Theorizing Feminist Ethics of Care in Early Childhood Practice - (Feminist Thought in Childhood Research) by Rachel Langford (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book responds to a growing academic interest in theorizing care and care work in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. The contributors theorize a new feminist ethics of care in everyday early childhood practice, revealing its complexities and importance. Drawing on feminist theories and philosophies, the chapter authors show how the caring practices of early childhood educators involve values, emotions, decision-making, action and work. Using cutting-edge theory, authors address the social locations and the inclusion and exclusion of both care givers and care receivers. With contributions from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, the volume brings together early childhood studies, sociology, psychology, philosophy and critical disability studies to offer diverse perspectives on feminist ethics of care in early childhood practice and its possibilities and dangers.

Review Quotes

Drawing on transdisciplinary insights and a rich array of theoretical perspectives, this book more than lives up to its promise of revisiting, challenging and reconceptualising how notions of a feminist ethics of care might imagined, articulated and enacted within the complex ecologies of ECEC settings. A deeply thought-provoking read, it invites us to push beyond conventional and comfortable ways of conceiving of an ethics of care in ECEC, and illuminates new, potentially transformative possibilities.

I am excited by this book: It is a theoretically rich collection of work on what care - and feminist ethics of care - might mean in early childhood practice. Grounded in early childhood research, its insights challenge and delight in equal measure as they disrupt, broaden and search for transformative re-configurations of discourses and pedagogies of care.
Carmen Dalli, Professor of Early Childhood Childhood Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Taking aim from a range of theoretical perspectives, the essays gathered here raise important challenges to the often taken-for-granted place of care in early childhood education. Foregrounding and interrogating the complexities of care entanglements across the relational, political, mundane, and messy, this book reveals feminist theories of care that must be debated by all who work with young children.

About the Author

Rachel Langford is Associate Professor in the School of Early Childhood Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada, and the lead editor of Caring for Children (2017).