Beyond Compliance in Early Childhood Education

What might it mean for young children with disabilities to experience freedom and belonging from their earliest moments in school?

This volume provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of how critical perspectives on disability can inform our work with children, families, and teachers in early childhood settings. Thirty international contributors center disability and prioritize children’s perspectives across a variety of contexts, including Head Start, community-based centers, public school classrooms, and home visiting.

This one-of-a-kind book argues that a focus on disability and ableism is necessary for countering traditional developmental perspectives and oppressive notions of “normalcy” to cultivate freedom and belonging for marginalized young children.

Chapter topics include:

• Histories and contexts of ableism in early childhood.
• Affirming and supporting positive disability identity in early childhood.
• Creating interdependence and relationships of support with and between children in early care settings.
• Recognizing children’s varied socio-emotional expressions as legitimate.
• Children’s expansive, multilingual, and multimodal meaning-making in the context of standardized academic goals.
• Honoring marginalized families’ priorities, engagement strategies, and meaningful resistance.
• Integrating Indigenous, Black feminist, and/or disability justice perspectives in teacher education.

Maggie Beneke is an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington. Hailey R. Love is an assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“Beneke, Love, and the contributors to this volume . . . create pathways for ‘imagining otherwise,’ showing us how to move beyond that space between resistance and compliance toward something far more liberatory.”
—From the Foreword by Tran Nguyen Templeton, assistant professor of early childhood, and faculty co-director, Rita Gold Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

“This moving collection is at once a study of history, an honest accounting of the present, and a hopeful vision for a future made possible by those who recognize, honor, and leverage the full freedom of young children. It is a stunning, needed, and rare contribution to our field, and a call to action in these times that so aggressively threaten the promises of inclusion.”
—Carla Shalaby, P–20 partner support, The School at Marygrove, and coordinator of social justice initiatives and community internships, University of Michigan

"This book brings together a dynamic group of authors—featuring the voices of children, scholars, practitioners, and families—to challenge readers to refuse and reimagine many of the fundamental assumptions shaping the education of children with disabilities. As incisive as it is hopeful, this text is both a call to action and a breath of fresh air."
—Harper B. Keenan, assistant professor, University of British Columbia

“An invaluable and timely contribution to early childhood research and practice that centers disability in affirmative and liberatory ways. Each of the chapters offers rich conceptual and pedagogical possibilities for refusing compliance and normalcy in encountering disability in early learning contexts.”
—Fikile Nxumalo, assistant professor in the department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto

“The editors and authors of this volume provide a powerful testament to what is possible when we center and honor the lived experiences of peoples with disabilities and their families, who each day traverse multiple liminal spaces of resistance. Their call to action is clear. Refusing compliance must be a collective endeavor, in which we are steadfast in learning from and in our solidarity with children with disabilities. The wisdoms shared in this book are essential to disability justice, and serve as acts of love, hope, and possibility.”
—Michelle Salazar Pérez, Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Education at the University of North Texas