Review of Debating Childhood and Preschool: A Field Guide to Raising Children, Navigating Pre-K, and Lifting Early Education, by Bruce Fuller, with Rebecca Cheung & Shanylin Jin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v33.4631Author Biography
Melissa Sherfinski, West Virginia University
Melissa Sherfinski, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is Professor of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at West Virginia University. Before joing the faculty of WVU in 2011, she had six years public school experience (K-5) and four years in private preschool or childcare. She is the immediate past-Chair of the American Educational Research Association’s Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group, and the author of Rooted in Belonging: Critical Place-based Education in Elementary and Early Childhood Pre-service Teacher Education (2023, Teachers College Press). Her current research is focused on the roles of parents rights initiatives in early education, the impacts of AI programs in Appalachian elementary schools, teachers’ views of homeschooling, and understanding systems of universal pre-kindergarten education and childcare in local communities.
References
Sherfinski, M. (2013). Class and parents’ agency in West Virginia: Between choices and rights. Education Policy Analysis Archives/Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 21, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v21n78.2013
Sherfinski, M. (2017). Becoming critical communities of practice in pre-kindergarten. Journal of Family Diversity in Education, 2(3), 71-93. https://doi.org/10.53956/jfde.2017.81
Sherfinski, M. (2018). Challenges to goals of “recovery”: A narrative analysis of neoliberal/ableist policy effects on two mothers of young children with autism. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 16(3), 276-290. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X18775767
Sherfinski, M. (2019). Culture matters: A comparative study of teachers’ views of universal pre-kindergarten in two state regions. Early Child Development and Care, 189(8), 1325-1338. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2017.1377193
Sherfinski, M., & Ansah, G. (2025). Data Embargoes as a Tool for Emplacement and Displacement of Children in Early Childhood Classrooms: A Comparative Case Study. Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies, 25(1), 56-64. https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086241268351
Sherfinski, M., Weekley, B. S., & Mathew, S. (2015). Reconceptualising advocacy: Creating inclusive education in US universal pre-kindergarten. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 19(12), 1213-1228. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2015.1041566
Sherfinski, M., & Woodrum, H. (2026). When public preschool teachers’ classroom time is left behind. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 27(1), 36-51. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491241266331
[Book reviewed] Fuller, B., with R. Cheung & S. Jin. (2026). Debating childhood and preschool: A field guide to raising children, navigating pre-K, and lifting early education. Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Melissa Sherfinski
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, distribute, and adapt this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, the changes are identified, and the same license applies to the derivative work.
All journal content from 1998-2020 and was published under an earlier Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
