Confronting and Countering Bias and Oppression through Early Childhood Policy and Practice: An Introduction. [Special issue]

Across the globe, there has been sustained anti-bias and anti-oppressive scholarship and policywork addressing social inclusion in early childhood and teacher education, grounded in the work of Louise Derman-Sparks and the ABC Task Force, 1989 (Kumishiro, 2000; Murray & Urban, 2012; Swadener, Aquino-Sterling, Nagasawa, & Bartlett, 2009). In this special issue, contributors address a range of social inclusion focused policies and practices across continents, including the challenges and opportunities of implementing anti-bias education. This kind of research takes a principled stance as it works to ameliorate, and eventually eliminate, exclusionary practices impacting young children and their families. The primary goal of this special issue is to rethink the importance, conceptualizations, and enactments of scholarship on anti-bias and socially inclusive approaches in early childhood education contexts.