Call for Papers: Finding Froebel: National and Cross-National Pedagogical Paths in Froebelian Early Childhood Education, Volume 8, No. 4, December 2021
In recent years, there has been an international resurgence of interest in the philosophy and principles of major pioneers and theorists in early childhood education. They include the radical educationalist, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1832) whose ideas were subsumed or laid dormant beneath educational agendas that have privileged metrification and its attendant pedagogical turns. The resurrection of Froebelian praxis emerges from deep-seated concerns about prevailing neo-traditionalist approaches to teaching young children, behaviourist theories of learning and modernist constructs of early childhood amid a Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM). Educators and scholars are reigniting Froebel’s holistic framework for early childhood pedagogies, which foreground young children’s histories and human condition; and respect the particularities of each child’s environmental, sociocultural and politico-economic circumstances. It is from this complexity that pedagogies attend to each child’s educational drive. Consequently, lexicons for early childhood education find close correspondence between Froebel’s humanistic maxims and contemporary preoccupations for social justice, equity and sustainability, which apply in equal measure to early childhood systems and young children’s living and learning.
For this special issue of GER we are seeking papers that illustrate, theorise, critique or evidence early childhood education, which is concerned with interpretations of Froebel’s philosophy and historical or contemporary Froebelian pedagogies. Submissions should correspond with at least one of the following topics:
- The place of Froebelian philosophy in 21st century early childhood education and care (ECEC) for children from birth to eight years
- How Froebelian ideas manifest in varied cultures and pedagogic systems today and how various cultures and pedagogic systems use, shape and interpret Froebel’s ideas
- How Froebelian ideas about care, learning and the environment can be understood in terms of modern scientific knowledge regarding the relationship between the biological and the social
- Combatting discrimination through Froebelian principles and practices
- Exploring economic, systemic and/or environmental issues from a Froebelian perspective
- Challenging the centralisation of educational content and direction in ECEC
- Reconceptualising quality in early childhood settings
- The contributions of Froebelian approaches to children’s learning experiences and outcomes
- Characteristics of contemporary Froebelian pedagogies in work with young children and their families
- Gifts and Occupations in a digital age
- Learning from the past and attending to culture – kindergarten education in time and place
- Froebelian practice as resistance and / or activism
Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words using 12 point font to: office@froebeltrust.org.uk by 15 November 2020. Attach your abstract as a Word document (please do not send PDFs) and write Global Education Review in the subject line of your email. Abstracts will be reviewed for fit and you will be informed by 30 November if the article is invited for review. Full manuscripts will be due by 28 February 2021. The issue will be published in December 2021.
Authors of articles invited for review are required to participate in a blind review of up to two articles submitted for publication in the same issue.
