Contesting Early Childhood Series

Home ◼︎ Children ◼︎ Study Guides ◼︎ Book Reflections ◼︎ Learning Stories ◼︎ Topics ◼︎ Essays

‣

These pages hold topics, threads, people or concepts that weave through many of the resources on this site. I developed the topics pages mostly for trainings as a resource. I hope they can be useful in your explorations. Many of these topics have other meanings in different settings or traditions. I offer these interpretations based on my experience only.

Contesting Early Childhood Series

The Contesting Early Childhood series is a collection of scholarly books that critically examine the political, social, and ethical foundations of early childhood education. Rather than offering classroom strategies or developmental checklists, these works interrogate the deeper structures that shape how we think about childhood—who defines it, who benefits, and who is excluded.

The series brings together international scholars who ask hard questions: How does neoliberalism reframe children as future workers rather than present beings? How do colonial legacies continue to shape early education systems? What alternatives might emerge if we start from values like justice, solidarity, or Indigenous cosmologies instead of compliance, readiness, or economic utility?

Titles in the series include Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education, Decolonizing Childhoods, Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education, and Silenced and Sidelined. These books are theoretical, sometimes dense, and intentionally provocative. They’re meant to unsettle assumptions—not to confirm them.

How It’s Understood (and Used)

The Contesting series is most often read in academic or graduate-level teacher education contexts. It’s used to challenge future educators to think beyond familiar frameworks like child development, behavior management, or classroom outcomes. Many of the texts critique foundational assumptions in mainstream early childhood theory—including those drawn from Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson, and even some play-based approaches.

These books are not “how-to” guides. They are works of critique and possibility. Educators engaging with this series often need time, discussion, and reflection to unpack its arguments. The language can be dense, but the ideas are powerful: childhood is not neutral, and early education is never outside of politics.

Some of the most compelling work in the series invites educators to listen to marginalized voices, reimagine the role of documentation, or resist surveillance and standardization in favor of ethical, culturally rooted ways of knowing.

How It Relates to My Approach

While my work is grounded in practice, lived relationship, and presence with children, I find in this series a valuable challenge. It names things that often go unspoken: the pressures of neoliberal systems, the whiteness of dominant models, the colonizing tendencies of developmentalism.

I don’t apply these texts directly in the classroom, but they sharpen my thinking. They remind me to look deeper—at my materials, my language, my assumptions. They also affirm some of the choices I’ve made: slow pedagogy, emergent curriculum, resistance to efficiency and control, and the centering of relationship over measurement.

At times, the series can feel abstract or distant from day-to-day teaching. But the questions it raises are necessary, especially for educators who want to remain awake to the deeper currents shaping our work.