Using a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) approach, the current study evaluated use of the Adolescent Media Project (AMP) as a pedagogical approach within an undergraduate adolescent development course. The AMP divided students into smaller groups (n = 8) in relation to an adolescent themed TV show. Students viewed the first season (or…

Maria Montessori's work remains popular and influential around the world. She provided fascinating descriptions of her observations of children's learning. Yet at the heart of her work is a lacuna: the issue of how children learn their first language. For Montessori, it was a marvel, a miracle--but a mystery. We argue that the later philosophy of…

The author contends that, although most early childhood educators agree about the value of play for child development, preschools and kindergartens often do not reflect this belief, and she discusses this anomaly in the adult notion of play and how it manifests in classroom practices. She argues that it produces schoolroom practices in which…

There is a longstanding discussion in child theology around the role of cognition for faith formation. This article explores research in the area of disability theology in order to examine potential benefits for Christian ministry to the child. It suggests three areas which may be profitable: the importance of increasing information to accompany…

Sid Mohandas argues that by tracing the roots of the Montessori approach and locate it within its historical context, contradictory stories begin to emerge. Montessori was primarily formed as a response to various social injustices and thus emerged as a justice-oriented project. However, the marks and traces of colonialism are clearly visible…

This conceptual paper introduces the idea of the walled garden of pedagogy. I will come to delineate it as a desirable and necessary feature of education given that it offers a protective space for pedagogical practice and rehearsal. This paper critiques a previous conceptualisation of a walled garden introduced by unschooling advocate John Holt…

Childhood states are commonly invoked by adult humans in derisory ways and as put-downs. While infantile and clownish ways of behaving are often met with insult, we argue that these ways of being could instead be seen in terms of their productive potential. Drawing on posthuman and feminist theories and invoking clownish qualities of Haraway's Bag…

Taking up the contention that child development manifests through the developmental logics it enacts, the authors work with citational practices as iterations of how developmentalism's logics are done in everyday practices in early childhood and teacher education. They work with Erica Burman's method of 'found childhood' to propose citational…

In "Emile," Rousseau advances significant ideas about language, language learning and teaching: He posits a universal natural language that develops as the child matures; focuses on 'private' words invented by children, on the challenge facing children in their understanding of exceptions to general rules of the mother tongue and on…

In this paper, Christian Morgner provides a critical reading of Niklas Luhmann's thinking as ignoring human beings or even as antihumanist. Here, he presents an alternative view that centers on Luhmann's idea of the child or human being as a medium. To explain Luhmann's use of these ideas to conceptualize the child and the consequences for…

Background: Recent attempts to rekindle the decolonisation of education project in South Africa, is a reaction to perceptions that there are fundamental frailties in the existing curriculum. Childhood education is yet to take up the challenge in any substantive way. Aim: To explore the insights critical posthumanism might offer in attempting to…

Mainstream images of "toddler" tend to serve a humorous purpose in mass media, most often presenting children of this age (18 months-3 years) as out-of-control. This assumed "barbaric" toddler promotes early childhood as a time for intervention, expecting adults to be the shapers of behavior and knowledge within discourses of…

Starting and finishing with the words of Sally Lubeck, one of the founders of RECE, this article locates early childhood education, all education, in conditions of polycrisis, conditions that are extremely dangerous but offer a glimmer of hope by making transformative change more possible. The article argues that such change calls for re-thinking,…

Most American classrooms employ a teacher-text-centered model of instruction that is misaligned with the developmental science of how children naturally learn. This article reviews that science and the origins of the common instructional model, including three modifications intended to make it work better (grades, age-graded classrooms, and…

Despite an increase in race-related Montessori research over the past decade, the Montessori community lacks a unified framework to examine the Montessori Method and its philosophy through a critical racial lens. Without explicit discussions or universal training about race and whiteness, the Montessori Method can be interpreted through a…