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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.
Contesting Early Childhood Series (selected titles)
- In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, Researching and Learning (2nd ed) – Carlina Rinaldi
- Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education: Markets, Imaginaries and Governance – Guy Roberts‑Holmes & Peter Moss (2021) North American Reggio Emilia Alliance+
- Rethinking Environmental Education in a Climate Change Era: Weather Learning in Early Childhood – Tonya Rooney & Mindy Blaise (2022)
- The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism – Michel Vandenbroeck, Joanne Lehrer & Linda Mitchell (2022)
- Slow Knowledge and the Unhurried Child: Time for Slow Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education – Alison Clark (2022) E
- Becoming Pedagogue: Bergson and the Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics of Early Childhood Education and Care – Liselott Olsson (2023)
- The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia: Voices and Ideas for a Dialectic Educational Experience – Stefania Giamminuti, Paola Cagliari, Claudia Giudici & Paola Strozzi (2023)
- Alternative Narratives in Early Childhood: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners – Peter Moss (2018)
- Young Children’s Community Building in Action: Embodied, Emplaced and Relational Citizenship – Louise Gwenneth Phillips et al. (2019)
- Revisiting Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Issues and Challenges in Early Childhood Education – Edited by Michel Vandenbroeck (2020)
- 'Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible': A Memoir of Work in Childcare and Education – (Memoir, 2018)
- Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy – Andrea Delaune (Forthcoming 2025)
Glossary
Neoliberalism– A political and economic ideology that prioritizes market logic, individualism, and competition—even in education and childhood.Developmentalism– The belief that children move through universal stages in a fixed sequence, often used to justify normative expectations.Coloniality– The lingering structures of colonial power, even after formal colonization ends; often embedded in knowledge systems and schooling.- Pedagogical Resistance – Educator practices that reject imposed norms and create space for alternative, liberatory ways of being with children.
- Critical Early Childhood Studies – A field of scholarship that examines early education through the lenses of power, justice, identity, and politics.
Articles and Resources on This Site
Exploring how children learn to exclude and label others as "one of those," and how educational systems suppress natural curiosity, movement, and diverse ways of learning.
Critiques of how neoliberalism reshapes early childhood through metrics, market ideals, and control—while also spotlighting paths of resistance rooted in care and justice.
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