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The purpose of this book is to imagine things otherwise in theorizing childhood subjectivity. The work brings together influential thinkers who are forthright in their refusal to be seduced by simplistic binaries, who are willing to address the notion of childhood subjectivity in ways that are complex and critical, and whose arguments lead to practical advances in our thinking about child policy, child-rearing, pedagogy, and curriculum. The contributors, distinguished authors from across the English-speaking world, are concerned about the ways in which teachers' practices are increasingly boundaried and policed, and they grieve for the stifling consequences for future generations of children. Postcolonial and poststructural theories, psychoanalysis, critical theory, personal narrative, and indigenous epistemologies are used creatively to pose the question of childhood subjectivity and to engage the promise of the question-child. This work contributes to a reconsideration of childhood and a rethinking of how we might enhance each child's journey toward becoming.
About the author
Michael O'Loughlin is Professor at Adelphi University in Long Island, New York, where he is on the faculty of the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and the School of Education. He published
The Subject of Childhood in 2009 with Peter Lang Publishing.
Richard Johnson is Professor in the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Hawaii. He has taught and served extensively in various field-based preservice teacher education programs at the University of Hawaii, where he has worked for 20 years.
Summary
Brings together influential thinkers who are forthright in their refusal to be seduced by simplistic binaries, who are willing to address the notion of childhood subjectivity in ways that are complex and critical, and whose arguments lead to practical advances in our thinking about child policy, child-rearing, pedagogy, and curriculum.
Report
"Everyone who suspects (and who in their right mind could not?) that the accepted way in which we think about children and prepare adults to work with them is flawed, foolish, and failing, will welcome and relish this book. It weaves together practical engagement, theoretical eclecticism and sophistication, scholarly discretion, criticality bordering on anger, and straightforward human warmth - and the result is brave, powerful, rich and liberating. Its contrarian commitment to human subjectivity and agency, human and disciplinary boundary-crossing, non-binary and universalistic understanding, challenging privilege, promoting equity and social justice, and speaking truth to power, makes it fundamentally important. For practitioners and academics in early childhood studies and cognate fields who want to connect their intellectual, personal, professional, and political lives, this is essential reading." (Heather Piper, Professorial Research Fellow, Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University)
