Drawing on a range of early childhood services, particularly the 'Reggio approach', this book presents essential ideas, theories and debates to an international audience and explores the ethical and political dimensions in this field.

This international handbook gives a comprehensive overview of findings from longstanding and contemporary research, theory, and practices in early childhood education in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The first volume of the handbook addresses theory, methodology, and the research activities and research needs of particular regions. The second volume examines in detail innovations and longstanding programs, curriculum and assessment, and conceptions and research into child, family and communities. The two volumes of this handbook address the current theory, methodologies and research needs of specific countries and provide insight into existing global similarities in early childhood practices. By paying special attention to what is happening in the larger world contexts, the volumes provide a representative overview of early childhood education practices and research, and redress the current North-South imbalance of published work on the subject.

Pedagogical documentation is a vital method of assessing and observing young children, and is a practice that enables practitioners, families and children to learn alongside each other. This book draws on the projects and experiences of senior researchers from nations including Australia, Canada, Sweden, Singapore, the UK and the USA to highlight multiple approaches to pedagogical documentation. Topics explored include: using video in pedagogical documentation making the most of outdoor learning environments developing pedagogical documentation within curriculum frameworks the relationship with Early Years transitions the potential of pedagogical documentation for leadership enactment. The book offers guidance, support and inspiration to practitioners and researchers on how to implement meaningful and sustainable child-focused observation in early years contexts.

Across the globe the work of early childhood educators, who are predominantly women, is misunderstood, underpaid and undervalued. Perspectives on early childhood educators are highly contentious: are they child development experts, oppressed workers, maternal substitutes, technicians, facilitators of early learning, or something else? This volume features chapter authors from Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the USA and New Zealand, examine a range of contemporary feminist theories in relation to the early childhood educator. The feminist theories covered include materialist feminism, poststructural feminism, decolonizing feminisms, posthumanist feminism, new materialist feminism, feminist ethics of care, womanist feminism, postcolonial feminism, femme theory and feminist queer theory. The editors of the volume offer an introduction and commentaries that explore solidarities and tensions between the feminisms to generate critical conversations about the work, lived experiences, and agency of early childhood educators. The volume contributes to shifting understandings of the early childhood educator in the contexts of culture, practice, policy and politics.

The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and sustains an enduring educational experience, for the common good. Emerging from a collaborative research project with Reggio Children and the Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, this book features in-depth observations of pedagogistas, teachers, and atelieristas, as well as interviews with key figures in Reggio Emilia. Children’s learning is thoughtfully emphasised, as the authors render the inextricable connection between theory-practice-research, framing documentation and progettazione as artful collective experimentation. The authors illuminate how Reggio Emilia’s system sustains reciprocal professional formation through progettazione, contesting dominant marketplace discourses of early childhood education as a commodity and re-imagining settings driven by values of reciprocity, artistry, culture, and the common good. By troubling conventional views on education and care, professionalism of teachers, and educational leadership, this book will appeal to all those who long for something different and hope to shift the field of possibility for early childhood education culturally, socially, pedagogically, and politically. It will be a key resource for teachers, leaders, policy makers, and scholars in the whole field of education.

Returning to the origins of education, Becoming Pedagogue explores its role in today’s society by reuniting philosophy with pedagogy. It investigates the aesthetics, ethics and politics of childhood, education and what a teacher really does, enabling educators to define and perform their profession as per its historical and intellectual roots. Reflecting on the practice, science and knowledge tradition of pedagogy as well as abstract and formalist discourse at all levels, Olsson’s work evokes real, becoming and free aspects of educational experiences and events. Through a close reading of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s major works, historical and contemporary pedagogical resources as well as the pedagogy developed in the early childhood centres in Reggio Emilia, Italy, it develops a critical-cum-creative methodology that both analyses the present educational situation as well as creates new pedagogical alternatives. Using brand new perspectives as well as practical examples of what teachers do, Becoming Pedagogue will provide students, educators and researchers tools for critiquing simplified ideas of what a teacher is as well as giving them inspiration to experiment with alternative ways of teaching.

