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Review Of Child Care In Russia: In Transition By Jean Ispa, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Jean Ispa first observed and studied Soviet child care centers in 1993–94 as part of her doctoral research on toddler social behavior. In 1991, just before the demise of the Soviet Union, she returned to Russia for an intensive 3 months of research on current practices. Growing up in a household of Russian immigrants, she is fluent in the Russian language. Her knowledge of Russian language and culture, coupled with the long time horizon of her experience with American and Russian systems of education, render this new book a particularly enlightening, thoughtful, and balanced description of a system of child …

Democratic Participation In A Community Of Learners: Loris Malaguzzi's Philosophy Of Education As Relationship , Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

We consider relationships to be the fundamental, organizing strategy of our educational system. -- Loris Malaguzzi, 1993, p. 10.

The metaphor of education as relationship provided Loris Malaguzzi with the fundamental premise for his philosophy and pedagogy. The child--seen as powerful, rich in resources, competent, and social--seeks from the beginning of life to find out about the self, others, and the world through interaction: knowledge is co-constructed. Education, hence, must focus not on the child considered in isolation from others, but instead on the child seen as interconnected with particular others in nested communities: home, classroom, school, neighborhood, city, region, …

Review Of Vivian Gussin Paley, You Can't Say You Can't Play , Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

You Can't Say You Can't Play recounts a teacher's attempts to undo the habit of exclusion in her kindergarten classroom. In this case, the exclusion that has come to concern her is that which arises when certain children are consistently rejected from entering the other children's play.