Brooke Richardson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3935909 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brooke Richardson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brooke |
| FAMILY NAME | Richardson |
| SIGNATURE | RICHARDSON B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brock University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2607-4935 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Regulation of Madness in Early Childhood Education: Exploring Undergraduates’ Understanding of Professional Identity and Mental Health
This qualitative study investigates how sanist systems of oppression within early childhood education both reflect and reinforce dominant discourses on mental health and madness. Through a Mad studies analysis of both qualitative interview data with postsecondary early childhood education and child studies students, as well as policy and curriculum documents relevant to Ontario postsecondary early childhood education studies, we seek to disrupt t…
Developing the Wecare cross-national research alliance for investigating early childhood educators’ wellbeing
Purpose This paper describes the development of the WECARE cross-national research alliance for investigating early childhood educators’ wellbeing, and details the experiences of some of WECARE’s 17 members. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores and situates the WECARE team’s experiences within extant literature on cross-national and collaborative research groupings alongside a strongly practical focus. Findings The study’s findings incl…
The Re-Emergence of Childcare as a Women’s Issue? Analyzing Gender in Australian and Canadian Covid-19 Childcare Policymaking
Canada and Australia, two liberal welfare states whose market-based ECEC systems consistently rank poorly on international measures, embraced similar short-term childcare policy responses to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: widespread closures, reduced capacity of centers, establishment of publicly funded emergency childcare programs for essential workers, and short-term wage subsidies for essential workers (sometimes including educators). She…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
I'm kind of in a dilemma: The Challenges of Non-Standard Work Schedules and Childcare
Canada has long been criticized for its patchwork of childcare policies and programmes. In this context, parents who work non-standard hours face additional challenges finding, affording, and maintaining stable childcare. Drawing on a purposive sample of twenty Canadian parents of young children who have non-standard work schedules, we explore the challenges these parents face, the strategies they use, and the impacts of current childcare policie…
Care -full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs
This article offers a theoretical provocation through conceptualizing a pedagogy of care as a means of caring with students and each other to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism in Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs. The authors’ conceptualization of care -full as pedagogy is rooted in the premises that education is always ethical and political, and caring about, for and with others is necessary to establish equita…
Commodification and care: An exploration of workforces’ experiences of care in private and public childcare systems from a feminist political theory of care perspective
Drawing on feminist care ethics and political theory (Engster and Hamington, 2015; Held, 2006; Noddings, 2015; Tronto, 2013), this paper examines how educators working in private (Ontario) and public (Denmark) childcare systems think about and practice care. Through interviews with pedagogues (Denmark) and early childhood educators (Ontario), linkages between the public/private positioning of care and the care experiences of educators are explore…
Critiquing Ontario’s Childcare Policy Responses to the Inextricably Connected Needs of Mothers, Children, and Early Childhood Educators
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the chronically inadequate childcare infrastructure in Canada and across much of the world. Government responses have been many and varied within and between countries, provinces, municipalities, and local communities. Embracing a feminist ethics of care lens, this paper examines how the needs of mothers, children, and early childhood educators were recognized as interconnected (or not) in Ontario’s childcare pol…
Ethics of Care in Practice: An Observational Study of Interactions and Power Relations between Children and Educators in Urban Ontario Early Childhood Settings
This article explores observations of care practices in interactions between early childhood educators and children in two urban early childhood settings in Ontario. Analysis of these care practices is informed by a feminist ethics of care. Findings show that the care actions of educators were more often instrumental in nature, often incomplete, and/ or interrupted. Children’s experience with and perspectives on their care were not taken into con…
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
A Shifting Collective Identity: A critical discourse analysis of the child care advocacy association of Canada's public messaging in 2005 and 2008
Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), a national grassr…
I'm kind of in a dilemma: The Challenges of Non-Standard Work Schedules and Childcare
Canada has long been criticized for its patchwork of childcare policies and programmes. In this context, parents who work non-standard hours face additional challenges finding, affording, and maintaining stable childcare. Drawing on a purposive sample of twenty Canadian parents of young children who have non-standard work schedules, we explore the challenges these parents face, the strategies they use, and the impacts of current childcare policie…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
The Re-Emergence of Childcare as a Women’s Issue? Analyzing Gender in Australian and Canadian Covid-19 Childcare Policymaking
