Swinging Pendulums: Cautionary Tales for Early Childhood Education

SWINGING PENDULUMS: CAUTIONARY TALES FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION deserves ongoing mention and recommendation for any early childhood collection, and offers keys to professional development and the swings of opinion in educational approaches and regulations. It provides a happy medium in its focus on high-quality early childhood education and provides essays that help teachers reflect on the pros and cons of various educational options. Any early childhood educator needs to review this for its sensible approach to creating and fostering middle ground in a constantly-changing world of teaching approaches and philosophies.

Mooney’s honesty is both refreshing and engaging. Here’s a director unafraid to share her mistakes and blind spots to help the rest of us learn. In bite-sized servings, Mooney serves up a scrumptious table of lessons learned, foibles overcome, and rich opportunities to share laughter, tears, or both. Swinging Pendulums is sure to spark spirited discussions in director support groups, book clubs, and classrooms.

Swinging Pendulums is exactly what the subtitle, Cautionary Tales for Early Childhood Education, suggests. In just thirty brief chapters Carol Mooney takes up the main predicaments faced regularly by those who work with young children in a wide variety of settings. As she makes very clear, working with young children “is not a career for the weak of heart.” Her vivid descriptions of the variety of situations encountered by caregivers and teachers are accompanied by questions and sound practical suggestions based on her many years of direct experience and her career-long habit of reflection. Mooney shares her insights with exceptional vividness, in a way that can help staff to work out all the basic issues that have to be addressed for effective early childhood practice.

Carol provides the reader with a thoughtful, personal, humorous, and important look at a variety of early childhood topics near and dear to the early childhood community. I appreciated her personal history and teaching background, as well as reflections on her own teaching experiences over the years. As we look at today's ever increasing focus on leadership, accountability, testing, assessment, evaluation, and why we even want to get into the field of supporting the growth and development of young children and their families, Carol brings a number questions for us to consider. The questions are even provided at the end of each chapter! I highly recommend this book, particularly to early childhood education directors and administrators, I think it will be an enjoyable read, an opportunity to reflect and reconsider the topics and issues of the day. Bravo!