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Street children are often constructed as fragile individuals who lose their innocent childhood since they have to work and do not have the opportunity to play like most of their peers. Using Bourdieu's concept of field, capital and habitus, this article seeks to go beyond the existing notion of play by exploring how street children in Bandung, Indonesia, understand and negotiate play with working as part of their everyday lives. The authors took an ethnographic approach to collect data from 14 street children and their guardians, mainly through observation and ongoing conversation. The findings suggest that the children are able not only to navigate the meaning of play, but also to negotiate their social position with adults on the street. This article serves as an invitation for educators and policymakers to develop educational programmes that are sensitive to multiple meanings of play, children and childhood.

This paper aims to explore how kindergartens in Indonesia become a space to negotiate local and global discourses. Informed by postcolonial theories, it seeks to identify a hybrid space that goes beyond the binary between South and North. Based on fieldwork in three different kindergartens in Indonesia, this paper illuminate different forms of negotiation adopted by the kindergartens. Two most pervasive global discourses found are related with child-centredness and neoliberalism. The kindergartens negotiate these discourses through a social aspiration, character building, and religious values discourses. The finding suggests how juxtaposed ideas continue to intersect with one another ECE.

This paper attempts to explore young children's construction of femininities in a kindergarten in Indonesia. Using a postdevelopmentalist and postcolonial approach, this paper seeks to understand how young children in the school develop, negotiate and resist existing gender construction. This paper is based on an ethnography research conducted in 2010 for eight months. Findings of this study reveal that discourse of femininities in the school is situated in the discourse of a princess. This paper argues that there are multiple meanings attached to the discourse of a princess. It does not only become a signifier for femininity, but it also acts as a signifier for social class. The findings also suggest that the discourse perpetuates the legacy of colonisation in the school. It is, then, recommended that, in order for kindergarten teachers to be able to disrupt the construction of femininities, they need to be able to understand multiple meaning of femininities as well as power relation embodied in the construction.

For the past 20 years, early childhood education has undergone changes that have resulted from an alteration in Indonesian socio-political situations. One of the changes has resulted in the emergence of the internationalisation of early childhood education in Indonesia. This paper unpacks the complexity of the process. Three teachers from three different kindergartens in Bandung, Indonesia were selected to participate in this study. Drawing from postcolonial theories, the findings of the study illuminate the extent to which international schooling perpetuates the legacy of colonialisation, while at the same time sustaining the legacy of neo-liberal policy. However, the findings also suggest that the schools have become a hybrid space where global and local values are interacting and negotiating with one another.

The notion of social justice has often been overlooked in the field of early childhood education because many teachers think that it is too early to introduce the concept to young children. Using multicultural theories, this article attempts to explore kindergarten teachers' perceptions on the issue of social justice. The method adopted in this research is case study. Thirteen kindergarten teachers from five different schools in three different cities in West Java, Indonesia, are selected as participants. Data are collected through semistructured interviews and analyzed using a grounded approach. Findings of this study highlight the extent to which kindergarten teachers understand issues of social justice in terms of equality of treatment. The findings also illuminate complexities faced by the teachers in negotiating social justice in their teaching. The findings also indicate the need to reform curriculum for teacher training programs to include matters like social justice.

Globally, the child-centred approach to education has influenced practitioners' views of young children as having democratic rights. A key principle of this concept is the belief that each child is unique and can only be compared in relation to their own performance. Here we employ a feminist poststructuralist approach to critique the child-centred discourse which normalises children's behaviour, situating children's different and non-normal behaviour as "the other"--including children's gendered behaviour. Drawing on data from the first author's ethnography of gender relations in Kopo kindergarten in Bandung Indonesia, we attempt to explore how the concepts of "care" and "difference" were used and negotiated by staff. Findings suggest that a visible surveillance of children is maintained in settings and is used by teachers as a form of social control. Teachers interpret their caring role in ways that perpetuate traditional gendered behaviour. It is concluded that there is a need to expand the notion of care by respecting differences, including gender differences, in children's behaviour.

This paper interrogates the discourses of stunting in Indonesia and its links to early childhood education. Here, stunting is analysed via Foucault's work, with data stemming from a long‐term ethnography study and analysis of relevant policy documents in Indonesia. We argue the discourses of stunting have been regulating children, teachers and parents by acting as a form of biopower of governing rationalities. Focusing merely on the individual and nutrition aspects, the discourses overlook larger societal problems. In such a space, the children, teachers and parents become a site of the state's surveillance and are produced as docile bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media is believed to possess its power in constructing discursive meaning in the society. This article aims to see how media creates discourse pertaining children and childhood during the pandemic of COVID-19. This article adopts critical discourse analysis (CDA) in order to unpack power relation in the children discourse by analyzing 78 articles from websites found in the internet. The analysis suggests that there is one hegemonic and dominant discourse on children, namely discourse of vulnerable children. The discourse sees young children as fragile being that do not have capacity to understand the pandemic and also to navigate their situation during the pandemic. While the discourse seems to be empathetic with the children, yet it actually does not recognize children's ability to have voices. Hence, this kind of discourse potentially excludes the children further from the discussion on how to mitigate the pandemic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroscience has become a new 'truth' in early childhood education across the globe, including in Indonesia. This article aims to demonstrate how the alignment of neuroscience discourse and the legacy of neoliberalism constructs a new form of childhood in Indonesia. The conceptual framework of brain science, predicated on biological determinism, suggests that the brain will significantly influence not only children's development in the present but also will have an impact in the future. Neuroscience is also based on the idea of transparency. Beneath this conceptual framework lies the idea that a child's mind can be made visible through both technological means and standardized development measures. Global neoliberal discourse reinforces this techno-scientific approach through the concept that stimulating children's development facilitates economic growth in a country. This instrumental use of child development contrasts with the paradigm which emphasizes children's agency. This article is based on ongoing and previous fieldwork from both authors. Using Foucault's concept of discourse and disciplinary power, the authors argue that neuroscience has become the truth that hides societal issues such as poverty as well as becomes a form of surveillance that constructs a child as being open to the adult gaze and surveillance. The findings will also illuminate the tension and negotiation between local values and global values in assembling a new form of childhood in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]