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Full-Text Articles in Education
Aesthetic-Ethical-Political Movements In Professional Learning: Encounters With Feminist New Materialisms And Reggio Emilia In Early Childhood Research, Stefania Giamminuti, Jane Merewether, Mindy Blaise
Aesthetic-Ethical-Political Movements In Professional Learning: Encounters With Feminist New Materialisms And Reggio Emilia In Early Childhood Research, Stefania Giamminuti, Jane Merewether, Mindy Blaise
Research outputs 2014 to 2021
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Professional learning is considered essential for early childhood teachers, and is frequently associated with childhood outcomes and dominant constructs of quality which perpetuate neoliberal ideals and position early childhood teachers within a framework of rationality, privileging discourses of masculinity and power. By engaging with feminist new materialist perspectives, with the concept of ‘movement’, and with the theory-practice of the educational project of the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy, this paper extends understandings of professional learning to include nonhuman others as worthy interlocutors, and puts forth …
Enchanted Animism: A Matter Of Care, Jane Merewether
Enchanted Animism: A Matter Of Care, Jane Merewether
Research outputs 2014 to 2021
© The Author(s) 2020. Jean Piaget, whose work continues to be very influential in early childhood education, associated young children’s animism with their ‘primitive thought’ claiming children remain animists until they reach a more advanced and rational stage of development. This article proposes a rethinking of the Piagetian view of animism, suggesting instead that children’s animism be conceived as a ‘matter of care’ which may then offer possibilities for living more responsively and attentively with non human others. Drawing on two recent research projects involving two-to-eight-year-old children, the article contends that children’s playful and speculative ‘enchanted animism’ can create a …