Reconceptualizing Early Career Teacher Mentoring as Reggio-Inspired presents an innovative approach to early career art teacher mentoring informed by both the philosophy of Reggio Emilia and an ontology of immanence while simultaneously illuminating the experiences of the teacher-participants as co-inquirers within the contemporary milieu of public education in the United States. Readers are invited to travel with a group of teacher educators and early career PK-12 art teachers across a four-year journey to experience the evolving nature of a collaborative inquiry through mentoring-as-research, the Teacher Inquiry Group (TIG). The authors share significant insights regarding what it means to be an early career art teacher––especially in an educational climate steeped in neoliberal agendas, standardization, and accountability––and make potent suggestions for re-visioning entrenched approaches to mentoring and professional learning that better account for the inherent complexities of teaching in schools. Advocating for more complex understandings regarding teacher subjectivity and the contextual forces at work in schools, the authors provoke an expanded vision of how mentoring can be imagined, practiced, and lived in current educational contexts. The authors employ key orientations grounded in the Reggio Emilia philosophy to reimagine an under-researched and undertheorized area of study in art education-––early career teacher mentoring––that has implications for teachers at all levels and across all disciplines. This volume is essential reading for scholars and professionals across the fields of art education, teacher preparation, teacher education, and mentoring. It will appeal to educational researchers, K-12 practitioners, teacher educators, and administrators working with new teachers, as well as those interested in mentoring, Reggio Emilia, professional learning and development, art and aesthetic education, and emergent, process-oriented research methodologies.

The revised edition of The Ontological Foundation of Ethics, Politics, and Law adds new concepts and discusses the views of additional thinkers. The author refers to his basic ontological conception of the human “mind” or “spirit” as an evolving, conscious, triadic entity composed of intellect, sensitivity, and power, each exerting a bidirectional (selfish and moral) activity. Through this approach, the notions of good, morality, society, and law are derived from the structure and functioning of the mind. It follows that the solutions presented are the results of a discovery and not the consequence of a choice. Otherwise stated, ethics, politics, and law are given an ontological foundation. For each topic considered, Belfiore shows how his thought can reinterpret the views of other philosophers. This new edition, enriched in concepts and quotations, appears as an innovative and highly stimulating contribution to the philosophical branches of ethics, politics, and law, and will be of interest to both graduate students and philosophy scholars.

This book offers a variety of outlooks and perspectives on the constitutive values and formative norms of a society, reflected by discourses on ethical-political education. It also discusses conceptual and critical philosophical works combined with empirical studies. The book is divided into three parts: the first part describes contemporary youth’s tangible experience of and reflections on ethical-political issues, while the second part explores the potential powers and pitfalls of educational philosophies, old and new. The third part highlights cutting edge issues within the humanities and social sciences, and examines the prospects of a fruitful rethinking of ethical-political education in response to today’s pressing issues. By addressing current dilemmas with diligence and insight, the authors offer solid arguments for new theoretical and practical directions to promote philosophical clarification and advance research. Intended for students, teachers and researchers, the book provides fresh perspectives on the many facets of ethical-political education, and as such is a valuable contribution to educational research and debate.

Early childhood education has always provoked passionate feelings amongst stakeholders at all levels, from practitioners working with children and families in pre-school and school settings, to advisers, managers, politicians, and academics The purpose of this reader is to examine change, transformation and continuity, and to present indicative scholarship in relation to five key themes: theoretical perspectives on learning curriculum and pedagogy play policy professionalism and research methods Within each theme, the readings have been chosen to exemplify national and international perspectives and trends. This is not to present a homogenised view of early childhood provision and services across cultural contexts; rather the intention is to take a critical perspective on past, present and future directions, and to identify some of the challenges, dilemmas and contradictions posed in research and scholarship.