CALL FOR PAPERS

Journal of Global South Early Childhood Advancing Early Childhood Development Research from the Global South

Journal of Global South Early Childhood (JGSEC) invites researchers, educators, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to submit original manuscripts addressing early childhood development and education for children aged 0–8 years in Global South contexts.

The journal seeks to strengthen the visibility of research, knowledge, practices, and perspectives emerging from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, particularly research that responds to the social, cultural, economic, political, and ecological realities of children and communities in these contexts.

Why Publish with JGSEC?

Research on early childhood has often been shaped by theories, policies, and pedagogical models developed in the Global North. JGSEC provides a dedicated scholarly space to amplify locally grounded knowledge and challenge one-directional knowledge transfer by highlighting research that is contextually relevant, culturally responsive, and meaningful for children, families, educators, and communities in the Global South.

We particularly welcome manuscripts that move beyond describing local conditions and instead generate theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, or policy contributions with relevance to broader Global South contexts.

Priority Themes

We welcome original research and scholarly contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

1. Policy, Governance, and Systems

• Early childhood policy and governance
• Decentralization and local governance of ECE
• Government–private–community partnerships
• Accountability and quality assurance
• Sustainable financing of ECE
• ECE systems in low- and middle-income countries
• Policy implementation and local adaptation

2. Equity, Access, and Inclusion

• Access to ECE in remote, rural, underdeveloped, and disadvantaged areas
• Gender and early childhood
• Disability and inclusive ECE
• Migrant, refugee, and displaced children
• Children affected by conflict, disaster, and climate-related crises
• Socioeconomic inequalities in early childhood
• Marginalized and historically underserved communities

3. Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Local Knowledge

• Contextualized and culturally responsive curricula
• Play-based learning in diverse cultural contexts
• Indigenous and local pedagogical practices
• Mother-tongue and multilingual education
• Local knowledge and early childhood learning
• Nature-based and community-based learning
• Culturally grounded approaches to children's development

4. Early Childhood Workforce and Teacher Development

• Teacher education and professional development
• ECE teacher competencies and professionalization
• Teacher well-being and working conditions
• Workforce challenges in low-resource settings
• Community-based and non-formal early childhood educators
• Teacher identity and culturally responsive practice

5. Families, Communities, and Indigenous Childhoods

• Family engagement in early childhood
• Parenting and indigenous child-rearing practices
• Ethnoparenting and culturally situated childhoods
• Community participation in ECE
• Intergenerational knowledge transmission
• Family–school–community partnerships

6. Critical, Decolonial, and Postcolonial Perspectives

• Decolonizing early childhood education and research
• Postcolonial childhoods
• Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies
• Critiques of universal models of child development
• Reconsidering imported ECE policies and pedagogies
• Knowledge production and power in global ECE research
• Alternative conceptualizations of childhood and development

7. Sustainability, Resilience, and Global Challenges

• Early childhood and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Climate change and young children
• Disaster preparedness and resilience
• Environmental sustainability in ECE
• Early childhood in humanitarian contexts
• Community resilience and child development

Types of Manuscripts

JGSEC welcomes:

• Original research articles
• Systematic literature reviews and scoping reviews
• Conceptual and theoretical papers
• Comparative studies across Global South contexts
• Policy analyses
• Methodological papers
• Critical and decolonial scholarship

We welcome quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and theoretically grounded conceptual approaches.

What We Are Looking For

Manuscripts should demonstrate at least one of the following contributions:

• Generate new knowledge from Global South contexts;
• Provide strong empirical evidence concerning children aged 0–8 years;
• Develop or critically examine theories, concepts, or methodologies relevant to Global South childhoods;
• Present locally grounded innovations with potential relevance beyond the immediate setting;
• Challenge assumptions underlying dominant Global North ECE models;
• Provide evidence with implications for policy, practice, governance, or sustainability.

We especially encourage submissions from early-career researchers, researchers from underrepresented contexts, Indigenous scholars, practitioners, and collaborative research teams across Global South institutions.

Submission

Authors are invited to submit manuscripts through the journal's online submission system.

All submissions will undergo editorial screening and rigorous peer review. Manuscripts must be original, not previously published, and not under consideration by another journal.

Journal link: https://jgsec.ppjpaud.org/index.php/jgsec/index

Join the Conversation on Global South Early Childhood

JGSEC seeks to build an international scholarly community in which knowledge about young children is not only produced about the Global South, but also produced from, with, and for the Global South.

We invite scholars and practitioners to contribute research that makes local knowledge visible, strengthens evidence for equitable early childhood systems, and rethinks how childhood is understood across diverse cultural and socioeconomic contexts.

Submit your manuscript and help shape the future of early childhood research in the Global South.