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This article explores factors influencing the participation of industry professionals in Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in three Vietnamese public universities. The impact of the unique socio-cultural background of Vietnam on WIL is also addressed.

A qualitative approach that included three focus groups and 15 individual in-depth interviews was applied. In total, 30 key university and industry WIL stakeholders were involved. Thematic analysis was employed to identify enablers and inhibitors to the participation of industry professionals in WIL in Vietnamese universities.

Industry professionals faced more challenges than support when involved in WIL in three Vietnamese public universities. Four enablers of their participation in WIL stemmed from industry and nine inhibitors emerged from a variety of sources. The overwhelming number of inhibiting factors indicated difficulties associated with implementing WIL.

The rationale behind limited industry involvement in Vietnamese universities has not been explored previously. A holistic understanding of all key WIL stakeholders’ perceptions of factors influencing industry participation in a non-Western tertiary context may provide leads for higher education policy in Vietnam and add to the international literature.

Volume 14 of the Advances in Early Education and Day Care provides Sharon Ryan and Susan Grieshaber the opportunity to present current scholarship about early childhood education and care that reflects postmodern perspectives. This series has consistently intended to serve the field by providing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Early childhood practices have drawn on ideas from child development, curriculum studies, social work, nursing, sociology, anthropology, and other fields that inform us about children, their care, and the settings in which we implement our programs, an effort that should by its nature require diverse perspectives. Advances in Early Education and Day Care has always attempted to respect the necessary diversity of perspectives that can inform the field, and to support work that may not fit in a tidy disciplinary nook.

Most of the chapters in this book depict local attempts to transform practices in early childhood education. They represent endeavors to problematize the complexities and challenges facing the field and the ways in which moves are being made in everyday classroom practice, policy, teacher education, and professional development to build a knowledge base that is grounded in empirical data and that reflects the diversity characteristic of a globalized society.

We sincerely thank the following people, who reviewed chapters for this edited collection. The reviewing process is often a thankless and invisible task, but we want to recognize the professionalism of these reviewers, as well as their insight into the manuscripts with which they engaged.

Since 1998 New Zealand early childhood educators have been required to implement programs consistent with Te Whàriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), a bicultural early childhood curriculum that validates and enacts kaupapa Màori (a Màori theoretical paradigm reflected through the medium of the Màori language). This curriculum document affirms and validates the status of Màori, the indigenous people of this country so that Pàkehà (New Zealanders of European descent) early childhood educators now need to reposition themselves alongside Màori whànau (families) and colleagues who remain the repositories of Màori knowledge. This means a decentering of the “mainstream” curriculum to develop models that parallel Màori language and content inclusively alongside western knowledges in all facets of the early childhood curriculum. This chapter utilizes data from a recent study to illustrate some ways in which the bicultural requirements of Te Whàriki, are being understood and experienced by early childhood teachers, teacher educators, and professional development facilitators. In particular, this chapter considers how Te Whàriki challenges non-Màori teachers’ to confront the power relations that have historically positioned them as curriculum ‘experts’ and marginalized indigenous cultural knowledge.

This chapter tells the story of the Early Childhood Collaborative (ECC), a committee set up to formulate a plan for the delivery of universal preschool education for 4-year-olds in a medium sized Midwestern city in the United States. As I explore the policymaking interactions of this collaborative, the issue of who was included, the capital needed for inclusion, and the power related to social networks and how that shapes collaboration are illuminated. It is argued that in order to bring diverse voices to the table, alternate ways of creating space for participants in policy formulation need to be considered. It is in these spaces that it might be possible to create and present counter narratives to dominant views of how early childhood education should be enacted.

This chapter provides a case study of one woman who works as a professional child carer in a capital city of Australia. It details the ways in which she cares professionally for young children and shows how connections have been made between this caring and the ways in which the carer was mothered, or cared for as a child. Cultural feminist perspectives are adopted to theorise the lived experiences of mothering and caring that are depicted. The case study provides insights into connections that existed between the carer's experiences of growing up in relationships with her mother and the caring philosophies that continued to mediate her professional caring practices with young children.

In this chapter we describe an action research study on our course “Language and Literacy in the Early Childhood Curriculum.” We also explore links between the study and postmodern theory, embedding our analyses in an ongoing accreditation process. This required process positions us to question what authoritative narratives we have accepted and whether, through our action research, we have begun to create our own counternarrative that challenges assumptions underlying the accreditation process.