Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Animal Magic, Secret Spells, And Green Power: More-Than-Human Assemblages Of Children's Storytelling, Angela Molloy Murphy

Dissertations and Theses

Early childhood settings have become contested spaces, or sites of struggle, between economic and sociocultural interests disputing their purpose. Recent years have shown increased pressure on children in early education settings to demonstrate predetermined learning outcomes, which (a) limits the scope of what is possible in the classroom, (b) narrows the range of what learning is considered valid, and (c) privileges the experience and values of the dominant culture, thereby determining who and what matters in early childhood settings. Thus, in the current education climate where conventional knowledges are routinely privileged, unconventional knowledges and small stories from children's lives are …