Relational professionalism in early childhood teaching has been described as reflecting professional ethic of care values, as well as historical maternalist views. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, early childhood teachers negotiate conflicting contexts of professionalisation and maternalism. A strategic plan for early childhood education has emphasised…

This article reconceptualises the postmodern "Child" through the lens of Havel's work on ideology, power and subject formations. Set in an any ideologically charged early childhood setting, it analyses Havel's claim that all citizens, including children, are instrumental in maintaining the ideology of the establishment, and…

This article examines some of the contemporary policies and practices in Australian early years education to provide an insight into why social justice is such a critical element in preparing Australia's Indigenous children to engage in learning experiences in ways that will enable them to establish sound foundations for their future learning…

Considerable attention has been paid across international contexts to structural factors affecting the sustainability of the early childhood workforce. While attention to these elements is vital, it can nevertheless overshadow less tangible elements that may contribute to, or assist in addressing, problems of workforce sustainability. In…

This article examines the use of photography within the profession of early childhood education (including teacher education) and provides a post-structural critique of its use in light of ethical implications, particularly with regard to power relations between the various stakeholders, including children, their families, teachers, schools,…

The author draws on her own experiences through art, along with her experiences with children, to inform her understanding of art making as nomadic thinking, a means to disrupt the power structures and boundaries that developmental psychology imposes on early childhood practice. The author altered the classrooms of two early childhood centres with…

The idea that research on infants should "voice" their "perspectives", their experiences, what they are "really saying," is a central feature of current moves toward participatory research. While embracing the ethos of participation, this article steps away from the binary logic of identity that implicitly underpins such approaches--self-other,…

Young children learn about safety from a variety of sources, including formal lessons and informal activities provided through early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. For many ECEC centres in Australia, scheduled visits from police and fire departments are a highlight of safety education activities. Such visits offer children the…

At a time when English has emerged as the dominant language of academic communication, there is a disturbing silence about the risks and problems attendant on this development and a failure to ask critical questions about its consequences. Who gains and who loses? What is lost in translation? What are the consequences of one way linguistic…

This inquiry applied Bakhtin's dialogic process to the pretend play of preschool children using an interpretive approach. It used vignettes from videotaped data and Bakhtin's theories of dialogism and heteroglossia to provide an understanding of how children appropriate social roles and rules in pretend play and use a variety of "voices" in role…

The early childhood classroom is a space filled with contradictions. While a primary classroom is full of possibility, there exists a quiet narrative that we take for granted which serves to silence the voices of both children and teachers. This narrative is powerful in the space it occupies and within these contexts it manifests itself in a…

This article reinterprets practising for diversity and difference discursively and contextually using post-colonial, anti-racist feminist, and post-structural lenses. Working with data from a participatory action research project, the article critically reflects on normalized and standardized discourses of difference and diversity by interrogating…

This article both supports and complicates the positioning of reconceptualists who frame the regulation of early childhood services as repressive. Drawing on Foucault's construction of power and, in particular, his notion of an "analytics of power", the authors analyse findings from an Australian study investigating university-qualified early…

As teachers, researchers, caregivers, and people who take care of young children, we are often in conversation with children. These conversations are complex, filled with child and adult interactions. Further, both the child and the adult hold various levels of power, and work as a group within the interaction. As an artist and early childhood…

This article presents a negotiating practice that demonstrates the importance of the interplay of visual, verbal and linguistic signs. As such it discusses the relationship between identity and a signifying practice in a Swedish preschool, as children and teachers negotiate meaning. With emphasis on the relationship between building identity and…