Counteracting Dysconscious Racism and Ableism Through Fieldwork: Applying DisCrit Classroom Ecology in Early Childhood Personnel Preparation

Abstract

Early childhood personnel preparation programs must prepare future early educators who can counteract racism and ableism to provide all children with an equitable and just education. We applied Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) Classroom Ecology to early childhood and specifically to preschool settings. We argue that early childhood personnel preparation programs can utilize this framework to prepare preservice early educators to facilitate more equitable experiences for Children of Color with disabilities and their families. We discuss the importance of preparing future early educators to counteract racism and ableism through their fieldwork experiences. We also provide a brief overview of DisCrit in relation to early childhood personnel preparation and present DisCrit Classroom Ecology to apply the framework components to preschool fieldwork.

Re-Envisioning an Early Years System of Care towards Equity in Canada: A Critical, Rapid Review

“…In the equity-aligned international literature, there are also specific philosophical approaches to understanding, designing and delivering programs with families and children that are distinct in their origins and focus but share a relational orientation. These include anti-racist programming [ 44 , 104 , 117 ], cultural safety [ 11 , 118 ] and trauma-informed [ 94 , 101 , 119 ], or trauma- and violence-informed approaches [ 61 ]. This relational orientation to early years programs and practices is predicated on funders’, managers’ and service providers’ understanding of and capacity to respond to how structural inequities and structural violence are differentially impacting families and young children [ 67 , 116 ].…”

Exploring the role of Black feminist thought in pre-service early childhood education: On the possibilities of embedded transformative change

“…Scholars have since extended King's dysconscious racism in preservice educators to examine the intersections of race and disability. Hancock et al (2021) extend dis/ability critical race theory (see Annamma and Morrison, 2018) by entrenching dysconscious racism as an analytic frame, so that pre-service ECEC students can acknowledge their own positionality and biases rooted in racism and ableism, and provide new imaginaries through their fieldwork placements to support 'children of color'. 1 As a salient parallel, some researchers have questioned whether Ontario childhood educators are sufficiently trained to teach Indigenous children, and to support Indigenous families and communities (Lamb, 2020;Milne, 2016).…”

“… 1. ‘Children of color’ is a term used by Hancock et al (2021). I tend to use ‘Black’, ‘Indigenous’ and ‘racialized’ specifically to refer to Blackness and indigeneity in Canada, and to denote how racialization is a process rooted in White supremacist logic, where communities become racialized based on various sociopolitical contexts.…”

Exploring the role of Black feminist thought in pre-service Early Childhood Education: on the possibilities of embedded transformative change

“…Scholars have since extended King's dysconscious racism in pre-service educators to examine the intersections of race and disability. Hancock et al, (2021) extends Dis/Ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (see: Annamma and Morrison, 2018), by entrenching dysconscious racism as an analytic frame, so that pre-service ECEC students can acknowledge their own positionality and biases rooted in racism and ableism, providing new imaginaries through their fieldwork placements to support 'Children of Color' 1 . As a salient parallel, some researchers have questioned whether Ontario childhood educators are sufficiently trained to teach Indigenous children, and to support Indigenous families and communities (Lamb, 2020;Milne, 2016).…”