A Transdisciplinary Approach to Equitable Teaching in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

In this review of research, we offer a meta-analysis of young children’s learning and development within and across psychology, education, and linguistics. Engaging with Soja’s concept of Thirdspace, we mapped young children’s learning and development transdisciplinarily, seeking to (re)conceptualize early childhood teaching in ways that are answerable to intersectionally minoritized children, families, and communities of color—those whose voices, values, perspectives, and knowledges have been historically and continue to be contemporarily marginalized. To do so, we identified seven principles with the potential to transform early childhood teaching practice. We posit that together these principles can shift the architecture of early childhood teaching, offering promising possibilities for fostering equity by allowing us to move toward emancipatory praxis and negotiate practical solutions to education’s long history of inequities and oppressions.

“Somos fieles creyentes”: children’s construction of spiritual and literate identities at home

“…People use such artifacts to develop, foster and/or express their identities, which are congruently “embedded, distributed, and spread among geographical locations, people, social institutions, activities and practices, and artifacts” (p. 44). Educators’ attention to the religious/spiritual artifacts of children’s funds of ethnic identity is essential to ensuring that the sociocultural contexts of children’s lived experiences are recognized, if not leveraged, in positioning families and communities as partners in young children’s literacy development and education (Souto-Manning et al , 2019).…”

Reaching for consensus about preschool curricula

“…Pressures to close gaps in children’s skill levels have also fostered increased attention on curricula that emphasize basic math and literacy skills, while empirical research suggests that nurturing broader “unconstrained skills” may better sustain learning gains (McCormick et al, 2021). Despite calls for greater attention to cultural diversity and anti-bias curricula, there’s limited consensus on what these curricular approaches can and should entail (Souto-Manning et al, 2019). Preschool educators who seek to support dual-language learners may choose among curricular approaches that variously emphasize English-only versus multilingual interactions.…”

Teachers Learning to Implement Equitable Classroom Talk

“…"Minoritized" describes these students because they are often relegated to underprivileged statuses despite comprising numerical majorities in many (especially urban) schools. Souto-Manning et al (2019) use "intersectionally minoritized" to highlight how discrimination by race/ethnicity in schools interacts with other forms of exclusion (e.g., social class, language). Our focus is teacher learning to enact equitable opportunities for every student to talk and to participate in classroom activity, especially those from intersectionally minoritized communities.…”