International perspectives on early childhood education and development, Oct 11, 2013
Following Bourdieu (1998), Agbenyega (Chap. 3, this volume, p. x) reminds us of the importance of... more Following Bourdieu (1998), Agbenyega (Chap. 3, this volume, p. x) reminds us of the importance of ‘reflexivity, reflectivity and critical mindfulness’ concerning the social worlds that we, as researchers, ‘conjure up’ in our research. Being critically reflexive and mindful requires us to interrogate our epistemological and ontological assumptions, the theoretical and methodological resources that we use, the practices in which we engage and the meanings that we assign. It involves looking beneath the surface, going beyond the commonly accepted, being wary of theoretical and methodological fads and attending to power relations and their effects. It also means recognising that our desires to formulate revolutionary ways of seeing (Agbenyega) may blind us to the limitations of those ways of seeing and lead us, inadvertently, to reproduce the social, theoretical and methodological status quo and in doing so possibly exacerbate the inequities that we may have set out to address. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a case study of critical reflexivity and mindfulness concerning our use of ‘baby cam’ (our term for small head-mounted cameras worn by children aged up to approximately 18 months) in our endeavours to understand babies and toddlers’ experiences of early childhood settings from the perspective of the children themselves. In particular, we consider the extent to which baby cam might be considered a participatory approach to researching with infants, insights it might enable and/or constrain and ethical dilemmas it can create.
Belonging is a fundamental human need that impacts young children’s everyday experiences and well... more Belonging is a fundamental human need that impacts young children’s everyday experiences and wellbeing in group care. We know little, however, about how belonging works for infants in multi-age settings such as family day care. In this article, I use Sumsion and Wong’s three intersecting axes of belonging – categorisation, performativity, and resistance and desire – to analyse two segments of video data from a longitudinal case study of belonging for an infant in family day care. I draw on concepts from Deleuze and Guattari, in particular assemblage and desire, to develop understandings of how the axes appeared to be at work and what they meant for the infant’s belonging at family day care. I am particularly interested in what an examination of the axes might reveal about the roles infants can play in the politics of belonging in early childhood education and care. The data illustrate the important role played by material aspects of assemblages, the dynamic nature of social categories and the complex roles of desire and power in the politics of belonging for infants.
Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Dec 15, 2020
While early childhood educators’ use of digital applications (apps) to document children’s experi... more While early childhood educators’ use of digital applications (apps) to document children’s experiences and support parent communication is increasing, there is limited empirical research about the impact of these applications on children’s experiences and educators’ practices. This article provides a critical analysis of the findings from this body of research with a focus on affordances and challenges. While the research supports potential benefits for parent engagement and pedagogy, a range of challenges relating to content, access, equity, workload and ethics are highlighted. Features of the neoliberal contextual that may enable the increasing use of apps and shape the way they are used are considered, and opportunities for future research to further critique, enhance understandings and inform practice proposed.
The idea that research on infants should ‘voice’ their ‘perspectives’, their experiences, what th... more The idea that research on infants should ‘voice’ their ‘perspectives’, their experiences, what they are ‘really saying,’ is a central feature of current moves toward participatory research. While embracing the ethos of participation, this article steps away from the binary logic of identity that implicitly underpins such approaches — self—other, adult—infant, subject—object. Instead, it demonstrates the generativity of concepts of ‘assemblage,’ ‘event,’ ‘line of flight,’ in rethinking what should form the focus for the theorising, pedagogy and practices surrounding infants and toddlers. To that end, it assembles a description of mealtime, a common segment of the lives of four young children in an Australian Family Day Care home. The assemblage connects a variety of heterogeneous elements, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, including highchairs, bottles, researchers, technologies, ideas, regulations, food, gravity and our own attempts to enunciate and engage with mealtime. It is concluded that, through the relations afforded by and made between these diverse elements, the descriptions of mealtime show how highchairs and their allies may afford a new infant-world symbiosis that entails not just a time and place to eat, but access to unanticipated relations of power, opportunities for connection, and ways of becoming. Such is the ‘what’ that should inform theorising, practice and pedagogy involving very young children.
