Unsettling Early Care and Education Origin Storytelling: Introducing a Genealogical Counter-Storytelling Methodology

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Mirrors, Windows, Sliding Glass Doors: Critical Approaches in ECE (Early Childhood Education) to Counter-Stories, Language, and Literature (Table 14)

Abstract

This paper describes genealogical counterstorytelling, a critical methodology that unsettles dominant historical narratives. Genealogical counterstorytelling draws from Foucauldian counter-historical genealogy and counterstorytelling, a tool from Critical Race Theory. This paper applies genealogical counterstorytelling to a study of the emergence and sociopolitical evolution of early care and education (ECE) in the United States. The resulting genealogical counterstory (1) traces carceral foundations of ECE across sites typically exiled from public memory and origin storytelling, and (2) articulates transformative praxis in education. Significantly, genealogical counterstorytelling critically reappraises historical narratives, thus illustrating the complexity and contradictions of educational philosophy, pedagogy, and meaning-making over time. This paper concludes by discussing the significance of ECE rendered through genealogical counterstorytelling and relations to contemporary equity issues.

Author

• Brita A. Bookser, Santa Clara University