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More than ever before, children are apparently being recognised as social actors and citizens. Yet public policy often involves increased control and surveillance of children. This book explores the contradiction. It shows how different ways of thinking about children produce different childhoods, different public provisions for children (including schools) and different ways of working with children. It argues that how we understand children and make public provision for them involves political and ethical choices. Through case studies and the analysis of policy and practice drawn from a number of countries, the authors describe an approach to public provision for children which they term 'children's services'. They then propose an alternative approach named 'children's spaces', and go on to consider an alternative theory, practice and profession of work with children: pedagogy and the pedagogue. This ground breaking book will be essential reading for tutors and students on higher education or in-service courses in early childhood, education, play, social work and social policy, as well as practitioners and policy makers in these areas.
What should be the relationship between early childhood and compulsory education? While it's widely assumed that the former should prepare children for the latter, there are alternatives. This book contests the 'readying for school' relationship as neither self-evident nor unproblematic, and explores some alternative relationships.
Early childhood education and care has been a political priority in England since 1997, when government finally turned its attention to this long-neglected area. Public funding has increased, policy initiatives have proliferated and at each general election political parties aim to outbid each other in their offer to families. Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a Democratic Education argues that, despite this attention, the system of early childhood services remains flawed and dysfunctional. National discourse is dominated by the cost and availability of childcare at the expense of holistic education, while a hotchpotch of fragmented provision staffed by a devalued workforce struggles with a culture of targets and measurement. With such deep-rooted problems, early childhood education and care in England is beyond minor improvements. In the context of austerity measures affecting many young families, transformative change is urgent.
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.
Eleven years old when his family joined the Anglo-Indian exodus, on the eve of India's independence, Peter Moss never felt at home in the postwar austerity of his "father's land", where he saw how far and how fast Britain was forsaking both her empire and her greatness. When he returned to his childhood haunts, more than thirty years later, he found his Anglo-India had disappeared, submerged beneath the waves of history. Bye-Bye Blackbird is more than a loving portrait of that lost world. It is also a wry but affectionate look at Britain, bracing herself for the implosion that would follow the "Big Bang" of her imperial expansion, when the fall-out would come hurtling back to the epicentre a...
Loris Malaguzzi was one of the most important figures in 20th century early childhood education, achieving world-wide recognition for his educational ideas and his role in the creation of municipal schools for young children in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, the most successful example ever of progressive, democratic and public education. Despite Malaguzzi’s reputation, very little of what he wrote or said about early childhood education has been available in English. This book helps fill the gap, presenting for the first time in English, writings and speeches spanning 1945 to 1993, selected by a group of his colleagues from an archive established in Reggio Emilia. They range from shor...
The Mosaic approach views children as ‘experts in their own lives’, and offers a creative framework for listening to young children’s perspectives. At a time of shifting policy in early years, this second edition offers a timely reminder that listening to young children is still important for reviewing service provision.The Mosaic approach has been applied by practitioners throughout the world. This new edition reflects on the authors’ original ground-breaking work, with new introductions, updates and examples of how the Mosaic approach has been adapted, and offers case studies that will encourage practitioners to use the framework in their own setting.will be of interest to policy makers, practitioners in nurseries, children’s centres, pre-schools and schools and residential settings. It will also be welcomed by early childhood students and other researchers who are engaged in searching for new theoretical, practical and imaginative ways of listening to young children.
This book challenges received wisdom and the tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical issues of measurement and management.
What is education, what is it for and what are its fundamental values? How do we understand knowledge and learning? What is our image of the child and the school? How does the ever more pressing need to develop a more just, creative and sustainable democratic society affect our responses to these questions? Addressing these fundamental issues, Fielding and Moss contest the current mainstream dominated by markets and competition, instrumentality and standardisation, managerialism and technical practice. They argue instead for a radical education with democracy as a fundamental value, care as a central ethic, a person-centred education that is education in the broadest sense, and an image of a...
This title covers 15 countries in Europe and beyond bringing together leading academic experts to provide a unique insight into the past, present and future state of this key policy area.