"Recognising multiple cultural, ethical and geographical influences which impact on the development of a child's identity, this insightful text explores the role of early childhood practitioners and settings in nurturing and navigating the child's sense of being and belonging. Multiple Early Childhood Identies confronts the diverse factors which influence early identity formation to emphasise the child's understanding of self, outsiders' projections, and the messages communicated by educators, family members and the wider community as critical to a child's identity and wellbeing. Written to provoke group discussion and extend thinking, this text also provides opportunities for international comparison, points for reflection and editorial provocations and will help students engage critically with the concept of identity-formation and influencing factors. Chapters are divided into four key sections which reflect major influences on practice and pedagogy: Being alongside children; Those who educate; Embedding families and communities; Working with systems. Offering in-depth discussion of the diverse perspectives, experiences and practices which impact on the formation of the child's identity, this text will enhance understanding, support self-directed learning, and provoke and transform thinking at both graduate and postgraduate levels, particularly in the field of early childhood education and care, for students, educators, integrated service providers and policy makers"--

This book critiques the often presumed racial innocence of young children. The authors challenge early childhood educators to engage with the racialized identity politics that form among their students, and to reform their own identities and intersect and frame children's identities throughout their earliest years.

Anti-bias education begins with you! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers.

The authors emphasize the fundamental principles and enduring themes underlying children's development and focus on key research. This new edition also contains a new chapter on gender, as well as recent work on conceptual development.

Tony Eaude argues that the foundations of a robust but flexible identity are formed in early childhood and that children live within many intersecting and sometimes conflicting cultures. He considers three meanings of culture, associated with (often implicit) values and beliefs; the arts; and spaces for growth. In exploring how young children's identities, as constructed and constantly changing narratives, are shaped, he discusses controversial, intersecting factors related to power in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, religion, class, physical ability and age. Eaude explores how young children learn, often tacitly, highlighting reciprocity, example, habituation and children's agency and voice. He emphasises the importance of a sense of belonging, created through trusting relationships, and inclusive environments, with adults drawing on and extending children's cultural capital and 'funds of knowledge.' Eaude shows how a holistic education requires a breadth of opportunities across and beyond the school curriculum, and highlights how play, the humanities and the arts enable children to explore how it is to be human, and to become more humane, broadening horizons and helping challenge preconceptions and stereotypes. This radical, inclusive and culturally sensitive vision, for an international audience, challenges many current assumptions about identity, culture, childhood and education.

Children’s curiosity about their lives and worlds motivates many interests. Yet, adults often have fixed ideas about what children’s interests are and have been criticised for trivialising children’s interests. This book offers a critical and accessible engagement with research on children’s interests that challenges us to move beyond surface-level understandings. Children’s Interests, Inquiries and Identities argues that the powerful relationship between interests and informal learning has been under-recognised and undervalued. The book proposes new principles for understanding children’s learning. It provides evidence that we need to look beyond the activities or topics children may currently be selecting to find out who and what has stimulated their interests, how we might identify and interpret interests more analytically and deeply, and how we might respond and engage with these in ways that take children’s interests seriously. Moving beyond play-based activities, Helen Hedges explains and illustrates a number of ways by which children’s interests can be interpreted and understood, to get to the heart of what really matters to, and for, children. The book draws on examples from research with children aged under 5 years, and young adults aged 18-25. It also includes a chapter on teachers’ interests. It presents new and original models for interests-based curriculum and sociocultural curriculum and pedagogy for future examination in research and practice. This book demonstrates that leaving behind long-standing, taken-for-granted practices that have influenced understandings of curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and outcomes allows a new perspective of children’s interests to emerge. It will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate students, and practitioners in the early years, parents, and other professionals who work with young children.

Children and youth, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, are experiencing lifestyle choices their parents never imagined and contributing to the transformation of ideals, traditions, education and adult-child power dynamics. As a result of the advances in technology and media as well as the effects of globalization, the transmission of social and cultural practices from parents to children is changing. Based on a number of qualitative studies, this book offers insights into the lives of children and youth in Britain, Japan, Spain, Israel/Palestine, and Pakistan. Attention is focused on the child's perspective within the social-power dynamics involved in adult-child relations, which reveals the dilemmas of policy, planning and parenting in a changing world.