More-Than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood draws on a long-term ethnographic research into the role of place, materiality and the body in the literacies of young children aged 12-36 months. It builds a picture of how children participate in, or become caught up in, literacies and language in the contexts of their everyday lives. Throughout the book, recognised understandings of young children are decentred in favour of experiential knowing of parents and communities, body-place knowing and ordinary affects. Abigail Hackett argues that young children's literacies are always more-than-human, involving sounds, gestures and movements between humans and nonhuman places and things. By paying close attention to the more-than-human nature of these literacies, which rely on bodies, places, animals, humans, objects and atmospheres for their ongoingness, a case is made for the decentring of young children. The book will be of particular interest to researchers looking at feminist-new materialism, posthumanism, affect theory, and critical literacy in early childhood settings.

Found in Translation: Connecting Reconceptualist Thinking with Early Childhood Education Practices highlights the relationships between reconceptualist theory and classroom practice. Each chapter in this edited collection considers a contemporary issue and explores its potential to disrupt the status quo and be meaningful in the lives of young children. The book pairs reconceptualist academics and practitioners to discuss how theories can be relevant in everyday educational contexts, working with children who are from a wide range of cultural, ethnic, gender, language, and social orientations to enable previously unimagined ways of being, thinking, and doing in contemporary times.

Providing an overview of contemporary research into early childhood literacy, this handbook deals with subjects related to nature, function and use of literacy and the development, learning and teaching of literacy in early childhood.

Covering key terms and concepts in the emerging field of posthumanism and literacy education, this volume investigates posthumanism, not as a lofty theory, but as a materialized way of knowing/becoming/doing the world. The contributors explore the ways that posthumanism helps educators better understand how students, families, and communities come to know/become/do literacies with other humans and nonhumans. Illustrative examples show how posthumanist theories are put to work in and out of school spaces as pedagogies and methodologies in literacy education. With contributions from a range of scholars, from emerging to established, and from both U.S. and international settings, the volume covers literacy practices from pre-K to adult literacy across various contexts. Chapter authors not only wrestle with methodological tensions in doing posthumanist research, but also situate it within pedagogies of teaching literacies. Inviting readers to pause, slow down, and consider posthumanist ways of thinking about agency, intra-activity, subjectivity, and affect, this book explores and experiments with new ways of seeing, understanding, and defining literacies, and allows readers to experience and intra-act with the book in ways more traditional (re)presentations do not.

Situated against a backdrop of multiple global pandemics—COVID-19, racial injustice and violence, inequitable resource distribution, political insurrections and unrest—this timely and critical volume argues for a divestment in white privilege and an investment in anti-racist pedagogies and practice across early childhood contexts of research, policy, and teaching and learning. Featuring established scholar-practitioners alongside emerging voices, chapters explore key issues around equitable and inclusive practices for young children, covering topics such as multilingualism and multicultural practices of immigrant communities, language varieties, and dialects across the Black diaspora, queer pedagogies, and play at the intersection of race, gender, disability, and language. Thoughtfully and compellingly written, each chapter offers an overview of the issue, the theoretical framework and critical context surrounding it and implications for practice.

The field of languages and literacies education is undergoing rapid transformation. Scholarship that draws upon feminist, post-colonial, new material and posthuman ontologies is transcending disciplinary boundaries and disrupting traditional binaries between human and nonhuman, the natural and the cultural, the material and the discursive. In Transforming Language and Literacy Education, editors Kelleen Toohey, Suzanne Smythe, Diane Dagenais and Magali Forte bring together accessible, conceptually rich stories from internationally diverse authors to guide new practices, new conversations and new thinking among scholars and educators at the forefront of languages and literacies learning. The book addresses these concepts for diverse groups of learners including young children, youth and adults in formal educational and community-based settings. Challenging and disruptive, this is a unique and important contribution to language and literacy education.