Acknowledgements

Credits

There are many people who were involved in the creation of this Pressbook, and there is certainly no way that I could have written it without all of them. The support that I received through the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) was beyond anything I could have imagined and was the driving force in being able to finish this textbook.

Project Development Leads

With tremendous thanks to the collaborators from the Digital Learning team at CELT who have led with sensitivity, respect, hard work, creativity and care:

• David Arromba (Instructional Designer), who worked closely (and tirelessly) with the content and reshaped it in ways from which students can more effectively benefit.
• Sally Goldberg Powell (Instructional Technologist), who brought to life content in ways I did not know were possible, but who made it look easy (and fun!).
• Nada Savicevic (Educational Developer/Digital Learning), who brought vision and insight into the process, with a critical eye that was always positive and constructive.

The creative thinking and expertise brought to this project has elevated any seeds of an idea that I had to make an accessible and interactive textbook. Thank you for your encouragement and inspiration, and for your hard work. What a joy it was to work with you all!

Team Members

• Anisah Ramdeo, MA (Early Childhood Studies, 2023), Research Assistant on the project, has both provided technical support and critical feedback on content as a Registered Early Childhood Educator and as a scholar of childhoods and culture.
• Santiago Sanz (Student, The Creative School) has contributed creatively in many ways, with illustrations in the text and in supporting video production.
• Kyana Alvarez (Student, The Creative School) helped with video production, photography, and sourcing visual content.
• Sally Wilson (Web Services Librarian) has been a valuable consultant on Pressbooks supporting the project.

Faculty Colleagues

Thanks to colleagues for feedback on early writing:

• Dr. Odilia Yim, Assistant Professor, Social Psychology, University of Toronto
• Dr. Maria Petrescu, Contract Lecturer, Toronto Metropolitan University and founder, Inspired2read
• Dr. Ebrahim Talaee, Associate Professor of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
• Nicole Ineese-Nash, Assistant Professor, Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University

Colleagues contributing video interviews and/or cross-cultural resources:

• Patricia Falope, PhD Candidate, Urban Health, Toronto Metropolitan University, CEO Early Childhood Development Initiative
• Junehui Ahn, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Department of Urban Sociology, University of Seoul, Seoul, South Korea
• Amy Desjarlais, Rebirthed Teachings, Office of Indigenous Initiatives, Office of the Vice-President, Equity and Community Inclusion, Toronto Metropolitan University

Former Early Childhood Studies students:

• David Mepaiyeda, B.A., TMU
• Stella Jeong, MA, TMU
• Jessica White, BA, TMU, MA OISE
• Wendy Suh, MA, TMU, Research Coordinator, Cross-Cultural Play-Based Learning Project
• Victory Igwenagu, BA, TMU, Research Assistant, Cross-Cultural Play-Based Learning Project

Child Contributors

Child-drawn illustrations were contributed by the children of our Early Learning Centre who drew pictures on themes for the book. We thank them very much for contributing to the learning of students who may have crossed their paths in placements.

My 12 year old son, Desmond Rittich, contributed some of his baby videos and recorded new ones to help illustrate important concepts of the development of children’s thinking.

Dedication

This book is dedicated first and foremost to Robert LeVine, who caused a paradigmatic shift in my thinking about child development. Sadly, as I prepared this text Dr. LeVine passed away, but provided guidance along the way in my many pursuits, notably my work in Nigeria, and he knew that I was writing this textbook, even if he did not see the final product. The book is also dedicated to my family with deep gratitude from whom I learned about culture, identity and race.

Thank You

I wish to thank those who have led me to the understandings that I have as a scholar, with an awareness that I may or may not do their work and theoretical approaches justice in this text, and who may not always agree with me or adopt similar approaches to me. Instead, it is with gratitude and respect for their work and, in many cases mentorship, that I attribute my thinking to an ever-changing pathway. The conversations began for me in my undergraduate linguistics degree and have continued through to the present day in my working relationships with community members, colleagues and students. So I both pay tribute to those who came before, I welcome students and others to join in this continuing conversation as we try to understand the many ways in which children think and learn.

In my linguistic training in Systemic Functionalism (Halliday, 1985) I am indebted to scholars Bill Greaves and Jim Benson who worked with me closely and inspired me to study human behaviour in social context. In cognitive psychology I was influenced in deep ways by two scholars, one from Sick Kids (Toronto, Canada), Dr. Rosemary Tannock, and one from York University (Toronto, Canada), Dr. Ellen Bialystok. Both of these scholars taught me rigor of methodology combined with an openness to my contextualized approaches, making me realize what was possible in our joint fields of study, and how we can bridge what at first may seem like theoretical chasms. For helping to cross that gap I thank Dr. Jonathan Fine (Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel) for his kindness, his mentorship and his ability to connect the dots between Systemic Functionalism and experimental psychology, and for recognizing why it was so important for me to go to Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).

At HGSE I would find my intellectual home, primarily through the leadership of Dr.s Catherine Snow, Lowry Hemphill and Barbara Alexander Pan (in memory, with love). These scholars brought psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and developmental psychology into a critical, active and dynamic dialogue to which I was invited. The first professor to teach me children’s thinking was Howard Gardner, who inspired me with his large and open mind through his theory of Multiple Intelligences, and who modeled a dialogic approach to scholarship that has had a strong influence on this book. Another influential professor was Jerome Kagan, whose work in the temperament of the child focused on the importance of what children themselves bring to their development challenged universalism in developmental psychology. Lastly, but not least, you as the reader will see many referrals to the work of Barbara Rogoff, who, while not my teacher, has been the inspiration of much of my work and who has supported me with such generosity that I feel as though I must also count her as one of my teachers.