Visiting Scholars
The Equity and Childhood Program has an active Visiting Scholar Program and welcomes visitors whose work is consistent with the mission of the Equity and Childhood Program. We are strongly committed to building networks with others committed to equity and social justice in early childhood, and learning from others who share our mission and commitments. Visitors to the Equity and Childhood Program make an important contribution to the overall work of the program.
Scholars who share the research interests of the Equity and Childhood Proram team who are interested in visiting should in the first instance contact Dr Kylie Smith.
2011 Visiting scholars
Mrs Lisa Coulson
Dates: 17-19 November 2011
Biography
Lisa Coulson is a member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal palawa community. She has been the Director of the long-day-care Tasmanian Aboriginal Child Care Association (TACCA) since 1993. Lisa is also the Manager of the TACCA FaHCSIA funded Indigenous Parenting Support Program and Locational Supported Playgroup and manages children’s programs for the Northern Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. Lisa has been a SNAICC National Executive Member since November 2001. She was the SNAICC 2010 Conference Working Group Convenor. Lisa has been a child and family service practitioner and leader for 19 years. She comes from a position of knowledge and strength as an experienced advocate for the rights of Aboriginal children and families, with a deep and practical knowledge of the challenges and aspirations of Aboriginal families and what works in engaging and supporting families who experience social disadvantage and exclusion.
Dr Jonathan Silin
Dates: 5-26 November 2011
Biography
Jonathan Silin is a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto. He has spent his life working in and out of classrooms to promote innovative, equitable, and socially relevant curriculum. His groundbreaking book Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS changed the way that people think and write about early childhood education. After earning a doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia, where he established one of the early critiques of stage theories of development and their codification in Developmentally Appropriate Practice, he spent a decade immersed in AIDS education and advocacy. He eventually returned to the field as a member of the Bank Street College Graduate Faculty and as a leader in the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood movement. In his work he is committed to foregrounding the knowledge and skills of classroom teachers. His 2002 book, Putting the Children First: The Changing Face of Newark's Public Schools, provided a vehicle for educators in that troubled city to tell their own stories about school reform. More recently in -- My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents -- he tells the story of caring for his parents during a brief period of precipitous decline. Across all of his teaching and writing projects he invites students and readers to consider the challenges and opportunities afforded by the most difficult often confusing moments in our lives and the lives of those for whom we care. A keynote speaker at early childhood conferences in Brisbane and Melbourne, he was a 2002 CEIEC Visiting Scholar.
Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones
Dates: 3 January – 25 February 2011
2010 Visiting scholars
Mrs Marion Le, AM
Dates: 17-20 November 2010
Biography
Born in New Zealand, Marion Le has a long history as a consultant, writer, teacher and guest speaker on refugee and migration matters and currently works as a Consultant and Migration Agent in Canberra. She is well known for her work in refugee law. Most recently Marion was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) at the Australia Day Awards 2009. She is a Registered Migration Agent (1992), a qualified teacher of 30 years experience (Aust & NZ) and has an Honours Degree in History (ANU) ; Bachelor & Licentiate of Theology Degrees (ACT) and a Graduate Diploma in International law (ANU). Amongst other positions, Marion is currently the Vice-President of the Grandparents and Kinship Carers Association (ACT) Inc. She currently has two children in her care by orders of the family court and two others under kinship carer arrangements through the child protection processes of the ACT Government. Over the years she has raised three birth children; several step-children and fostered others. At the moment she shares her home in Canberra with the children in her care and her adult son, daughter and 20 month old grandson.
Marion was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1990, and the AUSTCARE Paul Cullen Award for Outstanding Contribution to Refugees in 1994. In 2003 she received the prestigious Australian Human Rights Award. She delivered one of the ABC Alfred Deakin Lectures marking the Centenary of Federation in May 2001 entitled “Immigration, Diversity & the Fabric of Australian Society” on how immigration has changed Australia, and the challenges Australia faces as a civil society.
In March 2003, Marion spent two weeks in Afghanistan locating the villages of some of the asylum seekers detained in Australia. She returned to Afghanistan in April 2007 for two weeks to explore the possibility of establishing health clinics and a hospital to assist in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and provide direct assistance to the people.
