Childhoods in More Just Worlds

Those who are younger continue to be objects of injustice and inequity; those who are younger, people of color, females, and human beings living in poverty have never been included in equitable performances of justice, care, respect, and fairness.


The authors in this international volume use existing social values and institutions--and the strengths of these varied perspectives--to address justice in ways that have not previously been considered. The aim is to create more just worlds for those who are young--as well as for the rest of us.


The first set of chapters, Bodies, Beings, and Relations in More Just Worlds, place at the forefront the lives of those who are younger who are commonly situated in positions of invisibility, disqualification, and even erasure. In the second section, Performances of Care and Education for More Just Worlds, the authors acknowledge that needed (re)conceptualizations of those who are younger, along with appreciation for human diversity and entanglements between the so-called human and nonhuman worlds, are the foundations for more just care and education environments. From the critique of neoliberal reform discourses to reconceptualizing human relations with nonhuman animal and material worlds, care and learning environments are rethought. The set of chapters in the final section, Stir of Echoes: 20th Century Childhoods in the 21st, take-up the 20th century critical concerns with constructions of “child” that have dominated and continue to govern perspectives imposed on those who are younger. Suggestions for becoming-with those who are younger through resources like reconceptualist scholarship, Black and Indigenous Studies, and various posthuman perspectives are provided throughout.


Whatever the emphasis or focus of a section or chapter, throughout the volume is the recognition that dominant discourses (e.g. neoliberal capitalism, conservativism, progressivism, human exceptionalism) and the policies they create (and that facilitate them), influence possibilities for, and limitations to, more just childhood worlds. Therefore, each section includes chapters that address these complex discourses and policy issues. The reader is invited to engage with these complexities, to become-with the various texts, and to generate unthought possibilities for childhoods in more just worlds.


Perfect for courses such as: Curriculum Theory │ Multicultural Education │ Cultural Knowledge of Teachers and Teaching │ Sociocultural Foundations │ Anthropology of Education │ Identity, Agency, and Education │ Race and Ethnic Relations in Schools │ Philosophical Foundations of Education │ Educational Epistemologies │ Theorizing and Researching Teaching and Learning │ Qualitative Research in Education: Paradigms, Theories, and Exemplars │ Epistemologies and Theories in Multicultural and Equity Studies │ Curricular Approaches to Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education │ Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (3) │ Multicultural and Global Perspectives in Teaching and Learning │ Teaching for Social Justice │ Diversity and Equity in Education │ 21st Century Childhood Curriculum │ Childhood and Globalization


Preface: Childhoods in More Just Worlds: An International Handbook

Gaile S. Cannella and Tim Kinard


Bodies, Beings, and Relations in More Just Worlds

1. The Reduction of Children to “Bare Life”: The Case of Child Migration

Michael O’Loughlin and Renata de Assis


2. “Forward to No Place at All”: Forceful Migration and Child Welfare

Mlado Ivanovic


3. A Romani Analysis of English Preschool Education

Mandy Pierlejewski and Gyula Vamosi


4. The Shadows and Silences of Colonialism: Resisting Eroding Realities for Māori Children Through Language Re-Vernacularisation in Antipodean New Zealand

Mere Skerrett


5. Staying with the Troubles of Colonised Emotional Well-Being of Young Children in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Jenny Ritchie


6. Competing Discourses about Immigrant Children: Metaphors of the Right and Left

Theodora Lightfoot


Care and Education: Performing Just Childhood Worlds

7. Refusing Policymakers’ Manufactured Crisis: Countering Conceptions of School Readiness

Christopher P. Brown, David P. Barry, and Da Hei Ku


8. Politics of Childhoods: Paradoxical Moments of Be(com)ing

I-Fang Lee


9. Sitting With the Agency Paradox to Stand for Childhood Liberation: The Case of Critical Mathematics Education

José Martínez Hinestroza


10. “Your Children Are Having Too Much Fun”: Teaching Literacy With Radical Hope

Luz A. Murillo


11. Justice Mapping: Making Theoretical Kin With/in Childhood Studies

Tim Kinard


12. Becoming-with Water: Collaboration, Ethico-onto-epistemologies, Experimentations, and Creativity

Mindy Blaise and Claire O’Callaghan


13. Entanglements of Neoliberalism, Childhoods and Environmental Justice

Kylie Smith, Casey Myers, and Marek Tesar


Stir of Echoes: 20th-Century Childhoods in the 21st

14. Figurations of the Child in Swedish Early Childhood Education

Therese Lindgren


15. Innocence and Parenting in Difficult Times

Emily L. Murphy and Hannah Dyer


16. Playing With the Politics of Play

Sue Grieshaber and Sally Barnes


17. Becoming Convivial With Child: Dismantling the Race/Child/Learning/Human Assemblage

Maria Kromidas


About the Authors


Index