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The importance of community has been widely recognised in the field of early childhood education. However, the various ways it has been conceived, together with taken-for-granted notions of education, have made it difficult to actualise the processes involved in contextually meaningful ways. This article draws on cultural models theory to explore educational leaders' re-imagining and redesigning of early childhood educational learning communities in a range of diverse settings. The examination of the processes and artefacts used to promote democratic identities and agency highlights the significance of establishing shared principles, sociality and challenging power relations to engage in processes of communing that are contextually meaningful, sustainable and democratic.

Examining how young children learn to write is increasingly important as global society moves further towards a knowledge economy, where the production of texts of various kinds is an increasingly ubiquitous practice in everyday life and work. While there has been recent policy and practice focus on children's writing performance in standardised tests, in this article, the authors focus on what can be learned by listening to children's voices as they are engaged in 'draw and talk' methodologies. While children's drawings have a material reality, they are also representations of children's perceptions of their experiences with learning to write. In this article, the authors explore the processes, practices and relationships involved in learning to write, depicted in children's drawings when they are asked to draw themselves learning to write. The authors identify representations of writing, evident in the children's drawings focusing the relational, the material and the spatial elements of writing.

In an era of normative standardised literacy curriculum continuing to make space for culturally responsive literacy pedagogy is on ongoing challenge for early childhood educators. Collaborative participatory research and ethnographic studies of teachers who accomplish innovative and inclusive early childhood education in culturally diverse high poverty communities is urgent for the profession. Such pedagogies involve complex understandings of the cultural and political histories, and the dynamic potential, of the places in which school communities are located. By incorporating the study of local histories and biographies and researching neighbourhood changes teachers adapt mandated curriculum to maintain community knowledges and allow for positive identity work at the same time as they meet the authorised systems objectives. When teachers work with children as co-researchers through the study of people's lives in particular places and times, the community and its complex histories become a rich resource for young people's literacy repertoires.

The importance of community has been widely recognised in the field of early childhood education. However, the various ways it has been conceived, together with taken-for-granted notions of education, have made it difficult to actualise the processes involved in contextually meaningful ways. This article draws on cultural models theory to explore educational leaders' re-imagining and redesigning of early childhood educational learning communities in a range of diverse settings. The examination of the processes and artefacts used to promote democratic identities and agency highlights the significance of establishing shared principles, sociality and challenging power relations to engage in processes of communing that are contextually meaningful, sustainable and democratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining how young children learn to write is increasingly important as global society moves further towards a knowledge economy, where the production of texts of various kinds is an increasingly ubiquitous practice in everyday life and work. While there has been recent policy and practice focus on children's writing performance in standardised tests, in this article, the authors focus on what can be learned by listening to children's voices as they are engaged in 'draw and talk' methodologies. While children's drawings have a material reality, they are also representations of children's perceptions of their experiences with learning to write. In this article, the authors explore the processes, practices and relationships involved in learning to write, depicted in children's drawings when they are asked to draw themselves learning to write. The authors identify representations of writing, evident in the children's drawings focusing the relational, the material and the spatial elements of writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]