She has been tireless in advocating a more humane approach to the processing of “unauthorized arrivals” – speaking out against arbitrary detention and particularly the detention of children. Marion was the only legal representative given access to the detainees on Nauru visiting Nauru on three occasions in 2003 - 2004 assisting with the review of all those there at the time. As a result of her work all but one entered Australia or went to New Zealand.
Professor Marianne Bloch
Dates: 15-21 November 2010/p>
Biorgraphy
Marianne (Mimi) Bloch has been a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (as well as Human Development & Family Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for thirty years. Prior to that, she did postdoctoral research in West Africa on women’s work and child care, and taught at several other universities with her focus on cross-cultural and cross-national child care and early education policy. She is one of the founding members of the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) conference. Her research has focused on gender and child care policy, children’s play, cultural histories of American early education/child care, and critical cultural studies of how “science” and evidence frame or govern children, teachers, and families. Her recent publications include, Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist, and Popkewitz (Eds.), Governing children, families, and education: Restructuring the welfare state (2003), and Bloch, Kennedy, Lightfoot, and Weyenberg, The child in the world/The world in the child. She is currently studying standards and teacher perspectives in a five State case study within the USA related to new publicly funded early childhood programs, and is co-editor with Gaile Cannella of the new on-line open access International Journal of Critical Childhood Studies. She also co-edits, with Gaile Cannella and Beth Blue Swadener, a book series, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood published by Palgrave Press.
Ms Siobhan Fitzpatrick
Dates: 13-23 November 2010
Biography
Siobhan Fitzpatrick is the Chief Executive Officer with Early Years the Organisation for Young Children, the largest early childhood organisation in Northern Ireland. Siobhan has responsibility for leading the organisation's policy and strategy in relation to services for young children in Northern Ireland /Republic of Ireland. She has responsibility for European and international issues and has chaired the International Working Group on Peace building with Young Children since 2004. Siobhan also had responsibility for the European Union's Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation(1994-2006). Siobhan is also a member of UNA a global initiative on ethnicity and diversity. Siobhan is currently President of ISSA the International Step by Step Association a network of early childhood organisations from the former Soviet Union. Siobhan has published widely on the important role of early childhood services in divided societies.
Professor Anne B. Smith
Dates: 6 February – 31 March 2010
John Nimmo
Dates: 1-12 February 2010
Biography
Dr. John Nimmo is currently Associate Professor of Family Studies at the University of New Hampshire, Durham and the Executive Director of the Child Study and Development Center (www.csdc.unh.edu), known for its inquiry-based approach to early learning. For the prior decade, he was a Core Faculty in Human Development at Pacific Oaks College in Seattle, where he was a member of the Anti-Bias/Culturally Relevant Education Leadership Project. Born and raised in Australia, John taught and played with infants through school-age children for over a decade in Queensland and the USA before pursuing a career in teacher education.
John’s publications include Emergent Curriculum (with Elizabeth Jones) and chapters in both editions of The Hundred Languages of Children drawn from his study and research on the Reggio Emilia experience. John’s scholarship currently focuses on children’s participation and the connections between young children in child care and the broader adult community with recent articles in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education. Developing a better understanding of the beginnings of children’s participation rights within their local community was the focus of his time at the CEIEC and during his subsequent semester spent as a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana in Legon.
John holds a doctorate in early childhood education and development from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and is a 1976 graduate of the teacher education program at the (now) Queensland University of Technology. During 2002, John spent a semester as a visiting scholar/researcher at Macquarie University and QUT and has presented on teacher education innovations in China on multiple occasions. Beyond his professional role, John has a background in amateur fringe theater and film in Australia and was an actor in Seattle’s Theater of Liberation Ensemble.
Download Visiting Scholar Report
2009 Visiting scholars
Ms Mercy M Musomi
Dates: 16-25 November 2009
Biography
Ms Mercy Musomi is the Executive Director of a children's rights organization in Kenya known as the Girl Child Network. The organization was started in 1995 to implement the recommendations of the fourth world conference on women held in Beijing in 1995. Mercy is an activist who fights for the rights of children and especially the Girl Child. The child in Kenya like in many African countries suffers violence from birth unto death. Girls suffer sexual gender based violence in terms of female genital mutilation; child marriages and child trafficking.
