Early childhood education in grades preK–3 continues to contribute to future school success. Discrimination, however, can still be an obstacle for many children of Latinx immigrants because they often receive less sophisticated and dynamic learning experiences than their white, native-born peers. In this article, Jennifer Keys Adair, Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove, and Molly E. McManus detail how this type of educational discrimination is perpetuated by educators' acceptance of the “word gap” discourse. Drawing on empirical work with more than two hundred superintendents, administrators, teachers, parents, and young children, they recount how caring, experienced educators explained that Latinx immigrant students could not handle dynamic, agentic learning experiences because they lacked vocabulary and how the children in those classrooms said that learning required still, obedient, and quiet bodies. Rather than blaming educators, the authors share this empirical evidence to demonstrate the harm that can come from denying young children a range of sophisticated learning experiences, especially when institutionally and publicly justified by deficit-oriented research and thinking. Using the work of Charles Mills, the authors argue that such a denial of experience to children of Latinx immigrants and other marginalized communities is discriminatory and, too often, the status quo.

In this essay, Jennifer Keys Adair aims to clarify the concept of agency as a tool for improving the educational experiences of young children in the early grades. She conceptualizes agency in the context of schooling as the ability to influence what and how something is learned in order to expand capabilities, drawing on economic theories of human development, agency, and capability as they might be applied to early learning in schools. An understanding of early childhood education aimed at expanding children's capabilities stands in contrast to the currently prevalent emphasis on preparing children for the knowledge and skills tested in elementary grades. Through her classroom-based examples of student agency and her call to bring cultural and varied perspectives into the discussion, Adair hopes to encourage dynamic, agentic learning experiences for all children, not just those of privilege.

Traditional conceptions of civic education for young children in the United States tend to focus on student acquisition of patriotic knowledge, that is, identifying flags and leaders, and practicing basic civic skills like voting as decision-making. The Civic Action and Young Children study sought to look beyond this narrow vision of civic education by observing, documenting, and contextualizing how young children acted on behalf of and with other people in their everyday early childhood settings. In the following paper, we offer examples from three Head Start classrooms to demonstrate multiple ways that young children act civically in everyday ways. When classrooms and teachers afford young children more agency, children’s civic capabilities expand, and they are able to act on behalf of and with their community. Rather than teaching children about democracy and citizenship, we argue for an embodied, lived experience for young children.

This article documents what happened in a first grade classroom when young Latina/o children of immigrants had consistent classroom-based opportunities to use their agency in their learning. Applying theoretical constructs from development economics to data from the Agency and Young Children ethnographic project, we explore three forms of agency that young children in Ms Bailey's class used so often that it became routine and normal to see on an everyday basis. These forms of agency include (1) initiating projects, (2) designing projects and (3) pursuing inquiry through questions. With each form of agency, we point out the types of capabilities that were possible because of children being able to use that particular form. We then discuss how these forms of agency debunk some of the deficit discourses that are used to justify the current narrowing of curriculum for young children from marginalized communities, specifically Latina/o children of immigrants.

Recognition of young children as citizens is relatively new in sociology, with translation emerging into education. Discourses of children and childhood shape ideas of young children as citizens and national discourses of citizenship frame what civic participation can be. The authors analysed national early childhood education curricula frameworks of Australia, New Zealand and the United States to understand how discourses authorise constructions of children as citizens and opportunities for young children's civic participation. They sought to locate how children are positioned as citizens and what opportunities there are for young children's citizenship participation in national early childhood curricula documents of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Illustrative examples of children's citizenship membership and participation from the three nations' early childhood curricula were critically read to locate how prevalent discourses of children, childhood and citizenship in each nation define children as citizens and shape possibilities for citizenship participation for young children.