The Multiple Geographies of Early Childhood Education and Care

Approaching the complex spatialities of early childhood education and care systems from the position of the child

“…Within each of these case studies a multi-sited ethnography was conducted, including interviews with parents and professionals/providers and the gathering of additional data on the local landscapes of ECEC in which they participated (Bollig, 2015). Most importantly, the study was based on participant observations of the children's daily encounters in and between ECEC services (and in some cases also within the family).…”

Spaces of early childhood: Spatial approaches in research on early childhood education and care

“…It is especially so if we take into account recent welfare transformations particularly apparent in the field of ECEC as it spans the state, the market, and the family and several policy areas (Penn, 2011). In consequence, we have to speak geographically about very much uneven ECEC landscapes (Bollig, 2015;England, 1996;Vandenbroeck et al, 2008). Moreover, and given to the multitude of functions ECEC services designed to meet and the diverse desires and needs of families, the politics of placing children in early childhood services are not just "filled with paradoxes, ambiguities and negotiations" (Gulløv, 2003, p. 36), but also with inconsistently layered and chronologically shifting conceptions of 'good ECEC childhood' and children's respective sense of place.…”

“…Given these developments, and more that we have no space to outline here 2 , that inform and challenge our notion of early childhood spaces, there is a small but growing body of ECEC-related research which already demonstrates the wide ranging and productive insights new perspectives on space can offer: such as political strategies that produce certain and constructed scales of ECEC-governance (e.g., Mahon, 2006), related 'governable spaces of ECEC' (e.g., Gallagher, 2012), the production of a 'global educational 1 1 space' (e.g., Millei & Jones, 2014); educative spaces within ECEC services (e.g., Kjorholt & Seland, 2013) and children's spatial strategies to take control and act autonomously within them (e.g., Gallacher, 2005). Although these studies rely on the same basic assumptions about space, they use quite diverse theoretical approaches, such as post-structural theories on space informed by Deleuze & Guattari (e.g., Sumsion, Stratigos & Bradley, 2014) as well as practice-analytical ones referring to Lefebvre (e.g., Rutanen, 2012), de Certeau (e.g., Schnoor, 2015) or Massey (e.g., Bollig, 2015), or perspectives based on post-colonial (e.g., Nxumalo & Cedillo, 2017) and citizenship theories (e.g., Gustafson & van der Burgt, 2015).…”

Distant places in children’s everyday activities: Multiple worlds in an Australian preschool

“…Despite the global situatedness of children's present and future lives, research in the fields of childhood studies and children's geographies is mostly framed as intimate geographies of local (see McKendrick, 2000;Ansell, 2009) and within institutional spaces of ECEC (see Bollig, 2015). This kind of delineation restricts consideration of how children's lives are embedded in global processes or how they have relevance to their identities and learning that pedagogies and curricula are designed to shape.…”