Introduction: Exploring lived spaces of infant-toddler education and care

This book has emerged from our deep and abiding interest in two interrelated questions: How can we further our understandings about early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings as they are experienced by very young children and adults? And, more specifically: What can be gained in this endeavour by bringing together diverse and sometimes seemingly oppositional theoretical and methodological perspectives? We are not alone in these interests. There is now a rich corpus of writing about the lives of infants and toddlers and early years' practitioners in ECEC settings. Indeed, infant-toddler education and care settings have become increasingly visible and vibrant sites for innovative research, as a growing number of collections illustrate. Moreover, in recent years there has been a groundswell of calls to unsettle the familiar contours of ECEC research and practice landscapes by finding ways to transcend constraining theoretical and methodological divides and dichotomies. Calls to open up thinking in ways that transcend unproductive divides are also beginning to appear in early childhood curriculum frameworks. We recognise the need to relinquish any illusions that bringing together diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives will achieve a consensus view about lived spaces in infant and toddler ECEC settings. Rather, our hope is that this book will provoke conversations about research, practice and policy in ways that will contribute to the lived spaces in infant and toddler settings becoming increasingly pluralist democratic spaces in which different views can be articulated and debated.