Early Childhood Curricula

Early childhood education has earned a prominent place on the political agendas of many countries throughout the world because it concerns one of the most important topics for people and societies -- educating and caring for children and respecting their rights. Given the global attention and action related to early childhood policies and curricula, the time to explore the tensions, political agendas, and taken-for-granted notions about children, childhood, and learning is now.

This volume contains pan-Canadian research from scholars grounded in reconceptualist curriculum theorizing that draws from sociocultural, feminist, critical, postmodern, and decolonizing understandings about early childhood, education, and care. These reconceptualist perspectives exist to examine limits, problematics, and possibilities of ECE, and to provide counter narratives to dominant ECE discourse of developmentalism, economic investment, and the universal child.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to reconceptualist perspectives, Luigi Iannacci and Pam Whitty

Part I: Reconceptualizing Curriculum and Professional Development in ECE
2. Towards designing a postfoundational curriculum document, Pam Whitty
3. Folding ethical-textual tensions: Explorations in curriculum writing, Emily Ashton
4. Rhizomatic stories of immanent becomings and intra-activity: Professional development reconceptualized, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Laurie Kocher, Alejandra Sanchez, and Christine Chan
5. Setting our little sails: Pedagogical documentation as a phenomenological act, Laurie Kocher

Part II: Reconceptualizing Children's Image and Agency
6. Valuing children's roles in research on literacy engagement, Tara-Lynn Scheffel
7. Lion and landscaper: Embracing multiplicities inside schooled spaces, Sherry Rose
8. Taking attendance and other rules of kindergarten: A child's perception of school literacy, Maureen E. Kendrick
9. We are here just for a brief time: Death, dying, and constructions of children in intergenerational learning programs, Rachel Heydon

Part III: Reconceptualizing Literacies in ECE
10. Taking Turtle out of the box: Multimodal storytelling in an urban kindergarten, Roz Stooke
11. Toys as text: Critically reading children's playthings, Kimberly Bezaire and Linda Cameron
12. Reconceptualizing early childhood literacy curriculum: An eco-justice approach, Kelly Young
13. Colonization, literacy, and the body: A critical narrative of culturally and linguistically diverse children in early childhood education, Luigi Iannacci