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European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2007
ISSN 1350-293X (print)/ISSN 1752-1807 (online)/07/010005–16
© 2007 EECERA
DOI: 10.1080/13502930601046620
Bringing politics into the nursery: early
childhood education as a democratic
practice
Peter Moss*
Institute of Education University of London, UK
Taylor and Francis LtdRECR_A_204566.sgm10.1080/13502930601046620European Early Childhood Education Research Journal1350-293X (print)/1752-1807 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis151000000March 2007PeterMossPeter.moss@ioe.ac.uk
This paper explores the possibility that early childhood institutions can be, first and foremost, places
of political practice—and specifically of democratic political practice. The case for the primacy of
democratic political practice in early childhood institutions is made more urgent by two develop-
ments apparent in many countries today: the growth of policy interest in early childhood education,
leading to an expansion of services, and the need to revive democratic politics. As well as bringing
democratic practice into the nursery, what this would mean and what conditions might enable it,
the paper also considers democratic practice at other levels: not just the institutional, but also the
national or federal, the regional and the local, and how each level can create ‘democratic space’ at
other levels. The paper ends by considering four issues related to democracy in early childhood
education including paradigmatic diversity and the European level.
Dans cet article nous précisons l’idée selon laquelle les institutions de la petite enfance peuvent être
avant tout des lieux de pratique politique, et en particulier de pratique démocratique. La question
de la primauté de la pratique démocratique dans les institutions de la petite enfance devient urgente
en raison de deux phénomènes présents aujourdh’ui dans de nombreux pays : l’intérêt politique
grandissant pour l’éducation des jeunes enfants qui mène à une augmentation des services de la
petite enfance, et le besoin de ranimer les politiques démocratiques. Cet article porte sur la pratique
démocratique dans les services de la petite enfance, sa signification et les conditions qui la rendent
possible, mais aussi à d’autres niveaux : pas seulement au niveau institutionel mais aussi au niveau
national ou fédéral, régional et local, en se demandant comment chaque niveau peut créer de
l’’espace démocratique’ à d’autres niveaux. Il se termine avec quatre questions liées à la démocratie
dans l’éducation de la petite enfance, dont le paradigme de la diversité et le niveau de l’Europe.
Es wird die Möglichkeit erörtert, wie frühpädagogische Einrichtungen vor allem auch Orte politis-
cher Praxis sein können – und insbesondere demokratischer politischer Praxis. Den Vorrang
demokratischer politischer Praxis in frühpädagogischen Einrichtungen zu thematisieren, ist aufgr-
und zweier aktueller Entwicklungen in vielen Ländern dringlicher geworden: das Anwachsen von
*Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education University of London, 27–28 Woburn
Square, London WC1H 0AA, UK. Email: Peter.moss@ioe.ac.uk
6 P. Moss
politischem Interesse in der Frühpädagogik, das zu einer Ausweitung des Angebotes geführt hat,
und die Notwendigkeit demokratische Politik wieder zu beleben. Außer dem, was das Hineintragen
demokratischer Praxis in den Kindergarten bedeutet und welche Bedingungen dies ermöglichen,
befasst sich der Beitrag auch mit demokratischer Praxis auf anderen Ebenen, nämlich neben der
institutionellen Ebene mit der nationalen oder föderalen Ebene, der regionalen und der lokalen
Ebene, sowie damit, wie jede einzelne Ebene ,demokratischen Raum’ auf anderen Ebenen schaffen
kann. Der Beitrag schließt mit der Betrachtung von vier Fragen zu Demokratie in der Bildung der
frühen Kindheit einschließlich der paradigmatischen Diversity und der europäischen Ebene.
Este artículo explora la posibilidad que las instituciones parvularias puedan ser, en primer lugar y
sobre todo, lugares de prácticas políticas – y especialmente de prácticas políticas democráticas. La
necesidad de una primacía de las prácticas políticas democráticas en las instituciones parvularias
adquiere urgencia a partir de dos desarrollos presentes hoy día en muchos países: el creciente interés
gubernamental en la educación parvularia, conducente a una expansión de los servicios; y la
necesidad de revitalizar las políticas democráticas. Junto con la introducción de las practicas
democráticas en las guarderías, lo que esto significaría y cuales condiciones se requieren, el articulo
también considera las prácticas democráticas en otros niveles: no solo el institucional, sino también
el nacional o federal, el regional y el local, y como cada nivel puede crear “espacios democráticos”
para otros niveles. El artículo finaliza considerando cuatro temas relacionados con la democracia en
la educación parvularia infancia incluyendo la diversidad paradigmática y el nivel europeo.
