This morning the editors of "Early childhood voices in the lives of children, families, and professionals" joined together via Zoom to celebrate the submission of our book to Springer.
Here is information about the Table of Contents: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2023/08/submitted-early-childhood-voices-in.html
 | |
| Editors - Dr Linda Mahony, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Jenny Dwyer, Dr Andi Salamon |
Here is the Foreword written by Prof Fran Press
This book is a remarkable achievement. It draws together scholars from an array of disciplines, from across the world, to interrogate what it means to elicit and engage meaningfully with the many languages of very young children. Steeped in a commitment to children’s rights, each chapter is also mapped against the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These Goals ‘recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests’. (United Nations https://sdgs.un.org/goals)It is a testament to the richness and breadth of this edited collection that it traverses multiple dimensions of children’s experiences on the planet, including home and family, the early childhood setting, friendship, the experience and aftermath of climate change impacts, and the disruption of the pandemic. It asks us to consider how we can address gender inequalities by actively engaging young girls in the early childhood setting in STEM. It asks us to consider how the mathematical graphics of young children are a form of children’s expression. Many of the chapters provoke us to be better at redressing the inequalities and/or disadvantages children might face.
A theme that runs throughout the book is the central role of communication. As Kemmis and Salamon remind us, the practice of communication not only creates a pathway for children to participate in the decisions that affect them (CRC Article 3), but it is also integral to our understanding and construction of the world. Through thoughtful and research informed contributions, the book’s authors cause us to reflect upon how we, as adults, might consciously tune in and recognise children’s many languages, including the embodied social and emotional language (Salamon) that accompanies or precedes verbal language. A number of chapters offer specific models or tools that we can draw upon to better obtain children’s insights and perspectives. The framework for children’s participation proposed by Ward and Lundy, for example, creates the conditions which invite and validate children’s perspectives but also recognises that adults may need to play an additional role in providing children access to information that enables them to form a view.
As language plays such a central role in communication, other chapters specifically address issues concerning children’s speech and language including interventions for children’s language acquisition. Some of these contributions illuminate the multilingual worlds that children inhabit and the multilingualism that many children practice and are adept in. Children’s right to maintain their home language is highlighted. These chapters are written with a consciousness of the trap of cultural specificity and how this can colour or limit our capacity as adult ‘experts’ to closely listen to children and, if required, provide appropriate support for speech development.
The rich insights to be gained from these collective offerings underscore both universality and particularity. Through these writings we can see where a shared experience such as the pandemic gave rise to unique and creative responses to reaching children and their families so that children could continue their educations (CRC Article 29), while also bringing into sharp relief the inequalities that exist within and between nations, that the SDGs exhort us to address.
It is incumbent upon adults to uphold children’s rights and to design and implement strategies that strive to attain the SDGs. Professionals who work with young children need to consciously seek ways to activate children’s rights backed by, as Downey et al. remind us, leadership that ensures ethical practices toward children. In doing so, we not only respect the right of the individual child, but we also work toward the collective good of all children.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge to all the authors, that I felt honoured to be invited to write the foreword for this book, and deeply appreciative of its content.
Professor Frances Press, Head and Dean, Education and Professional Studies Griffith University, Australia