Mercy is a Counselling Psychologist and undertakes a key role in mentoring children especially girls (early years, adolescents and the youth) on the importance of education despite the myriads of challenges they face. She is also a lobbyist and a champion of the Rights of the children.
Professor Helen Penn
Dates: 16-24 November 2009
Biography
I trained as an infant teacher and taught in schools in London and Kent in the UK. In 1986 I became Assistant Director of Education in Strathclyde Region in Scotland, where I ran the first integrated care and education service in the UK. I was responsible for the administration of 500 early childhood settings including nursery schools, children's centres and family support groups.
In 1992 I joined the Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. I undertook a range of research projects including work on the integration of care and education services. I co-wrote (with Spanish colleagues) an EU Childcare Network discussion document on quality, and then drafted Quality Targets in 1996 for the Network. I have just completed an analytical review for the EU Education and Culture Directorate on the evidence for policy making in early childhood education and care in Europe. I have been rapporteur for the OECD Starting Strong Reviews in Flanders and Canada.
I now hold the post of Professor of Early Childhood in the Cass School of Education, University of East London, UK where I work mainly on PhD programmes. I have co-founded the International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Market Economy (www.uel.ac.uk/icmec ) which is a virtual centre for information about the operation of the private sector in the field of early education and care. The centre also holds regular seminars and policy debates about the role of the private sector in a mixed market economy, and has an international advisory board.
My interests have increasingly been in the global South (developing countries/majority world) where I have undertaken a wide range of consultancy work for international non-governmental organizations and charities mainly in Central Asia and Southern Africa. I am currently funded by CfBT Educational Trust to research the costing of early childhood education and care projects in South Africa. I am concerned with the relationship between policy, practice and theory in early childhood, and in particular the way in which policies and practices get transferred from the global North to the global South.
Professor Patricia G Ramsey
Dates: 12 November – 1 December 2009-12-15
Biography
Patricia G. Ramsey is professor of psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College. She is a former preschool and kindergarten teacher and received her Ed.D. in Early Childhood Education from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has studied the development of children's attitudes about race and economic class and has written several articles and chapters on this research as well as the following books: Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World: Multicultural Education for Young Children (now in its third edition), Multicultural Education: A Source Book (now in its second edition and co-authored with Leslie Williams and Edwina Battle Vold) and What If All the Kids Are White? Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Their Families (co-authored with Louise Derman-Sparks).
Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones
Dates: 27 January – 13 February 2009-12-15
Download Visiting Scholar Report
2008 Visiting scholars
Associate Professor Karen Martin
Dates: 12-16 November 2008
Biography
Karen is a Noonuccal woman from Minjerripah (North Stradbroke Island - south east Queensland) and also has Bidjara ancestry (central Queensland). She has taught in Aboriginal Community controlled education services in all phases of schooling. She has lectured in Indigenous Australian Studies (James Cook University, Townsville) and teacher education at QUT (Brisbane). Karen has also published widely and lectured in Aboriginal early childhood education. Karen's PhD was conferred in March 2007 and was awarded the James Cook University Medal. n November 2007 Karen was jointly awarded the Australian Association of Research in Education Dissertation award. Thus, Karen's work is used internationally by First Nations and Maori scholars and researchers in the field of education, policy and human services. Karen's more recent publications apply this work in terms of effective changes in the schooling of young Aboriginal children. She is a steering committee member to the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (FaHCSIA) and member to the Expert Advisory Panel: Quality Working Group (Office of Early Childhood). She is now Associate Professor: Early Childhood, in the newly developed early childhood degree with the School of Education, Southern Cross University (Lismore).
Associate Professor Dr Wajuppa Tossa
Dates: 10-16 November 2008
Biography
Wajuppa Tossa is an Associate Professor at the Western Languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University where she teaches English and American Literature, Children's Literature, and Storytelling. In 1995, she founded the Mahasarakham University storytelling project. In this project, she gets people of all ages to be involved in preserving and revitalizing the use of local dialects and folktales in their daily lives and to take pride in their own cultural heritage. She has conducted storytelling workshops and performed in the USA, Australia, the Netherlands, Laos, Malaysia, and Singapore. She was a featured storyteller in several storytelling festivals such as, Asian Congress of Storytellers, Singapore International Storytelling Festival, the Book Fest in Seattle, and Story Fest International in the Pacific West Coast. Her publications include Phadaeng Nang Ai: a Translation of a Thai/Isan Folk Epic in Verse Bucknell University Press, 1990; Phya Khankhaak: A Translation of an Isan Fertility Myth into English Verse, by Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1996; and Lao Folktales, Libraries Unlimited, Connecticut, 2008.
