Refugee Families with Preschool Children

Refugee families, suddenly displaced from their familiar communities of practice and transplanted into new ones, are forced to navigate sudden changes. Refugee parents from seven ethnocultural commu-nities describe these changes within the parameters of eight key settlement issues they encounter in Edmonton, Canada. This general knowledge of the lived experience of resettlement provides the back-ground necessary to a further exploration of the resettlement process as it pertains to the way the learning of preschool refugee children is guided and mediated during the time of transition to life in this new location. Offering a critical look at the way developmentally appro-priate early childhood practice, formulated on Piagetian and Erik-sonian stage theories, dominates our early care and learning discourse and practice, the unique aspect of this research is the problematizing, deconstructing, and reconceptualizing of early childhood education within the context of refugee resettlement.