Early Childhood in Postcolonial Australia ― Children's Contested Identities

Early Childhood in Postcolonial Australia explores how cultural identities are contested in postcolonial spaces by subjects of nation, color and culture in early childhood settings. The book uses participatory action research methodology to gather how language was used in early childhood settings to "speak" of the interaction between the cultural groups of "self" and "other" in Australia. Ganga, the largest river in India is used as a metaphor by the author to guide the narrators and the narratives through multiple theories to surface their subjective attachments to such identities. By doing so, it provides a dialogic form of discourse analysis for researchers and early childhood educators, who want to critically inquire how cultural identities are contested by the "Power" of "whiteness" ideology in postcolonial countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and USA.

Prasanna Srinivasan is Research Fellow in the Equity and Childhood Program, Youth Research Centre at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia. Her doctoral research inquires how cultures are enacted in early childhood settings. She has earlier worked in ARC projects that have critically explored the support for cultural diversity in early childhood settings and primary schools in Australia.