The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education…

One in three children enrolled in US early childhood programs is a dual language learner. While dual language learners have been the target of sweeping educational reforms under the guise of justice, these reforms--which pathologize dual language learners as problems to be remediated rather than assets to be developed--have largely ignored the…

In recent times, education policy and reform discourses have become increasingly politicised by neo-liberalism, with critical policy methodologies struggling to catch up. Critical policy sociologists have noted that critical commentaries rarely succeed in changing or impacting dominant education policy pathways. This article presents a framework…

Over the last 30 years, neo-liberalism has permeated early childhood, as all other aspects of life. Having introduced what neo-liberalism is, the article looks at some of its effects on early childhood education and care, including markets, imaginaries and governance. It argues that though neo-liberalism is a powerful force, it is resistible and…

This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, 'child' in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori's contemporary reputation as a 'middle-class phenomenon' by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children…

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education is currently gaining ground in many parts of the world, particularly in higher stages of the educational system. Foreseeing a development of STEAM policy and research also in the early years, this colloquium seeks to bring questions of gendering processes to the table. The…

As a Black feminist scholar who teaches in an early childhood studies program, the author has witnessed how dominant theories and methods used for pre-service early childhood education and care disconnect students from their lived experiences. The detachment of social location in theoretical text, and particularly in developmental discourse, is…

Neo-liberalism continues to expand its grip on education, despite fierce opposition. As an economic and political hegemony, neo-liberalism silences alternative viewpoints and neutralises resistance. Using an example of integrating Australian Indigenous pedagogy in early childhood initial teacher education, this article puts forward a typology for…

This article critically examines how the policy of funded nursery places for 'disadvantaged' two-year-olds in England opens up economic and political spaces in readiness for increased governance. The government introduced funded nursery places in September 2013, which aimed to promote disadvantaged children's educational outcomes, narrow the…

This study addresses leadership enactment in the context of early childhood education and care centres in Finland. The study was implemented at a time when the early childhood education and care legislation had changed. The research draws from relational leadership theory to address the following questions: How do leaders, practitioners and…

Engaging with posthuman theorising, this article puts to work a number of concepts to produce generative reimaginings of early years leadership. In 1992, Deleuze argued that we are witnessing a transition from societies of confinement to 'societies of control'. In societies of control, power operates through neo-liberal corporate worlds via a…

In this conceptual article, the authors examine the context of early childhood education and care in England and the underpinning predominant ideologies to explore how these impact on the framing of leadership. The English context entails several contradictions (antinomies) at ontological, epistemological and axiological levels, and is heavily…

In this collective article, the authors explore constructions of early childhood practitioners and how they disconnect and reconnect in a global neo-liberal education policy context. The contributions to the conversation provide windows into shifting professional identities across five national contexts: New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, Australia…

Implementing relationships-based pedagogies in infant and toddler settings might assume that teachers' experiences of emotional labour will be acknowledged. This assumption may be complicated by assessment practices that both rely on and detract from relationship-building opportunities with infants and toddlers. Assessment also relies on…

This paper examines notions of childhood development in a significant Australian policy document. Using Fairclough's approaches to discourse analysis as guides, Foucault's understanding of regimes of truth and discourses as systems of power relations and Nikolas Rose's concept of "responsibilisation," the paper argues that discourses of…