Working to learn a language both contributes to language revitalization and teaches learners about themselves, thus developing a sense of mental and spiritual well-being associated with learning the learners' ancestral language. In addition, on an institutional level, those who contribute to language revitalization and hold space for the language…

This study's original data were collected in interviews with 23 pioneer leaders of early childhood education in Aotearoa, New Zealand. They were asked to remember play, free play and learning through play. Their collective experiences cover over 60 years of 'the everyday' recalled in the local array of diverse early childhood services as well as…

In this article, the author braids storytelling with oral life history interviews, Chicana Feminisms, and portraiture. The piece centers the portrait of Ms. Sotomayor, a veteran elementary teacher, who through her stories shares with us pedagogies of pain, trust, autonomy, and empowerment. These glimpses of her life journey as a Nepantlera offer…

As part of a joint European-Israeli project for developing modernised curricula on migrants' lives (DEMO), academic courses were adapted to meet the needs of a population served by a Palestinian teacher-education college in Northern Israel. Arab minority students, in many cases descendants of displaced people, attended two courses within the…

Twelve leading Social Foundations of Education (SFE) scholars describe their professional work in the field. The research question within this oral history study is: In what ways do SFE scholars express the importance of the Liberal Arts (LA) framework for the community of educational stakeholders in a democracy? The respondents explain the degree…

Early childhood education changed in the twentieth century, from mother-at-home-care in the 1950s, to professional early education today. Theoretical and social-political choices of pioneers in ECE had a profound impact on the way children's education is conceptualized. We argue from a social constructivist perspective. The oral history method is…

This paper, based on interviews conducted for the "Early Childhood Oral History Project," draws on oral life-history interviews with 14 prominent early childhood researchers who have been active since the 1970s within diverse European countries. A common theme across the interviews is the key role that collaborative research between…

Through the course of Indigenous history, cultural and spiritual knowledge remains, in many places as faint as the smoke rising from the embers of last night's fire; in other places, with enough flame to ignite another log. In spite of the genocidal acts portrayed through colonialism's experimentation through religious doctrine, residential…

We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…

Geographically isolated in the south-west Pacific but intellectually and culturally connected to Western Europe, Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood education sector is a unique mix of influences. The imprint of progressive education is evident in a legacy of "free play" programmes, yet its national curriculum is built on the…

This account of what, at first glance, might seem like a narrow and obscure historical case of one U.S. state's preschool program is a vehicle for raising questions about how early childhood policies have developed in other locales, for the contemporary policies and programs that exist around the world are the result of efforts by many…

Undergraduate teacher education program students have the opportunity to work with diverse student populations in a local school district in the Four Corners Area in the Northwest part of New Mexico. The family oral history practicum is a way to connect theory and practice while recognizing the issue that language is not a neutral landscape. What…

Literacy is a socially constructed ideology (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1995). Current representations reduce literacy to standards, skill testing, and the five components of reading (NICHD, 2000). This view of literacy discounts the knowledge and skills of many students. This article examines the oral story of Aisha, an African American…

In 1964, in "A Guide to Instructional Television," editor Robert M. Diamond defined "educational television" as a "broad term usually applied to cultural and community broadcasting which may include some programs for in-school use" (p. 278). His definition for instructional television was "television used within the formal classroom context on any…

These excerpts from an oral history interview with the founder of the Irving B. Harris Foundation, one of the most influential early funders of the infant-family field, emphasize the importance of promoting early childhood development as a social investment and highlights the lessons from business that Harris brought to philanthropy. Harris traces…