Common Worlds: reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities

Affrica Taylor, Miriam Giugni

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    102 Citations (Scopus)
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    Abstract

    ‘Common worlds' is a conceptual framework developed to reconceptualise inclusion in early childhood communities. Common worlds take account of children's relations with all the others in their worlds — including the more-than-human others. The ethics and politics of living together in these common worlds is the central concern of this article. The article begins by charting the interdisciplinary scholarship that has inspired the development of this worlds framework. In particular, the authors acknowledge those feminist relational theorists and philosophers who have helped then to de-centre their understandings of the human (and hence the child), and to refresh their thinking about human/more-than-human relations. Place is also pivotal to an understanding of common worlds, as it is the locus of human and more-than-human differences and relations. In the second half of the article, the authors build upon the traditions of place-attuned pedagogies to suggest that common worlds, like places, are inherently pedagogical. They propose that common worlds is both a generative framework for reconceptualising childhood, and a pedagogical opportunity for practising a politically attuned and non-human-centric ethics of inclusion within early childhood
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)108-119
    Number of pages12
    JournalContemporary Issues in Early Childhood
    Volume13
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

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