Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care—A Reader

Marianne N. Bloch is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beth Blue Swadener is Professor and Associate Director of the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University-Tempe. Gaile S. Cannella is an independent scholar, former professor and endowed chair and series editor for Childhood Studies, as well as Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry at Peter Lang. All are founding members of the International Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education group and are former early childhood classroom teachers, scholars who have conducted research that is published in multiple books and refereed journals and early years policy activists.

• Acknowledgements – Marianne N. Bloch/Beth Blue Swadener/Gaile S. Cannella: Introduction: Reconceptualist Histories and Possibilities – Marianne N. Bloch: Interrogating Reconceptualizing Early Care and Education (RECE)—25 Years Along – Shirley A. Kessler: Reconceptualizing the Early Childhood Curriculum: An Unaddressed Topic – Joseph Tobin: Anxiety, Theory, and the Challenges of Doing Early Childhood Research – Jonathan Silin: Through a Queer Lens: Recuperative Longings and the Reconceptualizing Past – Michael O’Loughlin: Still Waiting for the Revolution – Susan Grieshaber/Felicity McArdle: Social Justice, Risk, and Imaginaries – Gunilla Dahlberg/Peter Moss: Reconceptualising Evaluation in Early Childhood Education – Marek Tesar/Sonja Arndt: Posthuman Childhoods: Questions Concerning ‘Quality’ – Michelle Salazar Pèrez/Cinthya M. Saavedra: Black and Chicana Feminisms: Journeys Toward Spirituality and Reconnection – Liselott Mariett Olsson/Ebba Theorell: Affective/Effective Reading and Writing Through Real Virtualities in a Digitized Society – Gail Boldt/Joseph Michael Valente: Bring Back the Asylum: Reimagining Inclusion in the Presence of Others – Chelsea Bailey: Radical Theories of Presence in Early Childhood Imaginaries – Denise Proud/Cynthia à Beckett: Our Story of Early Childhood Collaboration: Imagining Love and Grace – Cheryl Rau/Jenny Ritchie: Ki te Whai ao, ki te ao Marama: Early Childhood Understandings in Pursuit of Social, Cultural, and Ecological Justice – Affrica Taylor: Situated and Entangled Childhoods: Imagining and Materializing Children’s Common World Relations – Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw/Fikile Nxumalo: Posthumanist Imaginaries for Decolonizing Early Childhood Praxis – Mariana Souto-Manning/Maisha T. Winn/Nicole McGowan/Jessica Martell: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and the (Im)Possibility of Racial Justice – Valerie Polakow: None for You: Children’s Capabilities and Rights in Profoundly Unequal Times – Mark Nagasawa/Lacey Peters/Beth Blue Swadener: The Costs of Putting Quality First: Neoliberalism, (Ine)quality, (Un)affordability, and (In)accessibility? – Mathias Urban: Learning From the Margins: Early Childhood Imaginaries, "Normal Science," and the Case for a Radical Reconceptualization of Research and Practice – Janette Habashi: [Im]possibilities of Reinvention of Palestinian Early Childhood Education – Jeanne Marie Iorio/Will Parnell/Elizabeth P. Quintero/Catherine Hamm: Early Childhood Teacher Educator as Public Intellectual – Kylie Smith/Sheralyn Campbell: Social Activism: The Risky Business of Early Childhood Educators in Neoliberal Australian Classrooms – I-Fang Lee/Nicola Yelland: The Global Childhoods Project: Complexities of Learning and Living With a Biliterate and Trilingual Literacy Policy – Gaile S. Cannella: Critical Qualitative Research and Rethinking Academic Activism in Childhood Studies – About the Authors.

“Weaving together as well as juxtaposing theoretical perspectives, conceptual concerns and activist-oriented commitments, the editors and authors of this reader compel educators not only to ponder but also to enact new imaginaries of early childhood and child care pedagogies, research, theories, policies and curricula. Representing cross-generational, transnational and theoretically rich and yet diverse perspectives, this text is a must-read for educators concerned with the care and education of all children, especially within current education climates dominated by the rage for accountability, ‘normalization’ and standardization. Reconceptualizing early childhood care and education is an on-going commitment, one that these contributors perform in challenging and inspiring ways.”—Janet L. Miller, Professor, Department of Arts & Humanities, Teachers College, Columbia University