Critical issues in EC…pb 6/7/06 10:30 am Page 1 CRITICAL ISSUES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION "This book is a valuable contribution to the creation of a more critical and theoretically diverse approach to early childhood policy and practice. Through many vivid examples and a varied cast-list of authors, both academics and practitioners, it shows the potential of this approach for pedagogical work in early childhood institutions and the education of the early childhood workforce." Professor Peter Moss, Institute of Education, University of London, UK. “In the era of No Child Left Behind in the U.S., you might think that the landscape of educational research and practice has been transformed into a row of ‘scientific’ models and unvarying curricular scripts. Nicola Yelland's volume will persuade you that, in contrast, the landscape in early childhood education is varied and full of unconventional angles. The authors examine virtually every significant aspect of curricular practice and postmodernist theory, while challenging readers to be skeptics themselves – to engage with risky ideas on the way to transformative actions.” Celia Genishi, Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. This book challenges long-established beliefs about early childhood education. It offers readers the opportunity to think about those aspects of their profession that are fundamental to providing effective and equitable educational opportunities for young children in the 21st century. Organized in three parts, the book considers: • Contemporary views of early childhood education and teaching • The rethinking of early childhood practices • The emergence of new technologies and multiliteracies Chapters focus on aspects of early childhood education that have for a long time been accepted as truisms, or have been too hard to deal with and thus often ignored. For example, they include a consideration of issues that range from examining play that might be sexual in focus or learning how to cope with traumatic events in young children’s lives, to the ways in which popular culture and new literacies impact on what young YELLAND children are interested in and how they can be engaged in learning with information and communications technology. Nicola Yelland is Professor of Education at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. Her previous publications include: Ghosts in the Machine: Women’s voices in research with technology (2002), Promoting Meaningful Learning: Innovations in Educating Early Childhood Professionals (2000) and Gender in Early Childhood (1998). Cover design: delnorte (Leeds) Ltd ISBN 0-335-21596-3 EDITED BY NICOLA YELLAND www.openup.co.uk 9 780335 215966 Critical issues in early childhood education Critical issues in early childhood education Edited by Nicola Yelland Open University Press Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL6 2QL email: [email protected] world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA First published 2005 Copyright © Nicola Yelland 2005 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4LP. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 335 21596 3 (pb) 0 335 21597 1 (hb) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data applied for Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow For Keith, Tamsyn, Caja, Gwendoline May and Muriel who have been critical in my life. In memory of Sally Lubeck, a remarkable woman, academic, friend and mother. Contents List of contributors ix List of illustrations xiii 1 Against the tide: new ways in early childhood education 1 Nicola Yelland and Anna Kilderry PART I Contemporary Views of Early Childhood Education and Teaching 15 2 Reconceptualizing the field (of early care and education): if ‘western’ child development is a problem, then what do we do? 17 Gaile S. Cannella 3 Developmental theory and early childhood education: necessary but not sufficient 40 Daniel J. Walsh 4 How ‘bad’ can it be?: Troubling gender, sexuality, and early childhood teaching 49 Mindy Blaise and Yarrow Andrew 5 Preschool children’s portrayals of their male teacher: a poststructuralist analysis 58 Jennifer Sumsion 6 Who can speak?: Silence, voice and pedagogy 81 Jonathan G. Silin viii CONTENTS PART II Rethinking Early Childhood Practices 97 7 Freedom to choose: examining children’s experiences in choice time 99 Sharon Ryan 8 Learning to be a child: cultural diversity and early years ideology 115 Liz Brooker 9 Questioning diversity 131 Jeanette Rhedding-Jones 10 Secret children’s business: resisting and redefining access to learning in the early childhood classroom 146 Sheralyn Campbell 11 ‘Civilization of replicas’: disrupting multicultural pretend play props 163 Richard Johnson PART III The Emergence of New Technologies and Multiliteracies 179 12 Digikids: young children, popular culture and media 181 Jackie Marsh 13 Literarily lost: the quest for quality literacy agendas in early childhood education 197 Leonie Rowan and Eileen Honan 14 Curriculum, pedagogies and practice with ICT in the information age 224 Nicola Yelland 15 Postmodernism, passion and potential for future childhoods 243 Nicola Yelland and Anna Kilderry Index 249 List of contributors Yarrow Andrew is an early childhood teacher who enjoys the challenges of working in long day care. As a teacher, his main interests are gender and sex- uality, children’s rights, and challenging adult complacency about what ‘child care’ should involve. Yarrow has worked in the early childhood field for ten years and still feels he is just beginning to understand children’s lives. Mindy Blaise is currently a Senior Lecturer in New Learning at RMIT Uni- versity and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Education at Melbourne University. She uses feminist poststruc- turalism and queer theory in her teaching and researching with teachers and young children to uncover the complexities of classroom life. Liz Brooker was an early years teacher in London for many years before mov- ing into postgraduate research and teaching at the Institute of Education, Uni- versity of London. Most of her work has involved an investigation of the ways that education and care systems can contribute to, or combat, the long-term social exclusion of children and young people from disadvantaged groups. Her book, Starting School: Young Children Learning Cultures (Open University Press, 2002), which won the Society for Education Studies’ annual book award for 2003, was based on a study of four-year-old children as they learned in their homes and in their first year of school. More recently, and currently, she has been researching the experiences of teenage parents and young people who have been ‘looked after’ by the local authority. Liz now runs a Master’s programme in Childhood Studies, focusing on children’s rights. Sheralyn Campbell is an early childhood practitioner-researcher, and Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood. Sheralyn has worked in a variety of children’s services as a teacher, policy advisor, manager and mentor. Her PhD research focused on the issues of social justice that were an everyday part of childrens’ lives in an inner urban child care centre. Her most recent work is emerging from a small Australian rural child care centre where she continues to focus on the ‘politics’ of curric- ulum in early childhood settings. In particular, she is concerned with how feminist poststructural theory can be used in practice to disrupt the meanings of gender, ‘race’, class and sexualities that constitute inequities within children’s worlds. x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Gaile S. Cannella is Professor of Education in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at Arizona State University. She is the author of Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and Revolution as well as the 2004 book entitled Childhood and (Post) Colonization: Power, Edu- cation, and Contemporary Practice. She is also the section editor for Childhood and Cultural Studies in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. Her professional work focuses on critical qualitative research and cultural studies as related to family, gender, and childhood public policy. Eileen Honan is a Lecturer in Language and Literacy education at Deakin University, Australia. Eileen’s current research interests include creating closer links between the theories and practices of classroom literacy teachers through the use of rhizo-textual analytical techniques, and the introduction of ver- nacular education in Papua New Guinea. She is co-editor (with Annah Healy) of the collection Text Next: New Resources for Literacy Learning. Richard Johnson’s research of late has been related to investigating how the field of cultural studies interpretively impacts children and early childhood/ teacher education programs. Some of this