2024:Call for Papers for Thematic Issue

2023-04-06

Policies and Practices of Early Childhood Education: Studies of Critical Conceptualizations

Thematic Issue Editors

Ziya Toprak, Independent Researcher, Türkiye
Mehmet Toran, Istanbul Kültür University, Türkiye

Childhood’s being inextricably linked to the projections of nations’ practical and ideological needs makes it a hot issue for policy makers, theoreticians and practitioners. Being one of the most intensely governed sectors of life, childhood is highly related to social, cultural and political contexts that ultimately define early childhood education policies and practices. This relationship is dynamic and complicated and imposes new ways of rearing and educating children. Children in this regard, are agents of the future who are in need of constant care and permanent surveillance conducted by institutional mechanisms and is reproduced by the multitude of institutional and organization methods. The current modern-centric wisdom surrounding childhood defines possible childhoods while ensuring its ‘normal’ development. Geographically highly Eurocentric understanding of modern childhood assumes that all children follow a similar path to adulthood which is why policies and practices concerning childhood have share many commonalities and show few differences. In this issue, we are particularly interested in policies and practices that create these commonalities across different geographies as well as differences that make them unique.

Despite these commonalities and the fact that the conventional wisdom of childhood bears similar conceptions across the world, early childhood education services have been showing a steady yet a geographically uneven development, all of which resulting in various challenges and possibilities related to constitutions of childhood, availability, accessibility and affordability of services, and teacher labor regimes. Perceiving childhood as a heterogenous experience, we are interested in non-coherent, non-integrated and fragmented childhood, and how contemporary relations of power and inequality influence early childhood services. We believe that local contexts of childhood and related conceptualizations and practices have much to offer against the current conventional wisdom surrounding childhood.

This thematic issue of JCES seeks to explore policies and practices addressing alternative conceptualizations of childhood and issues of availability, accessibility, affordability of early childhood services and teacher labor regimes across different geographies in order to understand the reciprocal relationship between early childhood education and contemporary relations of power and inequality. We invite papers that report empirical studies, reviews, policy analyses, theoretical trends related to policies and practices of early childhood education across different geographies. Papers can be comparative across time and space or present research findings and theorizations of specific locations.

Scholars are invited to submit proposals that are between 400 and 500 words. Please email these to: jces.editorial@gmail.com and include ‘JCES Special Issue Policies and Practices of Childhoods’ into the ‘subject’ box of your email.

The authors of selected proposals will be invited to submit a full paper, which will undergo a double-blind peer review by the editorial board members and external reviewers.

Key Dates:

November 15, 2023: Submit a proposal of no more than 500 words to the following email address jces.editorial@gmail.com
December 20, 2023: Abstract proposal decision sent to author/s
March 31, 2024: First full paper submission due for review via JCES submission portal.
October 2024: Anticipated date for publication