I completed my doctoral research in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. My research is primarily on the well known educational philosophy of the Reggio Emilia approach – a progressive educational philosophy for young children born in Italy after the Second World War in response to the Nazi-Fascist Regime. I have also been an early childhood teacher and currently I direct a Jewish Preschool in Berkeley, California, called Gan Shalom Preschool.
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Beatrice J.V. Balfour
Selected journal publications:
Balfour, Beatrice J. V.“‘Wounded Memory’, Post-war Gender Conflict and Narrative Identity: Reinterpreting Reggio Emilia Schools Origin Stories”. History of Education. 2017.
Balfour, Beatrice J. V. “‘Let’s Make Schools a Daily Practice of Democracy’ Change and Continuity in Gendered Visions of Citizenship in Municipal Preschools in Reggio Emilia (1969 – 1990s)”. [Special Issue] History of Education and Children’s Literature. 2016.
Balfour, Beatrice J. V. “Utopias”. Queer Studies and Education: Critical Concepts for the Twenty-first Century. Ed. W. Pinar, N. Rodriguez, U. Whitlock, E. Broclenbrough, and J. Ingrey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Balfour, Beatrice J.V. “Feminist Tales of Teaching and Resistance: Reimagining Gender in Early Childhood Education”. [Special Issue] Gender and Education. 2015.
Other publications:
Beatrice J.V. Balfour and James Underwood, “What is it like to have a mentorship 10,000 miles apart? A Thinkpiece on establishing a long-distance mentor/mentee relationship”. CollectivED. Forthcoming. February 2019.
As Gan Shalom Preschool Director, since February 2018, I have been keeping a blog of the school’s events and activities. I wrote a number of the articles on the school’s blog, which can be found here.
Beatrice J.V. Balfour, Alejandra Manena Vilanova. “How to make a basic school design pedagogically interesting? Learning from a case in Ecuador.” Architecture and Education, February 28, 2018.
Alejandra Bueno, Alejandra Manena Vilanova Buendía, Beatrice Jane Vittoria Balfour, Sebastiano Longaretti. “La Dimension Estetica en la Unidad Educativa – UNAE”. REVISTA MAMAKUNA 7. p. 8-17.
Mentions:
‘Gan Shalom director Beatrice Balfour and Derblich-Milea are also producing a video series for the general public on some of the topics the workshop covered, like not asking a child a yes-or-no question if “no” is not an option (when you need them to buckle their seatbelt in a car, for example). It’s an approach to consent that touches on a range of situations. “It’s a wider approach, which is why we can do that kind of work in preschools,” Balfour said.’
Pensieri di Bea 