International perspectives on early childhood education and development, 2014
Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in thei... more Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in their lives. Their first words reflect the context in which children live, words that are heard frequently, and things that may be important to children. There is some evidence to suggest that young children’s language development varies by situational context and in direct response to what is spoken to them by their parents. In this chapter, we explore the possibility that children’s first words may also provide insights into important aspects of their lived spaces in early childhood education and care settings. We asked parents and teachers to complete the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (MCDI) (Fenson et al. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd edn). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2007), a standardised checklist to determine the vocabulary that is understood and spoken by young children. Then we compared parents’ and educators’ responses for a group of ten infants attending infant-toddler education and care settings, and provided a case study of one child attending family day care. The children’s early vocabularies and gestures provided insights into common or important aspects of their lives, provided additional insights into relations with different interactional partners in different contexts, and facilitated some understanding of what life is like in child care for infants.
UNSTRUCTURED Recent years have seen remarkable progress in our scientific understanding of early ... more UNSTRUCTURED Recent years have seen remarkable progress in our scientific understanding of early childhood social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as our capacity to widely disseminate health information using digital technologies. Together, these scientific and technological advances offer exciting opportunities to deliver high-quality information about early childhood development (ECD) to parents and families globally, which may ultimately lead to greater knowledge and confidence among parents and better outcomes among children (particularly in lower-and-middle income countries). With these potential benefits in mind, we set out to design, develop, implement, and evaluate a new parenting app – “Thrive by Five” – that will be available in 30 countries, providing caregivers and families with evidence-based and culturally appropriate information about ECD, accompanied by sets of “collective actions” that go beyond mere “tips” for parenting practices. Here, we describe this ongoing global project and discuss the components of our scientific framework for developing and prototyping the app’s content. Specifically, we describe: (1) five domains used to organise the content and goals of the app’s information and associated practices; (2) five neurobiological systems that are relevant to ECD and can be “targeted” behaviourally to potentially influence social, emotional, and cognitive development; (3) our anthropological and cultural framework to learn about local contexts and appreciate decolonisation perspectives; and (4) our approach to tailor the app’s content to local contexts, involving collaboration with in-country partner organisations and local and international subject-matter experts in ECD, education, medicine, psychology, and anthropology, among others. Finally, we provide examples of content that has been incorporated in Thrive by Five’s global launch in Indonesia.
This chapter considers how early childhood teacher identities are developed through negotiation w... more This chapter considers how early childhood teacher identities are developed through negotiation within a landscape of personal and professional internal and external forces. It explores the challenging landscape of infant and toddler pedagogy and the way professional identity directly and indirectly promotes quality early education experiences for children. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development is often employed in early childhood education to develop understandings about the influence of context on the developing child. Classic conceptions of care and routine elements associated with “a carer ‘minding’ babies and toddlers” emerged as students consistently reflected they didn’t know what to do with babies. In Australia, the educators who work with infants and toddlers vary greatly in terms of their qualifications, and so does the quality of their work with infants and toddlers. The communication directly demonstrates the impact of centres that do not value quality pedagogical practice for infants and toddlers on students’ future career choices
International perspectives on early childhood education and development, 2014
