Reframing the Everyday in Early Childhood Pedagogy

This book provokes us to think more deeply about an important but neglected aspect of early childhood centres -- every/day moments in the lives of children attending these settings. Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives, the book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of these centres and the significance of these moments. Arguing for a ‘mundane early childhood praxis’, the contributors show that such praxis is anything but mundane, being impactful and complex, and involving thoughtful pedagogy and relational ethics.

Emeritus Professor Peter Moss, Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education

Having done immersive ethnographic work in early childhood contexts, I appreciated how this book decenters the official curriculum and foregrounds the implicit or hidden curricula of daily life in early childhood classrooms, with chapters organized around the flow of typical daily routines and rituals. Authors make a compelling case for a deeper consideration of the taken for granted and "mundane" routines that occur alongside enactments of explicit or official curriculum. Nuanced analyses and well theorised reflections in each chapter evoke a sense of "making the familiar strange" to gain insights into the extraordinary meaning making of the ordinary by young children, their teachers, families, and their physical environment. Readers come to understand ways in which often invisible routines reflect power, politics, play, and possibilities through theories -- including posthuman, spatial, Black Feminist, post-foundational, and new materialisms.

Emeritus Professor Beth Blue Swadener, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University

The heartbeat can create a co-regulation and profound body-dialogue between parent and newborn. Similarly, here, I found myself in close relationship, in rhythm, inside of this writing—as a testament to daily, lived experiences. Myers, Smith, Hostler and Tesar develop an air of expectancy for the reader to pick the words up while living with/in the ordinary moments of daily life. It is a marvelous and profound experience to crack open the kernels of time by living between them in moments of deep thought and in remembrances of my own relational perceptions in schools; all while reading and turning over these lovely and thought-provoking pages in my mind!

Professor Will Parnell, Early Childhood Education and Curriculum & Instruction, Portland State University