The narrative of one ethnic minority early childhood student teacher tells of her journey as she (re)constructs her identities as a Cook Island woman and as a pre-service teacher, during a teacher education course in New Zealand. This story conveys her experiences of learning across different pedagogical paradigms. Findings show that teacher…

Young boys' "underachievement" and their disaffection with learning continue to dominate education agendas [Francis, B. 2006. "Stop That Sex Drive." "Times Educational Supplement" 30; Peeters, J. 2007. "Including Men in Early Childhood Education: Insights from the European Experience." "NZ Research…

Despite the political and academic debate on the demands for more male workers in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), no European country has reached the benchmark set for 2006 to have 20% male early childhood workers. This has predominantly been countered by challenging the idea that care for the youngest implies an activity "that…

A history of framing the teaching of young children as a matter of "natural" female aptitude has led a number of researchers and educators to oversimplify men's experiences as a foil or antidote to the ills of schooling. In this qualitative study of men, women, and "feminisation" in early education and care environments,…

Children's experiences and understandings are often marginalised in discussions of their own television viewing. Moreover, rarely is attention paid to the meaning children make "from" and "with" the ideas and images in media, much less in horror movies. This inquiry examines the horror media talk of a preschool girl in a…

Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys' classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily…

The article reports on a study investigating influences on Australian politicians' decision making for early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy. The astronomical concept of dark matter is utilised as a metaphor for considering normalising, and therefore frequently difficult to detect and disrupt, influences implicated in politicians'…

This paper explores the transition to first-time motherhood as experienced by a small sub-sample of women engaged in the professional care of young children. In the context of a wider study of motherhood in the UK, their experience of combining work with new motherhood was distinctive. Women who professionally care for young children present a…

The task of re-evaluating the legacy of Susan Isaacs is a complex one. Of course there is the need to acknowledge the role and work of a key woman thinker and (in some senses) activist, clearly unconventional and forward-thinking, whose specific contribution seems to have been largely overlooked by malestream history. As a contemporary to some of…

A central principle of 1970s feminism was a concern with making women visible and the historical creation of women's public voices is an important methodological premise of feminist research. When written, biographies of female actors "recovered" from the condescension of posterity, can illuminate the telling of individual and collective pasts, of…

Susan Isaacs made a significant impression on the world of early childhood education during the first half of the twentieth century. She ranks alongside Froebel and Dewey, as one of the pioneers of child-centred education. As Jody Hall has written, "the life, work and legacy of Isaacs serve as a witness to the value of the curiosity of children."…

British teacher education in the interwar years was a contested field, dominated numerically by women but regulated by the Board of Education. The traditional perception of women's residential training colleges was that they were autocratic and socially isolated. By focusing on Gipsy Hill Training College (GHTC), the first specialist training…

In this study I have investigated how alternative ways of teaching mathematics influence and affect Early Childhood Education (ECE) students' attitudes towards maths and how they understand their own subjectivities as more or less mathematical during a 10-week alternative maths course. The investigated course adopts a feminist post-structural…

In the Netherlands, moral panic about boys' education and behavioural problems has led to public concern about the almost exclusively female environment in which young boys in daycare find themselves. Female daycare workers are attacked for creating a feminized culture in daycare centres. In this article we explore the extent to which these media…

The teaching of young children has long been dominated by women. This global phenomenon is firmly rooted in issues relating to economic development, urbanisation, the position of women in society, cultural definitions of masculinity and the value of children and childcare. There have been expressions of concern by the media, by government…