Search results for: Preschool education

In this article, the author uses the framework of prek-3rd as a vehicle for exploring the implications of more closely linking Early Childhood Education (ECE) and schooling, focusing especially on philosophical and practical issues raised by this objective. He will examine the reasoning of proponents and raise questions about their assumptions. The prek-3rd posits a heterogeneous population of children moving up through a matrix of diverse learning and developmental tasks at different rates. The author concludes that the example of prek-3rd suggests that there are many positive aspects to the idea of bringing ECE and early schooling closer together, such as a complex view of the child and sensitivity to individual differences; the balance in attention to teaching and learning; and the broadened time frame for considering the transition to school.

The purpose of this article is to challenge the habitual anthropocentric gaze we use when analyzing educational data. By enacting analysis of photographic images from a preschool playground, using a relational materialist methodological approach, the authors put to work concepts that open up possibilities to understand the child as emergent in a relational field, where non-human forces are equally at play in constituting children's becomings. In the second part of the article, the authors discuss how the decentring of the child may also be applied to researchers as producers of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to share the findings of a 4-year qualitative study investigating the relationships forged and teaching ideologies constructed by Latino pre-K teachers via critical “storying” within a culturally responsive professional learning community. Findings suggest that as teachers learned to recognize, listen to, and learn from the personal/professional individual and collective life histories of each other, their teaching efficacy was enhanced increasing their ability to develop effective literacy instruction that was culturally and linguistically responsive to the needs of young children.

This article analyses staff responsibilities for promoting gender equality in preschool in Sweden and Scotland. These countries represent different welfare regimes, but also display common features, both influenced by tradition and recent transnational policies and discourses. In both cases, teachers are constructed as role models who should promote certain gender values and provide children with opportunities. The Swedish curriculum places more emphasis on similarities between girls and boys, while the Scottish counterpart tends to emphasize difference more, paying attention to boys and the need for male role models.