Repositioning developmentalism

This chapter looks at the notion of the 'developing child'. it commences with a discussion about critical thinking and questioning.Next, it provides an overview of what child development and developmentalism are in the ECEC context, and it critiques the way developmentalism is relied upon to inform practice in ECEC. In the final section readers are introduced to the concept of postdevelopmentalism (Blaise, 2005; Edwards, 2009) and how a postdevelopmental framework (Nolan and Kilderry, 2010) can reposition developmentalism.