationships and problems; taken-for-granted forms of academic writing are challenged by different forms of praxis- and experience-based writings that transgress the theory/practice divide; children, students and teacher educators use pedagogical documentation to understand their own learning, and to critique dominant habits of thinking and doing. Challenging the dominant understanding of ‘inclusion’ in educational contexts, and making ‘difference’ actively visible and positive, this book is rooted in the experiences, practices and words of teachers, teacher educators and student teachers. It will appeal to all those involved in early childhood education and also to those interested in challenging educational thinking and practices.


The Posthuman Child

The Posthuman Child

Author: Karin Murris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-17

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1317511689

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The Posthuman Child combats institutionalised ageist practices in primary, early childhood and teacher education. Grounded in a critical posthumanist perspective on the purpose of education, it provides a genealogy of psychology, sociology and philosophy of childhood in which dominant figurations of child and childhood are exposed as positioning child as epistemically and ontologically inferior. Entangled throughout this book are practical and theorised examples of philosophical work with student teachers, teachers, other practitioners and children (aged 3-11) from South Africa and Britain. These engage arguments about how children are routinely marginalised, discriminated against and denied, especially when the child is also female, black, lives in poverty and whose home language is not English. The book makes a distinctive contribution to the decolonisation of childhood discourses. Underpinned by good quality picturebooks and other striking images, the book's radical proposal for transformation is to reconfigure the child as rich, resourceful and resilient through relationships with (non) human others, and explores the implications for literary and literacy education, teacher education, curriculum construction, implementation and assessment. It is essential reading for all who research, work and live with children.


SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood

SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood

Author: Elizabeth Brooker

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2014-06-17

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1473907160

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′This Handbook offers diverse perspectives from scholars across the globe who help us see play in new ways. At the same time the basic nature of play gives a context for us to learn new theoretical frameworks and methods. A real gem!′ - Beth Graue, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA Play and learning scholarship has developed considerably over the last decade, as has the recognition of its importance to children’s learning and development. Containing chapters from highly respected researchers, whose work has been critical to building knowledge and expertise in the field, this Handbook focuses on examining historical, current and future research issues in play and learning scholarship. Organized into three sections which consider: theoretical and philosophical perspectives on play and learning play in pedagogy, curriculum and assessment play contexts. The Handbook′s breadth, clarity and rigor will make it essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students, as well as professionals with interest in this dynamic and changing field. Liz Brooker is Reader in Early Childhood in the Faculty of Children and Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London. Mindy Blaise is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Susan Edwards is Associate Professor in Curriculum and Pedagogy at Australian Catholic University. This handbook′s International Advisory Board included: Jo Aliwood, The University of Newcastle, Australia Pat Broadhead, Leeds Metropolitan University, Australia Stig Brostrom, Aarhus University, Denmark Hasina Ebrahim, University of the Free State, South Africa Beth Graue, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA Amita Gupta, The City College of New York, CUNY, USA Marjatta Kalliala, University of Helsinki, Finland Rebecca Kantor, University of Colorado Denver, USA Colette Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Ellen Sandseter, Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education, Norway


Literacies, Literature and Learning

Literacies, Literature and Learning

Author: Karin Murris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1351400908

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Literacies, Literature and Learning: Reading Classrooms Differently attends to pressing questions in literacy education, such as the poor quality of many children’s experiences as readers, routine disregard for their thinking and the degrading impact of narrow skills measurement and comparison. This cutting-edge book moves beyond social, psychological and scientific categories that focus on individualistic and linear notions of the knowing subject; of progress and development; and of child as less than fully human. It adopts a posthumanist framework to explore new perspectives for teaching, learning and research. Authors from diverse disciplines and continents have collaborated to interrogate the colonising characteristics of humanism and to imagine a different – more just - reading of a literacy classroom. Questions of de/colonisation are tackled through the exploration of both education and research practices that seek to de-centre the human and include the more than human. Inspired by an example of high quality children’s literature, playful philosophical teaching and the power of the material, the authors show how the chapters diffract with one another, thereby opening up radical possibilities for a different doing of childhood. The book hopes to help transform adult-child relationships in schools and universities. As such, it should be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of literacy, philosophy, law, education, the wider social sciences, the arts, health sciences and architecture. It should also be essential reading for teacher educators and practitioners around the world.


