Offering insights from a research-practice partnership, we examine how five pre-K-6 teachers discussed using LGBTQ+-inclusive children's literature as backup to counter curricular censorship and community pushback.

Present-day early childhood educators face the challenge of producing their professional identities in highly neo-liberal contexts, negotiating contested discourses on professionalism, education quality and the overall purpose of early childhood education. While it has been suggested by critical scholarship that the early childhood workforce…

This paper provides a discourse analysis of 12 Swedish sexuality education texts intended for preschool practitioners and published between 1969 and 2021. Using Fairclough's framework, we identify three discourses about children's sexual play in relation to children's sexual agency in the texts: child sexuality as encouraged and entangled with…

Amid efforts to limit "divisive concepts" in educational settings, this article investigates the obstruction of a civic-focused early childhood curriculum. Joy Dangora Erickson and Winston Thompson analyze the challenges faced by a resourceful kindergarten teacher striving to uphold curriculum goals despite constraints imposed by the…

Early intervention and integration are highly valued ideals in kindergartens in Norway. Building on two research projects informed by institutional ethnography, the authors address how kindergarten teachers 'do' early intervention and integration in their everyday work. They argue that this work largely revolves around managing categories, whether…

An educational innovation experience developed as part of the curriculum for the Early Childhood Education degree is presented within the framework of the scientific dissemination project entitled 'INFA-CIENCIA: From the girls of today to the scientists of tomorrow', which pursues two objectives: (1) To bolster future teachers' knowledge of women…

In this conceptual paper, we propose a new three-pronged theoretical framework derived from Chinese philosophy: (1) "Tian Shi" (timing); (2) "Di Li" (context); and (3) "Ren He" (human capital). Specifically, we delineate the nature of "Tian Shi, Di Li, Ren He" required for the successful translation of…

In Norway's 'Framework Plan for kindergartens' digital tools are to be implemented for learning, play and creativity. Implicitly the concept of digital tools, or ICTs, tend to be tablets, computers, and interactive whiteboards, smartphones are as such not taken into account. However, we find that the smartphone is particularly interesting because…

This article provides an opportunity to listen to a master teacher describe the achievements that go into having a good day in school with kindergarten children. It can look deceptively easy to achieve. We visit Vivian Gussin Paley's classroom, listen as she describes her goals, and get a glimpse of how she strives to achieve them. We then witness…

This article seeks to look below the surface of pedagogical documentation with a temporal lens. We focus on the potentialities of pedagogical documentation as an intertwined research process with children and teachers as learners in 'slow pedagogies' (Clark [2020]. "Towards a Listening ECEC System: Valuing Slow Pedagogy and Slow…

This paper takes a 'networking of theories' approach to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of agency. We examine an episode, where a kindergarten teacher and nine children work on an addition problem, from three different perspectives: Valsiner's zone theory; Radford's theory of objectification; and Pickering's dance of agency. Our…

Japanese teachers consider clean-up time to be the group's responsibility, and they rely on the use of music and encouragement to make clean-up time an appealing activity. The children's positive feelings also may be partially explained by the fact that teachers consider clean-up time to be an extension of play, saving toys and activities for the…

Inclusive practice in education is supported by a compelling body of research (Cologon, 2019; Graham, 2020; Raphael et al., 2019) policy recommendations (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009; Te Tahuhu o Te Matauranga--Ministry of Education, 2017(Commonwealth of Australia. (2003)) and mandated by legislation…

Australian early childhood education positions literacy learning as a set of social practices contextualised by one's unique experiences and knowledges. Despite widespread agreement about the need to teach phonics and other code-breaking practices, the ways early childhood educators integrate "constrained" skills are not well understood…

This paper argues that when young children are given an opportunity for their voice to be heard, they are competent communicators and social agents who can co-create cultural practices as theory makers. The paper draws on video recorded data from a small study that focussed on how young children (3-5 years) participated in an end-of-year cultural…