New book maps changing landscape for resourcing of early learners
Published on 28 November, 2012
CQUniversity researcher and cultural anthropologist Dr Sophie Rainbird has helped produce a book which unravels new spaces and new networks at work in early childhood literacy and development.
According to Routledge, the publisher of Resourcing Early Learners: New Networks, New Actors, governments are assuming increasing authority in relation to child-rearing in the years before school entry.
Dr Rainbird and her co-authors Sue Nichols, Jennifer Rowsell and Helen Nixon are aware of a social agenda aimed at forming citizens well prepared to play an active part in a globalised knowledge economy.
As the idea of ‘early learning' now expresses the necessity of engaging caregivers right from the start of children's lives, the authors investigate this trend over three years, in two countries, and three contrasting regions, by setting themselves the task of tracing every service and agent offering resources under the banner of early learning.
Dr Rainbird says the authors looked at the ways that parents sourced information and resources.
"We found that a consideration of the inclusive, dynamic and transformative elements of an actor-network provides great insights into the ways in which information, knowledge and resources about children's early learning and development are circulated," she said
"If we think about, for instance, an important piece of information about a baby's development which is verbally passed from a practitioner to a parent, who then shares it on a Facebook mother's group, then we can understand that parents play as active a role as service providers and practitioners in the distribution and transformation of information as it circulates through their networks.
"A consideration of actor-networks will assist service providers in determining a more strategic approach to reaching parents by tapping in to parents' networks and circulating transformable knowledge, information and resources to assist them in the healthy development of their children."
The publisher notes that, far from being a dry catalogue, the study involves "in-depth ethnographic research in fascinating spaces such as a church-run centre for African refugee women and children, a state-of-the-art community library and an Australian country town".
"Included is an unprecedented inventory of an entire suburban mall. Richly visually documented, the study employs emerging methods such as Google-mapping to trace the travels of actual parents as they search for particular resources. Each chapter features a context investigated in this large, international study: the library, the mall, the clinic, and the church."
More details on this new book are via http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415897594/
* Dr Rainbird is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at CQUniversity's Appleton Institute for Behavourial Sciences in Adelaide. An anthropologist, her research has focused on migrant and refugee experiences, social networks and risk management. She is published in several journals including Journal of Intercultural Studies and Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.