Comparative Early Childhood Education Services

This edited collection reconceptualizes the place of early childhood education within communities. Contributors present a shift in the lens of the teachers and management within early childhood services to incorporate new ways of working with, alongside, and in collaboration with family, whanau (a Maori term referring to an extended family), and the wider community.

Review: This book challenges an image of early childhood services that has come to dominate much of the international literature. That challenge is both welcome--and necessary. - Alan Pence, UNESCO Chair for Early Childhood Education, Care, and Development; Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria; Director, Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU) Te One and Duncan's pedigree in kindergarten teaching, political advocacy, community development, research, and early childhood teacher education provides an impeccable background for inspiring a similar group of activist writers to question, challenge, critique, and trouble our beliefs, our policies, and our practices that currently form the pedagogies of early childhood education centres (ECEC) in the early twenty-first century.

During the twentieth century early childhood education moved beyond its radical experiments into the mainstream of education provision by the state. But there are some troubling aspects of this shift. Te One and Duncan, editors of this volume, provide a case for a radical re-conceptualizing and rethinking of the place and role of ECEC in our society. - Helen May, professor, College of Education, University of Otago