Reconceptualist work in a colonising context: challenges for Australian early childhood education

Reconceptualist work in early childhood education remains fluid and challenging. Since the early 1980s, the Reconceptualist movement has provided new forms of praxis, particularly in response to critiques of developmental frameworks and universal ideas about quality that negate local and diverse articulations of early education and care. In the past decade in particular, reconceptualist work has bought into focus issues around colonialism, Indigenous education and decolonising approaches to research and practice. The theorising of Soto (2000), Soto and Swadener (2002) and Ritchie (2007) are some examples of reconceptualist work that highlight how colonialism produces historical silences and political and social invisibility for Indigenous peoples, and how centring Indigenous knowledge frameworks and perspectives in research and practice supports decolonising early education and care. As explored in this chapter, issues around colonialism are central to reconceptualist work in the Asia-Pacific context, particularly in Australia which remains a colonising context to the present day. In Australian early childhood education, reconceptualising requires engagement with interrelated concepts of colonialism, whiteness and racism. Exploration of these concepts is challenging for many educators due to their socialisation and gaps in education and training. Such challenges hinder the development of skill sets necessary for new forms of scholarship and activism that underpin reconceptualist work.