Early Childhood Care and Education at the Margins

Book excerpt: The importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) in the lives of very young children is gaining increasing attention around the globe and yet there is a persistent lack of diverse knowledge perspectives on this critical phase. This stems from dominant Eurocentric framings of early childhood research, and related theories. Early Childhood Care and Education at the Margins provides contextual accounts of ECCE in Africa in order to build multiple perspectives and to promote responsive thought and actions. The book is an entry point to knowledge production for birth to three in Africa and responds to the call for the field to be in dialogue with different perspectives that attempt to map concepts, debates and contemporary concerns. In this book, a group of African authors, representing both Anglophone and Francophone Africa, provide insider's perspectives on a wide range of geographic, cultural and thematic positions. In so doing, they show the breadth and depth of ideas on which the ECCE field draws. The chapters in the volume highlight a range of topics including poverty, early socialisation, local care practices, gendered roles, and service provision. They open up important points of departure for thinking about ECCE policy, practice, theory and research. The book presents African perspectives in a globalising world. It is therefore suitable for an international readership. It includes cross-cultural comparisons as well as critiques of dominant discourses which will be of particular interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students active in the field of ECCE, childhood studies, cultural studies and comparative education.