ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a further example of the desire and capacity of young children to ‘make sense’ of their experiences. It focuses on pre-school children and on the ways in which they understand and accomplish their ‘genderedness’ — what it is to be male or female in their everyday world. The book focuses on an analysis of two nursery units attached to primary schools in Scotland. It argues that, whilst the idealism of child-centredness existed, the two classes were far more distinctive for the bureaucratic tendencies which they exhibited. The book describes unsupervised groupwork in an infant school. It provides an analysis of the development of a class of children in their transition from infant school to ‘the juniors’. The explores such teaching strategies directly with regard to the important topic of race.
