Caring About Theory: Between Fidelity and Hybridity

• In Event: Theoretical and Discursive Rethinkings in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

We seek to construct with our audience a dialogue about theory that challenges taken-for-granted understandings about theories and theorists. We invite participants to consider:
* How we might make sense of and imagine links between theorists, such as Bronfenbrenner and Bakhtin, from different eras and cultures, who developed theories that appear at first to have little in common
* How important fidelity is (Are theories so fixed in time and space that we can be “faithful” to them?)
* Whether fluidity and hybridity should happen to all theories
*Why we in early childhood education should care about them.

Authors

• Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Celia S. Genishi, Teachers College, Columbia University