Canada and Australia, two liberal welfare states whose market-based ECEC systems consistently rank poorly on international measures, embraced similar short-term childcare policy responses to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: widespread closures, reduced capacity of centers, establishment of publicly funded emergency childcare programs for essential workers, and short-term wage subsidies for essential workers (sometimes including educators). She…
Commodification and care: An exploration of workforces’ experiences of care in private and public childcare systems from a feminist political theory of care perspective
Drawing on feminist care ethics and political theory (Engster and Hamington, 2015; Held, 2006; Noddings, 2015; Tronto, 2013), this paper examines how educators working in private (Ontario) and public (Denmark) childcare systems think about and practice care. Through interviews with pedagogues (Denmark) and early childhood educators (Ontario), linkages between the public/private positioning of care and the care experiences of educators are explore…
A Shifting Collective Identity: A critical discourse analysis of the child care advocacy association of Canada's public messaging in 2005 and 2008
Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), a national grassr…
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
Ethics of Care in Practice: An Observational Study of Interactions and Power Relations between Children and Educators in Urban Ontario Early Childhood Settings
This article explores observations of care practices in interactions between early childhood educators and children in two urban early childhood settings in Ontario. Analysis of these care practices is informed by a feminist ethics of care. Findings show that the care actions of educators were more often instrumental in nature, often incomplete, and/ or interrupted. Children’s experience with and perspectives on their care were not taken into con…
Critiquing Ontario’s Childcare Policy Responses to the Inextricably Connected Needs of Mothers, Children, and Early Childhood Educators
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the chronically inadequate childcare infrastructure in Canada and across much of the world. Government responses have been many and varied within and between countries, provinces, municipalities, and local communities. Embracing a feminist ethics of care lens, this paper examines how the needs of mothers, children, and early childhood educators were recognized as interconnected (or not) in Ontario’s childcare pol…
Care -full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs
This article offers a theoretical provocation through conceptualizing a pedagogy of care as a means of caring with students and each other to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism in Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs. The authors’ conceptualization of care -full as pedagogy is rooted in the premises that education is always ethical and political, and caring about, for and with others is necessary to establish equita…
Commodification and care: An exploration of workforces’ experiences of care in private and public childcare systems from a feminist political theory of care perspective
Drawing on feminist care ethics and political theory (Engster and Hamington, 2015; Held, 2006; Noddings, 2015; Tronto, 2013), this paper examines how educators working in private (Ontario) and public (Denmark) childcare systems think about and practice care. Through interviews with pedagogues (Denmark) and early childhood educators (Ontario), linkages between the public/private positioning of care and the care experiences of educators are explore…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
I'm kind of in a dilemma: The Challenges of Non-Standard Work Schedules and Childcare
Canada has long been criticized for its patchwork of childcare policies and programmes. In this context, parents who work non-standard hours face additional challenges finding, affording, and maintaining stable childcare. Drawing on a purposive sample of twenty Canadian parents of young children who have non-standard work schedules, we explore the challenges these parents face, the strategies they use, and the impacts of current childcare policie…
Developing the Wecare cross-national research alliance for investigating early childhood educators’ wellbeing
Purpose This paper describes the development of the WECARE cross-national research alliance for investigating early childhood educators’ wellbeing, and details the experiences of some of WECARE’s 17 members. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores and situates the WECARE team’s experiences within extant literature on cross-national and collaborative research groupings alongside a strongly practical focus. Findings The study’s findings incl…
The Re-Emergence of Childcare as a Women’s Issue? Analyzing Gender in Australian and Canadian Covid-19 Childcare Policymaking
Canada and Australia, two liberal welfare states whose market-based ECEC systems consistently rank poorly on international measures, embraced similar short-term childcare policy responses to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: widespread closures, reduced capacity of centers, establishment of publicly funded emergency childcare programs for essential workers, and short-term wage subsidies for essential workers (sometimes including educators). She…
Regulation of Madness in Early Childhood Education: Exploring Undergraduates’ Understanding of Professional Identity and Mental Health
This qualitative study investigates how sanist systems of oppression within early childhood education both reflect and reinforce dominant discourses on mental health and madness. Through a Mad studies analysis of both qualitative interview data with postsecondary early childhood education and child studies students, as well as policy and curriculum documents relevant to Ontario postsecondary early childhood education studies, we seek to disrupt t…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Early childhood (6 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (5 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Early childhood education (5 works)