Latest Module Specifications
Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026
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Description Early childhood educators must work with children and families from a range of diverse backgrounds. Relationships between early years’ educators and the communities of people in which they work are contingent upon how educators interact with families of diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, gendered practices, sexual preferences, special educational needs and so on. A variation in comfort (related to an individual’s own identity, experience and knowledge of difference, cultural values, positioning in heterosexist, racist discourse etc) exists around diversity issues. This module will help students to engage critically with understandings of difference and diversity in schools and society today. The construction of children as critical thinking, agentic beings with valuable contributions to families, schools, communities and society will be emphasised (while recognising the structural constraints that exist upon this agency, and the web of relations and circumstances in which children are embedded). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning Outcomes 1. Interrogate normative assumptions about the nature of childhood - understanding how childhood is continually contested and renegotiated within particular local, social (and historical) contexts. 2. Understand the social construction of young children’s identities within the social categories of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, disability and so on. 3. Critically reflect upon understandings of families and the factors that have an impact upon their engagement with young children’s education 4. Explore how to build relationships with a child’s family (by focussing in particular on the classed, ‘raced’ and gendered nature of parental involvement in schooling). 5. Reflect on their own values and social identity and draw upon these skills in an informed response to child, family and community issues. 6. Recognise children as having agency and power within their own right and develop skills for listening and responding to children in tandem with this recognition. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
1 • Equality, Diversity and Respect for Difference: theoretical perspectives 2 • Children and Childhood in Contemporary Society 3 • Understanding Families and Family Diversity 4 • Partnership with parents (reference to social class, race and gender) 5 • Supporting inclusion of minority families (culture, values and beliefs) 6 • Power and Pedagogy in the Education of Young Children 7 • Children’s Perceptions of Difference 8 • Educators' perspective and understanding of inclusion 9 • Effective Relationships with Children, Families and Communities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List Books:
Articles:
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Other Resources
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