Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care—A Reader

Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care—A READER

Critical Questions, New Imaginaries & Social Activism

SECOND EDITION

Marianne N. Bloch, Beth Blue Swadener, Gaile S. Cannella

EDITORS

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bloch, Marianne N., editor. | Swadener, Beth Blue, editor.
Cannella, Gaile Sloan, editor.
Title: Reconceptualizing early childhood education and care: a reader: critical questions, new imaginaries & social activism / edited by Marianne N. Bloch, Beth Blue Swadener, and Gaile S. Cannella.
Description: Second Edition. | New York: Peter Lang, 2018.
Series: Childhood Studies; 7
ISSN 2379-934X (print) | ISSN 2379-9358 (online)
Identifiers: LCCN 2018003895 | ISBN 978-1-4331-5417-1 (Paperback: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4331-5417-1 (eBook pdf) ISBN 978-1-4331-5419-5 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5420-1 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Early childhood education—Social aspects.
Social justice—Study and teaching.
Classification: LCC LB1139.23 .R4 2018 | DDC 372.21—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003895
DOI 10.3726/b13310


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About the author

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.

About the book

Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care—A Reader: Critical Questions, New Imaginaries & Social Activism is a foundational text that presents contemporary theories, debates and political concerns regarding early education and child care around the globe. Chapter authors are leading contributors in discussions about critical early childhood studies over the past twenty-five years. The volume editors of Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care are long-time scholars in the reconceptualizing early childhood movement. Audiences include students in graduate courses focused on early childhood, early years, and primary education, critical childhood studies, critical curriculum studies and critical theories/perspectives.

“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

“The authors draw on twenty-five years of research and scholarship on reconceptualizing early childhood education to push us to intensify our struggles for equity, justice, inclusion, redistributive economics and social politics. With stories and voices that are both discomfiting and inspirational, they ask hard questions about how it could be and how we can use our imaginations and our activisms to make it better for all children.”—Mara Sapon-Shevin, Professor of Inclusive Education, Faculty Member, Disabilities Studies, Women’s Studies, Programs in the Analysis & Resolution of Conflicts, Syracuse University

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ONE

Interrogating Reconceptualizing Early Care and Education (RECE)—25 Years Along

Marianne N. Bloch¹

While some of the history of the first Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) Conference was initiated in 1991 as a tentative start for new discussions, critique, and presentation of then-marginalized approaches to research, theory, policy, and pedagogy, it was hardly the beginning of these debates, nor, of course, is it the end—as this volume illustrates well. In this chapter, I present a form of history of the RECE Conference, illustrate some of the key questions we asked, and, finally, continue to ask questions and interrogate where we’ve “been” and where we might move. Thus, this is a history that draws upon my memories and reflections, as well as events that, though incompletely discussed or illustrated, I have constructed as important.

A framework for reading this chapter: histories are not linear, nor are they “truth” (Foucault, 1980). They involve memories and forgettings, intentional and without seeming intention. In addition, following Scott (1991) and Butler (1993, 2004) “experience” as well as identity(es) are contingently situated and related or performed in the discursive moment in which “experience” or storytelling (in this case) happens. As I narrate this story, therefore, please see the narrative as nonlinear, with ruptures, and that different discursive moments may account in ways I or “we” (then and now) think, act, and write.

Brief Overview of RECE’s Early Days/Years

Therefore, drawing from my memories (and forgettings), I try to represent the work of other critical theorists in education and curriculum studies at different moments. My narrative begins with disciplinary, theoretical/methodological backgrounds of the early participants. ← 21 | 22 →