As policy makers' neoliberal reforms continue to impact teaching and teacher education, stakeholders across both fields of teaching continue to seek out alternative practices that assist educators in fostering democratic learning experiences for children in schools. However, many continue to struggle with the impact of these reforms on their…

The global shift toward neoliberalism continues to impact early childhood in numerous ways. One example of this shift is the push by education stakeholders for the incorporation of technology into the teaching of young children. Advocates contend implementing such technology in the classroom will increase children's academic performance and…

High-stakes education reforms across the United States and the globe continue to alter the landscape of teaching and teacher education. One key but understudied aspect of this reform process is the experiences of first-year teachers, particularly those who participated in these high-stakes education systems as students and as a…

The increased use of and demand for technology in early childhood education classrooms and programs creates new challenges for practicing and preservice early educators being asked to employ such technology within their teaching. Early childhood teacher education programs have struggled to meet these demands for teaching their students how to…

Policymakers across the globe continue to promote access to early education programmes as a means to improve children's readiness for school. Many of their reforms are rooted in a neoliberal conception of governance that frames policy solutions through economic rather than democratic terms. Such policies foster an image of the successful learner…

Research Findings: Having practicing or preservice early educators employing iPads and their apps as part of their practices with young children in high-stakes teaching contexts is a challenging process. The case study examined in this article further unpacks this complexity by investigating how incorporating iPads into their high-stakes field…

Policymakers' neoliberal education reforms have altered the landscape of publicly funded early education in the United States and across the globe. Practically speaking, these reforms expect early childhood teachers to prepare their students for success in elementary school and later life by providing them with a specific set of knowledge and…

Background: Policymakers' use of high-stakes exams to improve students' academic achievement affects teachers and their tenure in the field at all levels of schooling. Novice teachers now being inducted into the field have been educated almost exclusively in these high-stakes learning environments. Yet, how their familiarity with these contexts…

Research Findings: Policymakers preschool reforms that are to prepare young children for school success have sparked important conversations within the field of early childhood education over how these programs are to ready young children for school. This article presents findings from a case study that examined this issue of school readiness…

As policymakers and early childhood advocates across the United States continue to promote the expansion of early childhood education to prepare students for success in elementary school, many within the field are worried about how these reforms will affect the field. Little is known as to why early education stakeholders would seek out…

Federal, state, and local policy makers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms are transforming the early childhood teacher education process. These reforms affect how early education teacher candidates figure their role as teachers. By employing Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain's conception of figured worlds to analyze the…

As early childhood education continues to gain prominence on the agendas of policy makers across the globe, members of the field of early childhood education are concerned that these reforms will create new governing discourses that restrict how early educators are defined and limit their work with young children. While these neo-liberal policies…

As neoliberal polices that emphasize governing the modern state through market-based principles expand across the globe, they are altering the training of early childhood teacher candidates. This creates a range of challenges for those teacher educators who are critical of this reform process. This article presents an instrumental case study that…

This article presents a case study of standards-based reform in early childhood education to demonstrate how a particular set of early childhood stakeholders--by laterally incorporating a range of developmental domains within their standards--provided a "rhizoanalytic" response to the Bush administration's call for early learning…

Using John Kingdon's (2003) multiple streams approach to agenda setting, I analyze how key actors within the state of Wisconsin understood the need to construct and implement the state's No Social Promotion statutes to improve students' academic performance. Policymakers within the state focused their standards-based reforms on the issue of…