This chapter is about mapping, in a more-than-representational sense. We examine how space can be... more This chapter is about mapping, in a more-than-representational sense. We examine how space can be portrayed when studying infants’ experiences in early childhood education and care settings, first theoretically, and then by constructing schematic descriptions from video-records of an Australian family day care home by way of illustration. We ask: how are we to map relationships between babies and space? What kinds of maps open up anew the everyday worlds of early childhood settings? And from whose points of view can such mappings be undertaken? Our engagement with infants’ experiences has been catalysed by reading the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In particular, we have been inspired by and appropriated their emphasis on the variety of heterogeneous and hybrid elements, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, that connect with and form assemblages (Deleuze G, Guattari F, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (trans: Massumi B). Continuum, London, 1987) including ourselves as researchers researching and infants’ moment-to-moment lives (Bradley B et al, Contemp Issue Early Child 13(2):141–153, 2012). In considering what space might mean to babies, we have been helped by cultural geographer and non-representational theorist, Nigel Thrift (Theory Cult Soc 23(2-3):139–146, 2006; Non-representational theory: space, politics, affect. Routledge, London/New York, 2008) who has also been influenced by Deleuze and Guattari. Thrift’s space is dynamic, porous, hybrid and complex. It takes no one singular form; rather it “comes in many guises: points, planes, parabolas; blots, blurs and blackouts” (Theory Cult Soc 23(2-3):139–146, 2006, p. 141). We call Thrift’s conceptualisation of space more-than-representational (Lorimer H, Prog Human Geogr 29(1):83–94, 2005), rather than non-representational, both to convey the impossibilities of pinning down the potential fluidities and porosities in infants’ worlds and to avoid unhelpful dualisms.
International perspectives on early childhood education and development, Oct 11, 2013
Following Bourdieu (1998), Agbenyega (Chap. 3, this volume, p. x) reminds us of the importance of... more Following Bourdieu (1998), Agbenyega (Chap. 3, this volume, p. x) reminds us of the importance of ‘reflexivity, reflectivity and critical mindfulness’ concerning the social worlds that we, as researchers, ‘conjure up’ in our research. Being critically reflexive and mindful requires us to interrogate our epistemological and ontological assumptions, the theoretical and methodological resources that we use, the practices in which we engage and the meanings that we assign. It involves looking beneath the surface, going beyond the commonly accepted, being wary of theoretical and methodological fads and attending to power relations and their effects. It also means recognising that our desires to formulate revolutionary ways of seeing (Agbenyega) may blind us to the limitations of those ways of seeing and lead us, inadvertently, to reproduce the social, theoretical and methodological status quo and in doing so possibly exacerbate the inequities that we may have set out to address. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a case study of critical reflexivity and mindfulness concerning our use of ‘baby cam’ (our term for small head-mounted cameras worn by children aged up to approximately 18 months) in our endeavours to understand babies and toddlers’ experiences of early childhood settings from the perspective of the children themselves. In particular, we consider the extent to which baby cam might be considered a participatory approach to researching with infants, insights it might enable and/or constrain and ethical dilemmas it can create.
Belonging is a fundamental human need that impacts young children’s everyday experiences and well... more Belonging is a fundamental human need that impacts young children’s everyday experiences and wellbeing in group care. We know little, however, about how belonging works for infants in multi-age settings such as family day care. In this article, I use Sumsion and Wong’s three intersecting axes of belonging – categorisation, performativity, and resistance and desire – to analyse two segments of video data from a longitudinal case study of belonging for an infant in family day care. I draw on concepts from Deleuze and Guattari, in particular assemblage and desire, to develop understandings of how the axes appeared to be at work and what they meant for the infant’s belonging at family day care. I am particularly interested in what an examination of the axes might reveal about the roles infants can play in the politics of belonging in early childhood education and care. The data illustrate the important role played by material aspects of assemblages, the dynamic nature of social categories and the complex roles of desire and power in the politics of belonging for infants.
Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Dec 15, 2020
While early childhood educators’ use of digital applications (apps) to document children’s experi... more While early childhood educators’ use of digital applications (apps) to document children’s experiences and support parent communication is increasing, there is limited empirical research about the impact of these applications on children’s experiences and educators’ practices. This article provides a critical analysis of the findings from this body of research with a focus on affordances and challenges. While the research supports potential benefits for parent engagement and pedagogy, a range of challenges relating to content, access, equity, workload and ethics are highlighted. Features of the neoliberal contextual that may enable the increasing use of apps and shape the way they are used are considered, and opportunities for future research to further critique, enhance understandings and inform practice proposed.