Dr. Caroline Bath
Dates: 1 – 25 August 2008
Biography
Dr. Caroline Bath is the course leader for an Early Childhood Studies BA course at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. She became a teacher in 1983 and has worked in schools and nurseries across the north of England, including a post as an early years inclusion teacher in Sheffield, before starting her current university job in 2004.
During her teaching career, she gained distinction in a Masters degree in Poetry and then, stimulated by her work, studied for a Doctorate in Education. The focus of her thesis was young children's participation (examined by Professor Peter Moss in 2006) and her research interests continue to focus on this theme, in relation to early childhood practitioners and students.
Caroline has recently been engaged with other university staff in two research projects involving Education and Early Childhood students; one looking at concepts of citizenship and approaches to teaching and learning and the other looking at the experiences of British ethnic minority students. Both projects aim to improve the work of lecturers and course leaders. She has presented her research at recent EECERA conferences and has two forthcoming publications which have arisen from her research interests.
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 105Kb]
Elaine Watts
Dates: 7-18 April 2008
Biography
Elaine Watts is currently a Curriculum Support Officer in Education Services at Falkirk Council in Scotland. Her main remit is Race Equality and her work involves supporting teachers and practitioners from all sectors to use an anti-discriminatory approach to all aspects of teaching and learning. She delivers professional development training on anti-racist education, global citizenship and anti-sectarianism and is currently supporting 5 schools in Falkirk with anti-sectarian projects. Elaine has just completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Equality and Discrimination at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and is planning to continue this on to a Masters.
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 116Kb]
Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones
Dates: 2 January - 1 February 2008
Biography
Jeanette Rhedding-Jones is Professor in Early Childhood Education at Oslo and Bergen University Colleges, Norway. In Australia she was until 1997 a Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, and worked in Australian teacher education for 20 years. In the 1960s and early 1970s she was a preschool teacher with 3-5 year olds in rural Victoria, and a teacher with 5-8 year olds in Melbourne and Gippsland. Her PhD 1994 was supervised by Lyn Yates and Molly Travers and examined by Bronwyn Davies, Sue Middleton and Pam Gilbert. Jeanette's academic qualifications are TITC (Burwood), BA (Gippsland), BEd (Deakin), MEd (Deakin) and PhD (La Trobe), all except the first obtained through distance education, by studying weekends and evenings. Her workplace languages since 1997 are Norwegian and English, and she was appointed as a full Professor in Norway in 2000. She is the mother of two sons and two daughters and the grandmother of a boy and a girl.
Jeanette's supervises and examines Doctoral and Masters dissertations written in Norwegian, Swedish and English. She is an anonymous referee for more than 10 international refereed journals and has guest edited Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood; Australian Research in Early Childhood Education; and Nora, Nordic Journal of Women's and Gender Studies. Her book and chapter publications are with Sage, Open University Press, Routledge, Praeger and Universitetsforlaget. Publications forthcoming are with Fagbokforlaget, Cambridge and Springer. Since 1995 her internationally refereed articles are in journals including the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing; Pedagogy, Culture and Society; Gender and Education; Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood; Journal of Curriculum Studies; British Educational Research Journal; British Journal of Sociology of Education; Australian Research in Education; Nordisk Pedagogik; Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige; Qualitative Studies in Education; Transnational Curriculum Inquiry; Early Childhood Matters; and forthcoming in Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Studies. Further information is on Jeanette's website. Contact Jeanette via email.
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 63Kb]
2007 Visiting scholars
Dr. Gloria Swindler Boutte
Dates: 15-21 November 2007
Biography
Dr. Gloria Swindler Boutte is the author of Multicultural Education: Raising Consciousness and Resounding Voices: School Experiences of People From Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds. She has published numerous publications of journal articles. Additionally, she has presented nationally and internationally on curriculum, instruction, and diversity issues. She has taught at the South Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina (received early tenure), and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (tenured). She is currently a full Professor at Benedict College and is the principal investigator for the statewide Center of Excellence for the Education and Equity of African American Students (CEEEAAS).
