Sozo Kurahashi's (1882-1955) theories, formed from his profound respect for children, have influenced Japanese early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners for a long time. They also have influenced the national ECEC curriculum in Japan, which emphasizes the need for a rich environment where children can actively learn and play rather…

How do we teach for human dignity in a context where life is, generally speaking, not treated as precious? How do we carve spaces for humanity amidst inhumane contexts? In this paper, five experienced teachers share how they work from the cracks to expand spaces for human dignity in their schools. They write and act as teacher-philosophers, dually…

The Carole Robertson Center for Learning is one of the largest early childhood and youth development nonprofit organizations in Chicago, serving more than 1,000 children and their families every day, with a significant presence on the city's West Side. The organization's work during the COVID-19 pandemic and a summer grounded in the fight for…

This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…

A high-quality pre-school education will improve the well-being of all children, especially those with special needs for support, will enhance their development, with respect of diversity and dignity. The article presents the results of an exploratory study on those aspects of the quality of pre-school education that are important for implementing…

Drawing on a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study that was undertaken in two Australian preschool settings this article examines strategies that support the pedagogy of teaching for social justice and outlines how these strategies raised critical consciousness of both preschoolers (aged three to five years) and early childhood educators to…

Spirituality has become an issue in many domains of the Norwegian society, but this is not reflected in public education. This paper discusses why this is so, and suggests some hermeneutical approaches to understanding spirituality that can include pre-school children's spirituality, with particular reference to a Norwegian context. Central to…