Listening to Young Children, Expanded Third Edition

Listening to Young Children, Expanded Third Edition

Author: Alison Clark

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Published: 2017-06-21

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1909391263

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Viewing children as 'experts in their own lives', the Mosaic approach offers a creative framework for understanding young children's perspectives through talking, walking, making and reviewing material with an adult. This book demonstrates how children's views and experiences can stay in focus in early childhood provision. The multi-method approach brings together digital tools with interviewing and observation to enable adults to review current practice and implement change with children. Combining the authors' successful books Listening to Young Children and Spaces to Play into an expanded and fully updated third edition, this book builds on the authors' original ground-breaking work by commenting on the development and adaptation of the Mosaic approach, along with case studies of the Mosaic approach in action in four countries: England, Denmark, Norway and Australia. Alongside guidance on using and adapting the framework with young children, older children and adults, there is new material on the ethical and methodological issues involved.


Posthuman Research Practices in Education

Posthuman Research Practices in Education

Author: Carol Taylor

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1137453087

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How do we include and develop understandings of those beyond-the-human aspects of the world in social research? Through fifteen contributions from leading international thinkers, this book provides original approaches to posthumanist research practices in education. It responds to questions which consider the effect and reach of posthuman research.


The Routledge International Handbook of Learning

The Routledge International Handbook of Learning

Author: Peter Jarvis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 0415571308

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The aim of this handbook is to present an overview of the work on learning, written by leading scholars from all these different perspectives and disciplines.


Social, Material and Political Constructs of Arctic Childhoods

Social, Material and Political Constructs of Arctic Childhoods

Author: Pauliina Rautio

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-01-01

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9811331618

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This book addresses the geopolitical notion of the 'Arctic' through the everyday experiences of children. It explores the Arctic as various materializations that matter to, condition and define childhoods in Nordic countries. Presenting nine thematically very different but theoretically and methodologically coherent studies, it enables readers to gain an in-depth understanding of a selection of recent sociomaterialist, posthumanist and post-anthropocentric research on childhood in the Nordic context. The book offers new ideas and insights as to what matters in children's lives - in Arctic contexts.


Digital Play and Technologies in the Early Years

Digital Play and Technologies in the Early Years

Author: Christine Stephen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-24

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 042981500X

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Technologies are a pervasive feature of contemporary life for adults and children. However, young children’s experiences with digital technologies are often the subject of polarised debate among parents, educators, policymakers and social commentators, particularly since the advent of tablets and smartphones changed access to the Internet and the nature of interactions with digital resources. Some are opposed to children’s engagement with digital resources, concerned that the activities they afford are not developmentally appropriate, limit physical activity and restrict the development of social skills. Others welcome digital technologies which they see as offering new and enhanced ways of learning and sharing knowledge. Despite this level of popular and policy interest in young children’s interactions with digital technologies our understanding of the influence of these technologies on playing and learning, and on the role of educators, has remained surprisingly limited. The contributions to this book fill in the gaps of our existing understanding of the field. They focus on children and families from Australia to England to Estonia, the how and why of encounters with digital technologies, the nature of digital play and questions about practice and practitioners. The book raises critical questions and offers new understandings and theoretical insights around one of the ‘hot topics’ in early years research. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Early Years journal.


Ethics and Research with Young Children

Ethics and Research with Young Children

Author: Christopher M. Schulte

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-12-26

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1350076457

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As researchers and theorists, teachers and teacher educators, parents and grandparents and advocates for children, the authors featured in Ethics and Research with Young Children share a common inclination to counter the idea of an ethics that is conventional-i.e., an ethics that reinforces existing models and discourses, which position children as irrational and incompetent; that de-anonymize children's ways of working and being in the world; that reduces and distorts the social, cultural and political forces that shape children's everyday realities; and, that routinely subtracts from these realities the complex responsibilities that adults have (especially as researchers) to recognize ethics as situated, relational, intersectional, and provisional. Aligned with the interdisciplinary commitments of a Childhood Studies approach and informed by a range of theoretical and practical frameworks, the perspectives offered in this volume are grounded in relationships between and among adults and children, their shifting social, cultural, political and material realities, and a world of ideas and experiences that impel them to face and reorient their ethical commitments to each other.