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 91Kb]
Professor Beth Blue Swadener
Dates: 12 - 30 November 2007
Biography
Beth Blue Swadener is Professor and chairperson of Early Childhood Education and Professor of Policy Studies at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on social policy, professional development, dual language programs, and child and family issues in Africa. She has published eight books, including Does the Village Still Raise the Child?: A Collaborative Study of Changing Childrearing and Early Education in Kenya, Decolonizing Research in Cross-Cultural Context and Power and Voice in Research with Children and numerous articles and chapters. She is also active in a number of social justice and child advocacy projects including founding the Jirani Project, supporting AIDS orphans and street children, in Kenya.
Professor Paul Connolly
Dates: 11-18 November 2008
Biography
Paul Connolly is Professor of Education at Queen's University Belfast and also Director of the NFER at Queen's Centre for Educational Research. His main research interests are concerned with understanding young children's experiences and perspectives and particularly the ways in which factors such as race, ethnicity, gender and social class influence their attitudes and identities. Paul is the author of a number of books including: "Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children" (Routledge, 1998); "Too Young to Notice?: The Cultural and Political Awareness of 3-6 Year Olds in Northern Ireland" (Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, 2002); "Boys and Schooling in the Early Years" (Routledge, 2004); and "From Conflict to Peace Building: The Power of Early Childhood Initiatives - Lessons from Around the World" (2007, World Forum Foundation). Further details on Paul's work can be found on his website.
Professor Martin Woodhead
Dates: 27-30 August 2007
Biography
Professor Martin Woodhead is Professor of Childhood Studies at The Open University. His main research area relates to early childhood development, education and care, including policy studies and extensive international work. He has also carried out international research on child labour, and children¹s rights, including consultancy work for Save the Children, Council of Europe, OECD, UNICEF, UNESCO and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Professor David L. Kirp
Dates: June 2007
Biography
David L. Kirp is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. A former newspaper editor as well as an academic, his interests range widely across social policy. He has written on a wide array of topics, including education, race and gender discrimination, housing, AIDS, and civil liberties; and his books have been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Ukranian. He contributes regularly to the national media, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic Monthly, American Prospect and The Nation. With support from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Packard Foundation, he is writing a book, Does Preschool Matter? , on the universal preschool movement; excerpts have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle and American Prospect.
Dr. Affrica Taylor
Dates: 23 April - 22 June 2007
Biography
Affrica is a cultural geographer with an extensive background in Aboriginal education. She currently lectures in undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs in Canberra and HangZhou, China. Drawing on postcolonial, queer and spatial theory, her research is concerned with the socio-cultural politics of difference - with a particular focus on gender/sexuality, inter-'racial' and inter-generational relations. Her recent children's ethnographies have explored the politics of difference that come into play when children first negotiate their places of belonging in early childhood settings. She is currently collaborating on projects to deploy queer theory in early childhood and to 'trouble' the discourse of childhood innocence.
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 54Kb]
2006 Visiting scholars
Professor Peter Moss
Dates: 18-24 November 2006
Biography
Peter Moss is Professor of Early Childhood Provision at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education University of London. His research interests include services for children; the workforce in these services and gender issues in work with children; and the relationship between employment and care, with a special interest in leave policies. Much of his work has been cross-national, especially within Europe; he is currently editor of a multi-national and multi-lingual magazine Children in Europe. Recent books include: Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives (with Gunilla Dahlberg and Alan Pence); From Children's Services to Children's Spaces (with Pat Petrie); A New Deal for Children? Re-forming education and care in England, Scotland and Sweden (with Bronwen Cohen and Pat Petrie); and Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education (with Gunilla Dahlberg).
Professor Gaille S. Cannella
Dates: 13-27 November 2006
Biography
Professor Gaile S. Cannella is a former early childhood education teacher who has
also worked in a range of university settings in the United States. Currently, she is
Professor of education at Arizona State University and coordinator of the early
childhood doctoral programs. In addition to a range of articles and book chapters, her
books include Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and
Revolution (published in Korean, as well as English), Kidworld: Childhood Studies,
Global Perspectives, and Education, edited with Joe Kincheloe, and Embracing
Identities in Early Childhood Education: Diversity and Possibilities, edited with
Susan Grieshaber (published in Spanish, as well as English). Most recently, she has
published Childhood and Postcolonization: Power, Education, and Contemporary
Practice with Radhika Viruru. Her work uses feminist theories, poststructuralism,
and postcolonial scholarship to examine contemporary critical issues in the field of
early childhood education, as well as a current interest that focuses on critical
qualitative research, ethical practices in research, and knowledge construction in
higher education. This work can be found in two special issues of the journal
Qualitative Inquiry titled Dangerous Discourses, and in a forthcoming issue titled
Predatory Ethics.
