Issue: Summer 2025

Special Issue: Socially Just Ruptures in Early Childhood Education and Care: Rupturing Developmentalism in ECEC Curricula, Pedagogies, and Policy

Guest Editors: Dr. Adam Davies (University of Guelph) & Dr. Nidhi Menon (Toronto Metropolitan University)

Submission deadline:  March 1, 2025

This special issue is inspired thematically and conceptually by the notion of ‘ruptures’ – a term that draws its etymology from the Greek word for ‘to wound’. While ruptures of any form can be disorienting, challenging, and unnerving, ruptures can also provide avenues for rethinking taken-for-granted practices, beliefs, and frameworks that guide our professional and personal lives (Davies, 2022). In fact, Souto-Manning (2021) theorizes ruptures as transformative, and even a portal into new ways of moving forward societally. Thinking in this vein, ruptures can offer opportunities for radical shifts and changes in practices. This special call for eceLINK begins with the premise that ruptures allow possibilities for rethinking taken-for-granted practices, pedagogies, policies, and theories, and that ruptures provide avenues for transformative ways of thinking, living, being, and becoming.

Within the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC), child development theories of the twentieth century – all mostly theorized by white male psychologists and theorists – still remain dominant within post-secondary ECEC college and university programs and often dominate the post-secondary landscape and curriculum. Despite the continued important contributions of reconceptualist scholars, who have been critiquing child development theories and their hegemony within ECEC (Berman & Abawi, 2019; Grieshaber & Blaise, 2019), many post-secondary ECEC programs remain entrenched in child development theories as the foundation or the main focus of curricula and programming. Yet, there exists possibilities to rupture the ongoing hegemony of developmentalism in post-secondary ECEC (Davies, Karmiris, & Berman, 2022)!

This call raises some questions: how do child development theories continue to ‘wound’ or ‘rupture’ those who are not imagined within its normative trajectories? How do we rupture the idea that child development is the only or the foundational knowledge in ECEC or for future ECEs? Can critiquing the hegemonic status of child development in both post-secondary ECEC programs and early childhood education as a field also provide ruptures that open spaces for new avenues for existing and thinking in the early years? How do transformative (Souto-Manning, 2021) or professional (Davies, 2022) ruptures, reveal possibilities for new emergences and emancipatory potentialities for teaching and learning in ECEC?

This special issue seeks to spotlight work that strives to rupture developmentalism within early years post-secondary education. We seek contributions that are invested in rupturing the dominance of developmental theories in post-secondary ECEC – including artistic work, academic articles, and personal writing – by centralizing ways of knowing and being that are not currently included or imagined within post-secondary ECEC. We invite scholars, practitioners, and activists who seek to rupture the status quo of child development theories while thinking with theories and frameworks that are currently non-dominant and subjugated in ECEC.

Potential questions for contributors to think with:

• How do child development theories continue to ‘wound’ or ‘rupture’ those who are not imagined within its normative trajectories?
• What does it mean to rupture developmental knowledge in early childhood education curricula, pedagogies, and politics? How do we create ruptures? How do you do this in research, practice, pedagogical decisions and doings?
• How might ruptures work as empowering approaches that dismantle while simultaneously creating shifts in developmentalism in ECE pedagogy and practice?
• Why or how do ruptures provide new avenues for thinking, being, living and becoming in ECE?
• If ECEC pedagogists, practitioners, activists, and scholars think with ruptures, what possibilities or portals emerge from such a space?
• How might these new emergences be in conversation with what has ruptured? How might it offer possibilities for transformation? 

References

Berman, R., & Abawi, Z. (2019). Thinking and doing otherwise: Reconceptualist contributions to early childhood education and care. In S. Jagger (Ed.), Early years education and care in Canada: A historical and philosophical overview (pp. 165– 190). Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars.

Davies, A. (2022). Professional ruptures in pre-service ECEC: Maddening early childhood education and care. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(5), 571-592.

Davies, A., Karmiris, M. & Berman, R. (2022). Contesting the hegemony of developmentalism in pre-service early childhood education and care: Critical discourses and new directions.

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 23(4), 371–375.

Grieshaber, S., & Blaise, M. (2019). Making Room for More: Complexity, Diversity, and the Impact of Alternative Perspectives on Early Childhood Care and Education. The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Care and Education, (pp. 615-640). John Wiley & Sons.

Souto-Manning, M. (2021). The pandemic as a portal: On transformative ruptures and possible futures for education. Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 46(2), 3-11.

Please email submissions to: [email protected]

Download Full Call for Papers and Submission Guidelines

Aims and Scope of the Peer Reviewed Section

• Centre the voices/lived experiences of ECEs in the knowledge production process.
• Create a space for ECE professionals and allies to critically engage with contemporary pedagogy, policy and practice issues in the ECE sector (and beyond):
  • What are the current limitations of ways of knowing and being an early childhood educator in our sector?
  • How might ideas about children, childhood, education, educators, parents and families (beyond developmentalism) create space for new possibilities in the ECE?
  • We encourage submissions to trouble existing power relations at the interpersonal, community, state and global level.
• Contribute to building a community of scholars committed to positioning ECE pedagogy and practice as deeply ethical and political: 
  • Recognizing the AECEO’s unique space as an organization dedicated to building the collective voice of ECEs, we understand this publication as a venue for generating dialogue from perspectives that disrupt what already is.
  • New ways of conceptualizing professional practice, children, care, and individuals (and relations) involved in ECE through critical theory, cultural studies, and deconstructionist (and reconstructionist) lenses.

Understanding the eceLINK as contributing to the overall role of the AECEO in advocacy and activism, we seek articles that:

• Conceptualize pedagogy, curriculum, and relationships as work that disrupts existing systems of capitalism, developmentalism, neoliberalism, and ongoing settler colonialism.
• Position the sharing of robust, collegially-reviewed articles as a strategy to deepen the richness, creativity, and political power held through lived knowledges in the field.
• Embrace the sharing of peer-reviewed articles as an opportunity to build allies.

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts submitted undergo a rigorous peer review. Two peer reviewers who have or are working towards a PhD in early childhood studies or a related discipline provide a detailed assessment of the manuscript based on the following criteria: relevancy of subject, writing style, interest level for AECEO-eceLINK readers, organization, and presentation of ideas/research.

Possible outcomes of the peer review process are:

• accepted for publication with no revisions
• accepted for publication with minor revisions
• invited to resubmit the manuscript with accompanying document showing how feedback has been addressed. When resubmitted, the manuscript will be accepted or rejected
• rejected

Manuscript Guidelines

Form and Style

Style should be consistent with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th Edition). The journal uses Canadian spelling; please consult the Oxford Canadian Dictionary.

• All citations must contain DOI information where relevant.
• An abstract should be included at the start of the manuscript and not exceed 100 words.
• 4-5 keywords that represent the content of the article should be included following the abstract.
• Footnotes should not be used. We prefer that endnotes be avoided, but if you find it necessary to include them, please use the Insert Endnote function in Microsoft Word to insert them into your text rather than typing the numbers manually. This will ensure that your endnotes do not get lost in the journal's copyediting process.
• Manuscripts must be 5000-7000 words
• In order to enable blind review, manuscripts must be anonymized.  No author information should be included in the manuscript.
• When using names of children in your article, please use pseudonyms and advise us that you have done so.
• Please use Times New Roman 12-point font and do not use any special formatting or styles.
• Articles should be submitted in Microsoft Word format as per the submission instructions below.

Acceptance and Publication