Keywords: citizenship; democratic practice; early childhood institutions; nursery;
political practice
A recently published book, entitled Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education,
begins with the following words:
This book is about a possibility for institutions for children and young people…The possi-
bility is that these institutions can be understood, first and foremost, as forums, spaces or
sites for ethical and political practice. (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, pp. 1–2)
This paper explores part of this proposition: the possibility that institutions for
children and young people can be, first and foremost, places of political practice—
and specifically of democratic political practice. It focuses on one set of institutions,
those for children below compulsory school age. But the argument applies equally to
other types of institution, including schools for older children. The paper also uses
the term ‘early childhood education’ as shorthand for a wide range of institutions
providing education and care for young children, including nurseries, nursery
schools, kindergartens, pre-schools and children’s and family centres. In other
words, ‘education’ is treated as a broad concept that encompasses learning, care and
upbringing—‘education in its broadest sense’.
When I say that that there is a possibility that institutions for children and young
people can be, first and foremost, places of democratic political practice, I say ‘possi-
bility’ to emphasise that this understanding is a choice we, as citizens, can make.
There is nothing inevitable about it: there is more than one way in which we can think
about and provide these institutions. It is possible for them to be understood as places
of democratic practice. But there are other possibilities.
Early childhood institutions can, for example, be thought of as places, first and
foremost, for technical practice: places where society can apply powerful human
Bringing politics into the nursery 7
technologies to children to produce predetermined outcomes. In this respect they
form part of what Allan Luke describes as an ‘internationally rampant vision of
schooling, teaching and learning based solely on systemic efficacy at the measurable
technical production of human capital’ (Luke, 2005, p. 12). Or, to take another
example, they can be thought of as businesses competing in a private market, offering
a commodity to parents-as-consumers.
These understandings are both very prominent in England. The key question asked
of early childhood education is the supremely technical one: ‘what works?’ While the
government’s recent action plan for implementing its ten-year strategy for childcare
is explicitly based on a market approach (English Department for Education and
Skills/Department for Work and Pensions, 2006a). It speaks of the need ‘to develop
in every area a thriving childcare market which will respond to parents’ needs’; of
‘delivery through the market’ and of how local authorities will have ‘to play an active
role in understanding the way the local childcare market is working’ and help ‘the
market work more effectively’. There is no reference to ‘democracy’.
The case for democratic practice
Why is democratic practice so important, generally and in early childhood educa-
tion? The case can be put in a nutshell. Democratic participation is an important
criterion of citizenship: it is a means by which children and adults can participate
with others in shaping decisions affecting themselves, groups of which they are
members and the wider society. It is also a means of resisting power and its will to
govern, and the forms of oppression and injustice that arise from the unrestrained
exercise of power. Last but not least, democracy creates the possibility for diversity
to flourish. By so doing, it offers the best environment for the production of new
thinking and new practice.
The case for the primacy of democratic political practice in early childhood insti-
tutions is, in my opinion, made more urgent by two developments apparent in many
countries today. First, there is the growth of policy interest in early childhood educa-
tion, leading to an expansion of services. The question, therefore, of what we think
early childhood institutions are for, what purposes they serve in our societies, is
becoming very pressing.
Especially in the English-language world, the answer—the rationale for action—is
predominantly technical and consumerist. As already mentioned, early childhood
institutions are readily seen as places to govern children through applying increasingly
powerful human technologies and as suppliers of a commodity to be traded in a child-
care market. This understanding of early childhood services is produced by what has
been termed by Dahlberg and Moss (2005) an Anglo-American discourse, a
discourse that is instrumental in rationality, technical in practice and inscribed with
certain values: individual choice and competitiveness, certainty and universality. This
discourse has another feature that is at odds with an idea of democratic practice: it is
inherently totalising. It cannot understand that it may be just one way of seeing and
understanding, that there could be other ways of practising and evaluating early
8 P. Moss
childhood, that there might be more than one right answer to any question, that it is
just one of many perspectives.
