'This innovative and challenging book offers a refreshing and vigorous response to those who seek to create childhoods that are standardized, over-regulated and framed within a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. It demonstrates how childhoods are multiple, complex and multi-faceted in a global context and outlines approaches to policy and practice that celebrate diversity and address contemporary concerns such as poverty, children's rights and quality in early childhood education. This is a book that should be read by researchers, practitioners, students and policy-makers alike: each will find important material that will change their thinking about early childhood education in the 21st century' - Professor Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield, UK. This book considers and interrogates a range of new and critical issues in contemporary early childhood education. It discusses both fundamental and emerging topics in the field, and presents them in the context of reflective and contemporary frameworks. Bringing together leading experts whose work is at the cutting edge of contemporary early childhood education theory and research across the world, this book considers the care and education of young children from a global perspective and deals with issues and groups of children or families that are often marginalized. The contributing authors challenge traditional views and maintain that new ways of thinking and doing are required in these new times. The chapters in this book highlight some of the most important issues as catalysts for discussion and critique. Central to the discussions is the notion that these are complex issues that warrant debate and that there are often no simple solutions to them. These theoretical perspectives are situated in practice with the use of engaging case studies. This edited collection is essential reading for anyone studying or working in early childhood education. Contributors: Marina Umaschi Bers, Erica Burman, Judith Duncan, Anne Haas Dyson, Karen Gallas, Rachael Holmes, Elizabeth Jones, Michelle Leiminer, Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Maggie MacLure, Christina MacRae, Joanna McPake, Veronica Pacini Ketchabaw, Alan Pence, Helen Penn, Lydia Plowman, Valerie Polakow, Christine Stephen, and, Gail Yuen.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Contemporary perspectives on global and policy issues Extending possibilities and practices in early childhood education Rethinking pedagogical practices in early childhood education: A multidimensional approach to learning and inclusion Between two debts: Child and (inter)national development Shaping the future: How human capital arguments about investment in early childhood are being (mis)used in poor countries Reframing rights: Poverty discourses and children's lives in the United States The displaced early childhood education in the postcolonial era of Hong Kong National 'treasures': The Aotearoa New Zealand child Investigating 'Quality' project: Opening possibilities in early childhood care and education policies and practices in Canada Part 2 Critical views in practice When words are scarce, but success depends on them: Composing in a Navajo kindergarten Childhoods left behind? Official and unofficial basics of child writing 'Improper' children Like a wild thing': Analysing the 'deviant' competence of girls in home-preschool communications At home with the future: Influences on young children's early experiences with digital technologies When robots tell a story about culture... and children tell a story about learning The early years research-policy-practice nexus: Challenges and opportunities.

Author Biography

Nicola Yelland is a Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.