Deconstructing Racial Innocence: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care in Ontario

• In Event: Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Studies suggest that children develop an awareness of cultural and visible differences among and between people as young as two years of age (Aboud, 1988; Byrd, 2012; Connelly, 2007; Escayg, Berman, & Royer, 2017; Husband, 2012; Skattebol, 2003; Todd, 2009). Developmentalist paradigms dominate the discursive landscape of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and privilege trajectories of largely based on Western conceptions of childhood. Developmentalist theories widely provide a reductionary perspective of childhood assuming that children are too young to engage with race and identity, and are ‘racially innocent’ (Brown, Soutto-Manning, & Laman, 2010; Escayg, 2019; Pacini-Ketchabaw & Berikoff, 2008). This research argues that ECEC spaces ought to be reconceptualized as politicized spaces to engage with race and identity.

Author

• Zuhra Abawi, Niagara University