Theorizing Feminist Ethics Of Care In Early Childhood Practice

This open access book responds to a growing academic interest in theorizing care and care work in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. The contributors theorize a new feminist ethics of care in everyday early childhood practice, revealing its complexities and importance. Drawing on feminist theories and philosophies, the chapter authors show how the caring practices of early childhood educators involve values, emotions, decision-making, action and work. Using cutting-edge theory, authors address the social locations and the inclusion and exclusion of both care givers and care receivers. With contributions from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, the volume brings together early childhood studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and critical disability studies to offer diverse perspectives on feminist ethics of care in early childhood practice and its possibilities and dangers. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

This open access book responds to a growing academic interest in theorizing care and care work in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. The contributors theorize a new feminist ethics of care in everyday early childhood practice, revealing its complexities and importance. Drawing on feminist theories and philosophies, the chapter authors show how the caring practices of early childhood educators involve values, emotions, decision-making, action and work. Using cutting-edge theory, authors address the social locations and the inclusion and exclusion of both care givers and care receivers. With contributions from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, the volume brings together early childhood studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and critical disability studies to offer diverse perspectives on feminist ethics of care in early childhood practice and its possibilities and dangers. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

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.

This unique book brings together international scholars from around the globe to examine how different feminist theories are being used in early childhood research, policy and pedagogy. The array of feminist discourses captured by the authors offer contextualised possibilities for disrupting dominant patriarchal beliefs and producing change. The authors address and challenge how early childhood experiences, institutions and practices produce gendered effects across and within diverse contexts and demonstrate how feminism(s) in action can be used to reconceptualise research methods, government policy, children’s learning, teaching practice and educational resources. In this way, the book contributes to creating new knowledge connections and community alliances in the global effort to end gender-based inequalities across local and global communities.

Early Childhood Education and Care in a Global Pandemic is a book that highlights how the international early childhood education and care sector responded to the global COVID-19 pandemic. It shows the resiliency of the sector around the world as it grappled with a rapidly changing environment of uncertainty and complexity. Drawing on a diverse range of early childhood education and care contexts, the book captures real-life examples of how COVID-19 impacted children, educators and teachers, and families. Chapters present cases of the particular challenges that COVID-19 presented in a wide range of countries and then how they responded to these challenges – challenges that tested the resilience of children, educators and teachers, and families. By forward anchoring, each chapter examines the opportunities that arose from these challenges and how new local knowledge was produced as new ways were found to support children, educators and teachers, and families during this time. This book offers early childhood education and care a timely resource on lessons learnt from a once-in-a-lifetime event. It offers the sector a way forward to commit to developing new ways of thinking and working that stem from the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism explores how processes of marketisation and privatisation of ECEC have impacted understandings of children, childcare, parents, and the workforce, providing concrete examples of resistance to commodification from diverse contexts. Through processes of marketisation and privatisation, neoliberal discourses have turned ECEC into a commodity whereby economic principles of competition and choice have replaced the purpose of education. The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism offers new and alternative understandings of policy and practice. Written with co-authors from diverse countries, case studies vividly portray resistance to children as human capital, to the "consumentality" of parents, and to the alienation of the early childhood workforce. Ending with messages of hope, the authors discuss the demise of neoliberalism and offer new ways forward. As an international book with global messages contributing to theory, policy, and practice regarding alternatives to a neoliberal and commodified vision of ECEC, this book offers inspiration for policy makers and practitioners to develop local resistance solutions. It will also be of interest to post-graduate students, researchers, educators, and pre-service educators with an interest in critical pedagogy, ECEC policy, and ECEC practice.

The author assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. Held examines what we mean by care and focuses on caring relationships. She also looks at the potential of care for dealing with social issues and global problems.

Gender and Care in Pedagogical Relations with Young Children is an exploration of how children, educators, and things become implicated in gendered caring practices. Drawing on a collaborative research study with early childhood educators and young children, the author explores what an engagement with human-and non-human relationality does to complicate conversations about gender and care. By employing a material feminist analysis of early childhood education, this book rethinks dominant Western individualist pedagogies in order to politically reposition them within a relationality framework.