The idea that research on infants should ‘voice’ their ‘perspectives’, their experiences, what th... more The idea that research on infants should ‘voice’ their ‘perspectives’, their experiences, what they are ‘really saying,’ is a central feature of current moves toward participatory research. While embracing the ethos of participation, this article steps away from the binary logic of identity that implicitly underpins such approaches — self—other, adult—infant, subject—object. Instead, it demonstrates the generativity of concepts of ‘assemblage,’ ‘event,’ ‘line of flight,’ in rethinking what should form the focus for the theorising, pedagogy and practices surrounding infants and toddlers. To that end, it assembles a description of mealtime, a common segment of the lives of four young children in an Australian Family Day Care home. The assemblage connects a variety of heterogeneous elements, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, including highchairs, bottles, researchers, technologies, ideas, regulations, food, gravity and our own attempts to enunciate and engage with mealtime. It is concluded that, through the relations afforded by and made between these diverse elements, the descriptions of mealtime show how highchairs and their allies may afford a new infant-world symbiosis that entails not just a time and place to eat, but access to unanticipated relations of power, opportunities for connection, and ways of becoming. Such is the ‘what’ that should inform theorising, practice and pedagogy involving very young children.
International perspectives on early childhood education and development, 2014
Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in thei... more Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in their lives. Their first words reflect the context in which children live, words that are heard frequently, and things that may be important to children. There is some evidence to suggest that young children’s language development varies by situational context and in direct response to what is spoken to them by their parents. In this chapter, we explore the possibility that children’s first words may also provide insights into important aspects of their lived spaces in early childhood education and care settings. We asked parents and teachers to complete the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (MCDI) (Fenson et al. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd edn). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2007), a standardised checklist to determine the vocabulary that is understood and spoken by young children. Then we compared parents’ and educators’ responses for a group of ten infants attending infant-toddler education and care settings, and provided a case study of one child attending family day care. The children’s early vocabularies and gestures provided insights into common or important aspects of their lives, provided additional insights into relations with different interactional partners in different contexts, and facilitated some understanding of what life is like in child care for infants.
UNSTRUCTURED Recent years have seen remarkable progress in our scientific understanding of early ... more UNSTRUCTURED Recent years have seen remarkable progress in our scientific understanding of early childhood social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as our capacity to widely disseminate health information using digital technologies. Together, these scientific and technological advances offer exciting opportunities to deliver high-quality information about early childhood development (ECD) to parents and families globally, which may ultimately lead to greater knowledge and confidence among parents and better outcomes among children (particularly in lower-and-middle income countries). With these potential benefits in mind, we set out to design, develop, implement, and evaluate a new parenting app – “Thrive by Five” – that will be available in 30 countries, providing caregivers and families with evidence-based and culturally appropriate information about ECD, accompanied by sets of “collective actions” that go beyond mere “tips” for parenting practices. Here, we describe this ongoing global project and discuss the components of our scientific framework for developing and prototyping the app’s content. Specifically, we describe: (1) five domains used to organise the content and goals of the app’s information and associated practices; (2) five neurobiological systems that are relevant to ECD and can be “targeted” behaviourally to potentially influence social, emotional, and cognitive development; (3) our anthropological and cultural framework to learn about local contexts and appreciate decolonisation perspectives; and (4) our approach to tailor the app’s content to local contexts, involving collaboration with in-country partner organisations and local and international subject-matter experts in ECD, education, medicine, psychology, and anthropology, among others. Finally, we provide examples of content that has been incorporated in Thrive by Five’s global launch in Indonesia.
