Description
Twenty-two hard-hitting chapters by leading educators, researchers, policy-makers, and parents advocate for alternative ways for slowing childhood, better policy-making, and, most important, the right learning at the right time in children’s growth, when they are developmentally ready.
PART I: Policy Making and the Erosion of Childhood:
The Case of the Early Years Foundation Stage
1. The EYFS and the Real Foundations of Children’s Early Years – Penelope Leach
2. Challenging Government Policy-making for the Early Years:
Early Open EYE Contributions – Margaret Edgington, Richard House, Lynne Oldfield, and Sue Palmer
3. Against the Government’s Grain: The Experience of Forging a Path to EYFS Exemption – JOHN DOUGHERTY
4. The Impact of the EYES on Childminders – Arthur and Pat Adams
5. A Parent’s Challenge to New Labour’s Early Years Foundation Stage – Frances Laing
6. The Tickell Review of the Early Years Foundation Stage: An “Open EYE” dialogue – The Open EYE Campaign
PART II: The Foundations of Child Development and Early Learning:
Perspectives, Principles and Practices
7. The Myth of Early Stimulation for Babies – Sylvie Hétu
8. Current Perspectives on the Early Childhood Curriculum – Lilian Katz
9. Physical Foundations for Learning – Sally Goddard Blythe
10. The Unfolding Self –The Essence of Personality – Kim Simpson
11. The Democratization of Learning – Wendy Ellyatt
12. The Steiner Waldorf Foundation Stage – 13. Can We Play? – David Elkind
14. Play – Transforming Thinking – Tricia David
15. Challenging the Reggio Emilia Approach with Relational Materialist Thinking and an Ethics of Potentialities – Hillevi Lenz Taguchi
Part III: Advocacy, Research and Policy Making
for Children’s Early Years’ Learning
16. “If I Wanted My Child to Learn to Read and Write, I Wouldn’t Start from Here” – Sue Palmer
17. Viewing the Long-Term Effects of Early Reading with an Open Eye – Sebastian Suggate
18. Early Childhood Research and its Political Usage: Some Cautionary Remarks – Richard House
19. Does Not Compute, Revisited: Screen Technology in Early Years Education – Aric Sigman
20. An Inveterate Early Childhood Campaigner – Margaret Edgington interviewed by Richard House
Part IV: Ways Ahead to Achievable Futures
21. Education and Paradigm Shift – Grethe Hooper Hansen
22. Early Childhood: A Policy-Making Perspective – Barry Sheerman
Towards the Future: Implications and Recommendations for Educationalists and Policy-makers – Wendy Scott and Richard House
AFTERWORD – Richard Brinton and Gabriel Millar
