While there is increasing international commitment to inclusive education, as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), many children remain excluded at school. One marginalised and frequently excluded group of people are people who experience disability. In the recently released first report on…

This article examines how creativity and the arts can assist teachers who teach from a social justice perspective, and how knowledge built through meaningful experiences of difference can make a difference. Just as imagining is central to visual arts practice, so too is the capacity to imagine a necessity for social justice. The authors ask what…

The Australian government's current workforce reforms in early childhood education and care (ECEC) include a major shift in qualification requirements. The new requirement is that university four-year degree qualified teachers are employed in before-school contexts, including childcare. Ironically, recent research studies show that, in…

This research examines the emotional themes and discourse of emotion of early childhood educators using a post-structuralist theoretical framework of emotion. The data selected and analyzed is taken from 4 two-hour discussion groups that were conducted over an eight-week period with four female early childhood educators. The emotional themes and…

This article examines the implications of recent and proposed changes to the college-based training of practitioners in early childhood education (ECE). These changes will change the length of courses by shortening them and, therefore, the depth of teaching that students will experience on a college-based course. The links between level of…

The action research project Sustainable Change in a Critical Learning Community was conducted in the Netherlands (2007-08) to improve quality in early childhood by enhancement of critical reflection at all levels in early childhood organisations: educators individually and collectively, pedagogical leaders and coaches, and (middle) management. The…

Child-centred pedagogy is both an enduring approach and a revered concept in Western-based teacher preparation. This article weaves together major critiques of child-centred pedagogy that draw on critical feminist, postmodernist and post-structural theories. These critiques have particular relevance for conceptualizing what it can mean to be, and…

Australia is typical of many western countries where the provision of quality early childhood services has become a government priority. The government initiatives in Australia include repeated demands for "well-qualified" early childhood educators. As a result of these demands the pre-service preparation of early childhood educators is under…

Preservice early childhood educators responded in daily reflection journals on their field experience in local elementary classrooms. These journal entries were categorized according to the frequency of the responses. The focus of the study became the nature of the initial impressions that these preservice educators had of their cooperating…

Courses preparing early childhood professionals through institutes of technical and further education utilise competency standards to guide the assessment of students during professional experience. Some universities offering early childhood teacher education courses use the term "competencies" in practicum assessment forms and draw on teacher…

This article presents pragmatic information on teaching early childhood teacher candidates how to assess children's inquiry process skills. The authors list three important steps in choosing inquiry skills. They generated behavioral indicators for each inquiry skill, and designed an assessment rubric using number grading or a…

This layered account of arts education is produced through the three authors' critical reflections of experiences in their own early childhood education, and their pre-service teacher education. The first layer establishes links between the arts, learning in the arts and critically reflective practices through an account of teaching and learning…

This article seeks to deepen understanding of the ways in which trainees account for and justify their practice. The area of particular interest to the authors is early years education where, in England at least, centrally issued governmental curriculum advice can be viewed as calling upon conflicting conceptions of education. The article reports…

Contemporary research processes might be identified as having neither a beginning nor an end. This article is written as an interruption in the ending of the author's doctoral processes. The project is to critically reflect and examine complexities involving who is at risk when methodology and theory argue for displacements that unpack…

Over the last decade teachers, teachers' work and teacher education across all domains of education have been subject to increasing surveillance and regulation. Recent developments in the Australian regulatory context are signalling the emergence of a strengthening bifurcation between prior-to-school and schooling contexts that is forcing a…