Professor Margaret Eisenhart
Dates: 13-18 November 2006
Biography
Professor Margaret Eisenhart is a University Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology and Education and Research Methodology at the University of
Colorado. Margaret Eisenhart is Professor of Educational Anthropology and
Research Methodology and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of
Education, University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her Ph.D. in
anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was
a member of the College of Education at Virginia Tech for seven years
before moving to the University of Colorado. Dr. Eisenhart was a member of
the Committee on Scientific Principles in Education Research. Her research
and publications have focused on two topics: what young people learn about
race, gender, and academic content in and around schools; and applications
of ethnographic research methods in educational research. She is co-author
of three books as well as numerous articles and chapters.
Professor Jeanette Rhedding-Jones
Dates: 14 December 2006 - 19 January 2007
Biography
Jeanette Rhedding-Jones is Professor in Early Childhood Education at Oslo University College, Norway (Førskolelærerutdanning). She has earlier professional experience as an Australian teacher-carer with 3-5 year olds, and as an early schooling teacher with 5-8 year olds. She is now a grandmother of two and a mother of four. Her internationally refereed publications for early childhood education include 15 articles in journals edited from the UK, USA, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand; book chapters for Sage, Open University Press, Praeger, Heinemann and Routledge; and guest editorials for Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, and Australian Research in Early Childhood. These publications (1991-2006) regard critical and contemporary issues and practices in early childhood education, various theories and research methodologies. Jeanette currently teaches and supervises early childhood Doctoral and Masters students writing in Norwegian. A current development project is with Muslim women and children aged 1-6 in Oslo. Her book What is Research? Methodological practices and new approaches (2005) is published by Universitetsforlaget Norway.
2006 Honorary Appointment
Emma Flores
Dates: 17 July - 25 August 2006
Biography
Emma Flores is a visiting PhD student in Educational Leadership and
Organizational Policy from the University of Washington in Seattle,
Washington, USA. Emma's research interests are in doctoral education, innovation in
doctoral education, doctoral student socialization and retention and
interdisciplinary studies. She will be assisting Dr Sherie McClam with her Early Career Researcher Grant entitled Developing transdisciplinary practices: What does it mean for discipline-based academics.
2005 Visiting scholars
Elizabeth Wood
Dates: 9-19 May 2005
Biography
Elizabeth Wood is a Reader in Early Childhood Education at the University of Exeter. Elizabeth is an early childhood specialist, who early in her career taught 3-7 year old children. Elizabeth currently teaches a range of post-graduate programs, including the MEd Early Childhood Education, and the MSc Research Methods training for doctoral students. She also teaches on the initial teacher training program with early childhood and primary students.Her research interests include teachers' thinking and classroom practice, the role and value of play, transitions across phases, and socio-cultural orientations to learning, the policy-practice interface in early childhood education, and gender and under-achievement. Elizabeth has co-directed two research studies with Neville Bennett, on Teachers' Theories of Play and Progression and Continuity in the Early Years. Her publications range across these areas, and include two research-based books Teaching Through Play (with Neville Bennett, Open University Press, 1997); Play, Learning and the Early Childhood Curriculum (with Jane Attifield, Sage Publishing, 2nd Edition, May 2005).
2004 Visiting scholars
Dr. Mariani Md Nor
Dates: October 2004 - March 2005
Lecturer in Department of Psychology Education and Counselling Faculty of Education , University of Malaya. Area of Specialisation: Early Childhood Education/Psycholgy.
Coordinator Early Childhood Programme (undergraduate and postgraduate) Curriculum Developer of the National Early Childhood Curriculum Coordinator.
