"Race" and early childhood education : an international approach to identity, politics, and pedagogy

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. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: Thinking Differently: The Call and the Desire....Pages 1-14 Front Matter....Pages 15-15 Discourses of “Race” in Early Childhood: From Cognition to Power....Pages 17-30 Exploring “Race-Identities” with Young Children: Making Politics Visible....Pages 31-47 The Dynamics of Whiteness: Children Locating Within/Without....Pages 49-65 Intersecting Identities: Fantasy, Popular Culture, and Feminized “Race”-Gender....Pages 67-84 Masculinities, Mateship, and Young Boys: Defending Borders, Playing Footy, and Kissing Meg....Pages 85-97 Back Matter....Pages 99-109 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 (Un)masking Cultural Identities: Challenges for White Early Childhood Educators....Pages 113-125 On “Race” and Resistance: Transforming Racialized Identities—A Personal Journey....Pages 127-138 Adults Constructing the Young Child, “Race,” and Racism....Pages 139-153 Languages Matter: My Subjective Postcolonial Struggle....Pages 155-166 Working Within, Beyond, and Through the Divides: Hopes and Possibilities for De-“Racing” Early Childhood....Pages 167-179 Back Matter....Pages 181-186 Back Matter....Pages 187-196 This book explores the prominence of 'race' in the lives of young children and their early childhood educators. It critiques the often presumed racial innocence of young children and shows instead how young children actively engage with the politics of race as they form their own identities. It challenges early childhood educators to engage with children's racialised identity politics, and shows how this often requires early childhood educators to rethink their own racialised identities. Amongst the challenges the book presents it offers points of possibility and hope for creating more racially just early childhood classrooms This book explores both the prominence of 'race' in young children's perspectives on being and becoming in their earliest years and the othering and silencing of 'race' of and by early childhood educators