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Despite vast possible differences across geographic locations, cultural practices, community values, and curricular priorities, there are everyday events that are intimately familiar in the context of early childhood care and education centres. By attending to the daily events that are often overlooked and considerably under-theorized, this insightful text highlights the complexity of the everyday in early childhood settings. Contributions to this edited collection are organized to follow the chronology of a school day; each chapter draws upon post-foundational theories and empirical qualitative data in order to (re)examine a familiar routine within an early years centre, such as walking down the hallway, eating a snack, napping, or changing one's clothing. The authors argue for a mundane early childhood praxis that attends to the pedagogical possibilities within the seemingly unremarkable and highlights its importance, especially during what are understood to be unprecedented times.
This book will be of interest to advanced practitioners, graduate students, and scholars, and for use in courses in early childhood education, childhood studies, and educational foundations.
List of contents
1. Unlocking/Lights On: Attending to the every/day 2. Welcoming: Acts of (be)coming together 3. Washing up: Handwashing as an embodied practice in preschool bathrooms 4. Snacktime: The "both/and" of an in-between praxis 5. (Un)dressing: An ethical consideration of children's participation in dressing to be outside 6. Queueing and waiting: Reconceptualizing the still, silent line 7. Moving through the hallway: More-than-human relations in liminal spaces 8. Going outside - going inside: Negotiating cultural complexities and tensions 9. Eating lunch: Toddlers' lunchtime entanglements 10. Toileting: Entanglements of curriculum and care in the toddler classroom 11. Sleeping and Rest: Encounters with sleep/time 12. Tidying up: Rethinking "ryddetid" as democratic practices in early childhood institutions 13. Saying good-bye: Theorising fleeting disconnections 14. Locking up/Lights Off: Envisioning a mundane early childhood praxis
About the author
Casey Y. Myers is Co-founder of Watershed Early Years. An award-winning scholar, her professional interests include posthumanism, new materialism, and post-qualitative inquiry in relation to children's everyday lives in school, as well as children's ethical participation in community-based research.
Kylie Smith is Professor of Early Childhood Studies at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on pedagogies for social justice in early childhood. Kylie draws on participatory research methods and feminist theories to research and learn
with children, families, teachers, and communities
Rochelle L. Hostler is Co-founder of Watershed Early Years. Her professional interests include progressive social-constructivist early childhood education, critical interrogation of curriculum and pedagogy, and research involving children's school life.
Marek Tesar is Head of School and Associate Dean International at the University of Auckland. He is also the director of the Centre for Global Childhoods. His scholarship focuses on early childhood education and childhood studies in both New Zealand and cross-country contexts.
Summary
By attending to the daily events that are often overlooked and considerably under-theorized, this insightful text highlights the complexity of the everyday in early childhood settings. Contributions to this edited collection are organized to follow the chronology of a school day.