This chapter considers how early childhood teacher identities are developed through negotiation w... more This chapter considers how early childhood teacher identities are developed through negotiation within a landscape of personal and professional internal and external forces. It explores the challenging landscape of infant and toddler pedagogy and the way professional identity directly and indirectly promotes quality early education experiences for children. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development is often employed in early childhood education to develop understandings about the influence of context on the developing child. Classic conceptions of care and routine elements associated with “a carer ‘minding’ babies and toddlers” emerged as students consistently reflected they didn’t know what to do with babies. In Australia, the educators who work with infants and toddlers vary greatly in terms of their qualifications, and so does the quality of their work with infants and toddlers. The communication directly demonstrates the impact of centres that do not value quality pedagogical practice for infants and toddlers on students’ future career choices
International perspectives on early childhood education and development, 2014
This chapter is about mapping, in a more-than-representational sense. We examine how space can be... more This chapter is about mapping, in a more-than-representational sense. We examine how space can be portrayed when studying infants’ experiences in early childhood education and care settings, first theoretically, and then by constructing schematic descriptions from video-records of an Australian family day care home by way of illustration. We ask: how are we to map relationships between babies and space? What kinds of maps open up anew the everyday worlds of early childhood settings? And from whose points of view can such mappings be undertaken? Our engagement with infants’ experiences has been catalysed by reading the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In particular, we have been inspired by and appropriated their emphasis on the variety of heterogeneous and hybrid elements, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, that connect with and form assemblages (Deleuze G, Guattari F, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (trans: Massumi B). Continuum, London, 1987) including ourselves as researchers researching and infants’ moment-to-moment lives (Bradley B et al, Contemp Issue Early Child 13(2):141–153, 2012). In considering what space might mean to babies, we have been helped by cultural geographer and non-representational theorist, Nigel Thrift (Theory Cult Soc 23(2-3):139–146, 2006; Non-representational theory: space, politics, affect. Routledge, London/New York, 2008) who has also been influenced by Deleuze and Guattari. Thrift’s space is dynamic, porous, hybrid and complex. It takes no one singular form; rather it “comes in many guises: points, planes, parabolas; blots, blurs and blackouts” (Theory Cult Soc 23(2-3):139–146, 2006, p. 141). We call Thrift’s conceptualisation of space more-than-representational (Lorimer H, Prog Human Geogr 29(1):83–94, 2005), rather than non-representational, both to convey the impossibilities of pinning down the potential fluidities and porosities in infants’ worlds and to avoid unhelpful dualisms.
… Conference of the Australian Association for …, Jan 1, 2002
Prior to the 1970s, it was recognised in New South Wales that teachers who worked in the early ye... more Prior to the 1970s, it was recognised in New South Wales that teachers who worked in the early years of primary school should have specialist teacher education. It is reasonable to suggest, however, that the majority of teachers currently employed in Australian primary schools completed a generalist primary teacher education program. There is a small group of teachers who work in these settings who have completed specialist early childhood teacher education. Little is currently known about the experiences of these teachers and the extent to which they believe they are able to implement early childhood approaches within the primary context. This research aimed to explore how early childhood teachers working within primary schools perceived the influence of three aspects of the professional knowledge landscape (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995), (a) their personal beliefs and experiences, (b) their early childhood teacher education, and (c) the school environment and culture. Characteristics of schools that the teachers believed supported or discouraged early childhood practices in the early years of school were also investigated. Data was collected by conducting in-depth interviews with eight early childhood teachers working in the early years of primary school. Findings were analysed by a process of reading and re-reading interview transcripts to identify emergent themes. Findings indicated that the teachers felt they were significantly influenced both by their personal beliefs and experiences, and their early childhood teacher education. These two aspects were perceived by the teachers to be compatible and in many cases had merged into a unified belief system about teaching. The school context was influential in relation to class size, physical environment, the curriculum, and school cultures. Recommendations are made for schools, the NSW Department of Education and Training, the Board of Studies NSW and teacher education programs to increase support for early childhood teachers in the first years of primary school.
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