Team

Dr. Larry Prochner is a Professor of Early Childhood Education and Chair of the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta. He has published extensively in the areas of comparative and international education and the history of early childhood education. Central to this have been questions of how to prepare teachers to work in culturally and locally responsive ways. As former Chair of the Department of Elementary Education and director of the University of Alberta’s laboratory school he gained experience in leadership in teacher education. His networks will assist with the project’s knowledge mobilization strategies: as vice-president of the International Froebel Society, and as a founding member of the Early Childhood Development Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society.

Dr. Alessandra Arce is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil. She is a leader of the research group “History of Education and Early Childhood Education” and has published books and articles in those fields. She has also coordinated historical projects supported by Brazilian agencies. As a visiting professor at KU Leuven in Belgium, Dr. Arce has worked with transnational studies in the field of History of Education.

Dr. Helen May is a Professor of Education, and the former Dean of the University of Otago College of Education in New Zealand. She has been involved in advocacy work and advisory roles regarding a range of policy initiatives in both New Zealand and international settings. Her research interests are in early childhood policy, history, and curriculum, and she is the author of a number of books on the history, politics, and pedagogy of early childhood education.

Dr. Kristen Nawrotzki, lecturer at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous publications on the history of early childhood education and related social policy in England and the United States, as well as several international comparative works. Her experience partnering with Jack Dougherty on the path-breaking volume Writing History in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2013) will benefit the current project’s information management and within-group dissemination and communication. Her international networks in the history of education are both broad and deep, including membership in the International Froebel Society (serving currently as a vice president) and as longstanding and active member of the US and UK History of Education societies. She has served for many years as an advisory board member for H-Education and for Paedagogica Historica International Journal for the History of Education, as well as a reviewer for Teachers College Record, History of Education Quarterly, and History of Education.

Yordanka Valkanova is Senior Lecturer in the School of Childhood and Education Sciences at Canterbury Christ Church University. She has published numerous articles and chapters on early learning and development and the history of childhood. Her current research concentrates on the Froebel Hebrew Educational Institutes in Russia and Eastern Europe (1910-1925). She has been a researcher and principal investigator on a number of projects, including the British Academy funded Globalization, Identity Politics and Social Conflict Project. Her work as a Trustee for the National Froebel Foundation and member of the Froebel Trust Research Committee has kept her at the centre of developments and current issues in the field.