Professor Anne Smith
Dates: October 2003 - January 2004
Biography
Professor Anne Smith obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada in Educational Psychology in 1971, and taught in the Education Department at the University of Otago on her return to New Zealand in 1974. She took up her present position in 1995, as Director of the Children's Issues Centre, an interdisciplinary children's research and advocacy centre at the University of Otago. Anne was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995, received the McKenzie Award for innovative research in Education in 1997, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Oulu Finland in 1998. She is the author of a well known book in child development Understanding Children's Development, which is now in its fourth edition, and many other publications. Anne's research is framed by sociology of childhood, children's rights, and socio-ecological theoretical perspectives, and emphasises children as social actors, interpreters and participants in the events and experiences of their lives. Anne and colleagues at the CIC, have developed a variety of methodologies for observing or talking to children about their experiences in a variety of contexts, including family, school, early childhood centre, and the legal and social welfare systems. Anne's particular interests in children include social cognition, friendships, situated learning, and how adults scaffold and support the development of children's thinking and agency.
2003 Visiting scholars
Michelle Ortlipp
Dates: January - June 2003
Biography
I am currently completing a PhD under the supervision of Associate Professor Glenda MacNaughton. I trained as a preschool teacher in the 1970s and taught for 12 years in Victorian Preschools. I then worked as a TAFE teacher and program coordinator at Wodonga Institute of TAFE for 9 years before taking up a position as lecturer in the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) at Charles Sturt University in Albury. In my work at both TAFE and CSU I have been involved in the coordination of the practicum, and it was this experience that led to my interest in the process of practicum assessment, which has become the topic of my PhD.
My research project centred around tertiary supervisors' perspectives on assessment of the early childhood practicum (or professional experience as it is increasingly being referred to) in courses preparing students to work in early childhood settings. The broad aim of the study is to explore the knowledge-power regimes within which tertiary supervisors produce early childhood practicum assessment strategies. Specifically it asks within which specific pedagogical and assessment discourses tertiary supervisors understand and practice assessment, how power is exercised and by whom within these discourses and what the discursive silences, resistances, and sites of contradiction within these discourses are. The conceptual framework for the interpretation of the data is being developed using selected poststructuralist concepts such as discourse, subjectivity and power, drawn from the work of Michel Foucault, Bronwyn Davies and Chris Weedon.
Heather d'Cruz
Dates: Semester 2 - 2003
Deakin University
Dr. Karen Cachevki Williams
Dates: June 2003
University of Wyoming
Associate Professor and Head Department of Family and Consumer Sciences
P.O. Box 3354 Laramie WY 82071
2002 Visiting scholars
Jonathan Silin
Dates: February - April 2002
Biography
Jonathan Silin is a member of the graduate faculty, Bank Street College of Education in New York where he teaches and pursues research on the nature of contemporary childhood. He is also Director of Research for a major school initiative in Newark, NJ that is designed to restructure early childhood education in that city. He has published numerous scholarly articles in journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, and Educational Theory as well as occasional essays in more popular periodicals such Newsday, Education Week, and the East Hampton Star. He is the author of Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS (Teachers College Press, 1995). Before receiving his doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, he was a classroom teacher and taught in a variety of early childhood settings.
Whilst visiting the CEIEC Dr. Silin will conduct research with the CEIEC team members in the following project. For more information contact Dr. Silin.
Today's Child and Tomorrow's Curriculum:
Social Responsibilities and the New Standards. In collaboration with Associate Professor Glenda MacNaughton, I conducted qualitative research into the relationship between the changing nature of childhood - including the impact of technology, evolving family structures, increasingly multicultural communities - and the early childhood curriculum. In an era of intensified accountability, how can young children's questions about their immediate worlds be used to promote learning? This research is significant because parents and politicians in Australia and the U.S. are calling for new standards and high-stakes tests. At the same time, educators have questioned their impact, noting that they lead to a narrowed curriculum from which social studies, the arts, and discussion of difficult social issues are excluded.
Download Visiting Scholar Report [pdf, 57Kb]
Ms Anke van Keulen
Dates: 22-28 March 2002
MUTANT (Anti-Bias Agency)
The Netherlands
2001 Visiting scholars
Dr. Mindy Ochsner
University of Texas, USA
Dr. Sharon Ryan
Rutgers University, USA
Dr. Julie Koamea
University of Hawaii
Professor Kenneth Maton
University of Maryland