“Unintended Consequences”—A Life in Early Childhood Education: An Interview with Bernard Spodek

ECRP associate editor Jean Mendoza met with Dr. Bernard Spodek, Professor Emeritus of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in December 2008 in his home in Champaign, Illinois, USA. Dr. Spodek's contributions to early childhood education have spanned six decades, during which his teaching, mentoring, and writing have influenced many around the world who are working in the field today. It all began in the 1950s, as he tells ECRP, when as an undergraduate psychology student, he observed and interacted with young children in a progressive New York City day school. Since then, he comments, a "series of unintended consequences" took him from that classroom to a variety of leadership roles.