scholarly journals WHEN MATTER IN THE CLASSROOM MATTERS: ENCOUNTERS WITH RACE IN PEDAGOGICAL CONVERSATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4.2) ◽  
pp. 808-825
Author(s):  
Kathleen Kummen

This article considers how mattering and meaning are mutually constituted in the production of knowledge (Barad, 2007). Drawing on a research project with first year early childhood education (ECE) students in a university setting, I argue that material-feminism, as understood through the work of Barad (2007, 2008), offers a lens through which pedagogical practices can be re-conceptualized as more than anthropocentric endeavours. The research project explores the processes that occurred when a group of ECE students and I engaged with and in pedagogical narrations over one academic term as we attempted to make visible and disrupt the hegemonic images we held of both children and childhood. In the doing of pedagogical narrations, artefacts were produced that were not merely representations of our collaborative thinking. Rather, the artefacts that emerged-in between the material, the discursive and the participants, were themselves agentic; they invited us to shift our gaze and our conversation, and thereby new meanings and realities were produced. I provide one example that discusses how the presence of the artefacts invited “race” into a conversation of childhood in a way that reverberated in our thinking, feeling, and being. The article concludes by considering the pedagogical implications for learning, for both children and those learning to work with children, when matter comes to matter in the classroom.

Author(s):  
Pushpita Rajawat

The relative effectiveness of different pedagogical approaches and pedagogies in early childhood has raised substantial debate. While the other are associated with the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge and some of them are associated with socio-emotional development and problem-solving abilities. In general, research revealed both positive and negative effects of pedagogical approaches, without favouring specific pedagogical approaches over mainstream ones. However, it is important to note that research evidence and studies considering the same approaches in the same context are very limited. On the other hand, specific pedagogical practices are found to enhance child development, including high-quality interactions involving sustained-shared thinking methods, play-based learning, scaffolding, as well as a combination of staff- and child initiated activities. Research impacts pedagogy and pedagogical practices in the sense that research findings can inform policy makers and practitioners on best practices and what works best in enhancing staff performance, process quality and child development. Research on pedagogy and practices is usually not conducted at the national level, but focuses on particular programmes. So, research review has been used as a guide or manual to provide pedagogical guidance for Early Childhood Education (ECE) staff not only in India but also worldwide. The main focus of the study is that how of the best pedagogical practices and approaches across the country can be useful and implemented in early childhood education


Retos ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 241-249
Author(s):  
Alix María Casadiego ◽  
Karina Avendaño Casadiego ◽  
Leidy Carolina Cuervo ◽  
Gabriel Avendaño Casadiego ◽  
Alvaro Avendaño Rodríguez

 El juego, además de ser una de las experiencias que más disfrutan niños y niñas durante su etapa en educación inicial, les permite aprender y desarrollarse en forma integral. De acuerdo con ello, el presente estudio tiene como objetivo indagar en cuáles logros en relaciones espaciales, temporales y socioafectivas son más exitosos los niños y las niñas de educación inicial e identificar su evolución durante 10 semanas de observación. La metodología tuvo dos fases: inicialmente, mediante la ingeniería didáctica, se construyó un código de observación y una vez construido se realizaron las observaciones durante 10 semanas de trabajo. Las actividades fueron realizadas, durante las horas de juego libre, en las escuelas donde la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad Surcolombiana realiza sus prácticas pedagógicas. Los resultados mostraron que es en la actividad socio afectiva donde se obtienen mayores logros desde el comienzo de la experiencia; por otro lado, el principal logro se obtiene en la característica relación temporal, relacionada con la capacidad para anticiparse a los acontecimientos o predecir resultados, específicamente en la capacidad de organizar un plan para llevar a cabo una idea, que se logra en un 87%. Abstract. Playing, in addition to being one of the experiences that children enjoy the most during their stage of early childhood education, allows them to learn and develop in an integral way. In accordance with this, the present study aims to investigate which achievements in spatial, temporal and socio-affective relationships are more successful in early childhood education children and to identify their evolution during 10 weeks of observation. The methodology had two phases: initially, through didactic engineering, an observation code was constructed and once it was ready, observations were made during 10 weeks of work. The activities were carried out, during free play hours, in the schools where the Education Faculty of the Surcolombiana University carries out its pedagogical practices. The results showed that it is in the socio-affective activity where the greatest achievements are obtained from the beginning of the experience; on the other hand, the main achievement is obtained in the characteristic temporal relationship, related to the ability to anticipate events or predict results, specifically in the ability to organize a plan to carry out an idea, is achieved 87%.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocío García-Carrión ◽  
Lourdes Villardón-Gallego

<p>There is solid evidence that high quality Early Childhood Education (ECE hereafter) have substantial impact on later life outcomes. A growing literature suggests that interventions that develop social competency as well as cognitive, language and academic skills in the earliest years play a role in later educational, social and economic success. Less is known about the most conducive interactions –verbal and non-verbal- underpinning such pedagogical practices in early childhood education. This article aims at reviewing the last decade’s early childhood education with a twofold objective: (a) to describe how dialogue and interaction take place in high-quality early childhood education settings; (b) to identify the effects, if any, on children’s learning and development as a result of implementing dialogue-based interventions in ECE. The studies were identified through systematic search of electronic databases and analyzed accordingly. Several types of interactions given in high quality ECE programs and its short and long-term effects are discerned in this review. </p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Beverley Clark ◽  
Hilda Hughson

The views that early childhood teachers have of children and childhood are informed by the rhetoric and theories of early childhood, their cultures, life stories, philosophies, and ongoing practices as teachers. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Whāriki, the legislated national curriculum for early childhood education, further guides early childhood teachers’ practice and frames teachers’ image of the young child. This article confronts and critiques a short phrase that is an addition to the revised Te Whāriki curriculum document, specifically the phrase that children “need to learn how to learn”. This phrase implies that young children do not know how to learn. The implication in this utterance belies the intense drive that children have to learn, to play, to explore, and to understand as they grow in strength in their sense of self within their whānau and communities. We care about the image that this presents to student teachers, to teachers. We challenge whether the notion that children need to learn how to learn is the image that early childhood teachers hold, or want to hold, of children. We argue that this phrase and image of the child as needing to learn how to learn is a loose thread in the whāriki that potentially undermines and is counter to the more dominant concept within Te Whāriki of the competent child.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146394912090738
Author(s):  
Nicole Land

This article responds to Euro-western conceptions of childhood obesity that understand fat within developmental narratives, as biochemically consequential and as a marker of individualized responsibility. Drawing in multiple fat(s) generated in a pedagogical inquiry with early childhood educators and children, the author articulates ‘post-developmental fat(s)’ as fat(s) that trouble the logics, practices and relationships required to understand fat as obesity. She traces how situated methods of tending fat(s) generated specific possibilities for counting and fitting fat(s). Foregrounding questions of how fat(s) happen and what fat(s) can do in early childhood education, the author takes seriously how fat(s) matter momentarily amid intentional, speculative and deeply politicized pedagogical practices oriented towards doing fat(s) differently in early childhood education.


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