ABSTRACT

Autoethnography in Early Childhood Education and Care both embraces and explores autoethnography as a methodology in early childhood settings, subsequently broadening discourses within education research through a series of troubling narratives. It breaks new ground for researchers seeking to use non-conventional practices in early years research.

Drawing together research and literature from several disciplines, this unique book challenges the perception of what it means to be an early years practitioner: powerful and compelling narratives, from the author’s first-hand experiences, offer both a creative and scholarly insight into the issues faced by those working in early childhood settings. This text:

  • offers insight into working with autoethnography; its purpose and methodological tensions;
  • provides professionals engaged in caring relational approaches with a series of vignettes for training and further reflection;
  • encourages a wider debate and discussion of core values at a critical time in early years practice and other caring professions
  • skilfully and sensitively illustrates how to adopt a creative research imagination.

This book is a valuable read for researchers, postgraduate students and other professionals working in early childhood education and care seeking to give expression to their voices through creative methodologies such as autoethnography in qualitative research.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

Sketching the landscape and setting the early years scene

part I|50 pages

Troubling narratives

chapter 1|6 pages

White rabbits fly kites

Working in challenging contexts, finding liminality

chapter 2|10 pages

A silence louder than words

Listening, attunement and ‘voice’

chapter 3|17 pages

Darren, the wild boy

Poverty and early intervention, what price?

chapter 4|14 pages

Listening to Lola

Embodying care and safeguarding

part II|22 pages

Your world, my world, our embodied world

chapter 5|5 pages

Light and sound

Negotiating illness and the final threshold

chapter 6|5 pages

A tale of two halves and more

Considering difference and listening

chapter 7|8 pages

Dog-eyed

How do children see their world? How do we see them?

part III|32 pages

Autoethnography at work

chapter 8|10 pages

Working with autoethnography

Finding my voice — considerations of methodology

chapter 9|7 pages

Beyond narratives and solipsism to ethical knowing

Ethics and self-care

chapter 10|4 pages

Analysis

Speaking and reading from the heart

chapter 11|8 pages

Origins

Sowing the seeds of personal values