ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses how an expanded range of perspectives drawing on different background theories can illuminate and explain young children's musical experiences and, at the same time, it will be filtering them through a critical lens. It provides a working and up-to-date theoretical map for those who want to increase their professionalism in early childhood music. The book draws on children and childhoods as they are perceived and experienced in a number of societies located in the minority world, for this is where the early childhood music experience and practices. Childhood studies has emerged as an energetic field that originally combined sociological and anthropological approaches with a children's rights agenda. There are a number of reasons why early childhood music education remains conservative in both practice and research and these are interrelated.