If this discourse was limited to the English-speaking world, it would be serious. But
its aspirations are wider: it is increasingly dominant elsewhere, as can be judged by
the spread of its favoured vocabulary, terms like ‘quality’ and ‘outcomes’. It is an
example of what Santos (2004) refers to as ‘hegemonic globalisation’ that is ‘the
successful globalisation of a particular local and culturally-specific discourse to the
point that it makes universal truth claims and “localises” all rival discourses’ (p. 149).
What enables this discourse to aspire to global dominance is the spread of the
English-language and of neo-liberal values and beliefs.
Neo-liberalism seeks to de-politicise life, to reduce everything to questions of
money value and calculation, management and technical practice. It prefers technical
to critical questions and, under its influence, we are seeing the emergence of what
Clarke refers to as ‘managerialised politics’ in a ‘managerial state’:
The problems which the managerial state is intended to resolve derive from contradictions
and conflicts in the political, economic and social realms. But what we have seen is the
managerialisation of these contradictions: they are redefined as ‘problems to be managed’.
Terms such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’, ‘performance’ and ‘quality’ depoliticise a
series of social issues … and thus displace real political and policy choices into managerial
imperatives. (Clarke, 1998, p. 174)
This leads to my second argument for the contemporary importance of democratic
practice for early childhood institutions. The process of depoliticisation in public life
can be seen as part of a wider process: democracy, or I should say the established
institutions and practices of representative democracy, is in a sickly state. Fewer
people vote, elected representatives are held in low esteem, whole sections of the
community feel estranged from mainstream politics while many others feel cynical or
disinterested, and undemocratic political forces are on the rise. Yet at the same time,
all is not gloom and doom; there are reasons for hope. Alienation from more tradi-
tional and formal democratic politics—politicians, political parties and political insti-
tutions—is matched by growing interest and engagement in other forms of
democratic politics, including direct engagement in movements active on particular
issues, such as the environment or globalisation.
The challenge is both to revive traditional or formal democratic politics and to
exploit the interest in alternative forms of democratic politics through developing new
places and new subjects for the practice of democratic politics—including early
childhood institutions and issues that are central to the everyday lives of the children
and adults who participate in these institutions.
Democracy at many levels
The first part of this article’s title refers to ‘bringing politics into the nursery’. But the
second part—‘early childhood education as democratic practice’—implies demo-
cratic practice at several levels: not just the institutional, the nursery, but also the
national or federal, the regional and the local. Each level has responsibility for certain
Bringing politics into the nursery 9
choices: and it is important to make clear at this point that I use the word ‘choice’ to
mean the democratic process of collective decision-making, to reclaim it from the
neo-liberals’ usage of ‘choice’ as decision-making by individual consumers. As a
recent report into Britain’s democracy—the Power Inquiry—puts it:
We do not believe that the consumer and the citizen are one and the same, as the new
market-driven technocracy seems to assume. Consumers act as individuals, making deci-
sions largely on how an issue will affect themselves and their families. Citizenship implies
membership of a collective where decisions are taken not just in the interest of the individ-
ual but for the collective as a whole or for a significant part of that collective. (Power
Inquiry, 2006, p. 169)
The choices made at each level should be democratic, the consequence of democratic
political practice. But each level should also support democratic practice at more local
levels, ensuring those more local levels have important decisions to make and are
supported in so doing—in other words, creating ‘democratic space’ and conditions
for active democratic practice.
What is the democratic space at national or federal level? What democratic choices
should be made there? The task here is to provide a national framework of entitle-
ments, expectations and values that express democratically agreed national objectives
and beliefs; and to provide the material conditions to make these a reality and to
enable other levels to implement them and to practice democracy. This framework
needs to be both clear and strong, without smothering regional or local diversity. To
take some examples, it means: a clear entitlement to access to services for children as
citizens (in my view from 12 months of age), together with a funding system that
enables all children to exercise their entitlement; a clear statement that early
childhood services are a public good and responsibility, not a private commodity; a
framework curriculum that defines broad values and goals but allows local interpre-
tation; a fully integrated early childhood policy, the responsibility of one government
department; a well educated and well paid workforce for all young children (at least
half of whom are graduates); and active policies to reduce poverty and inequality.
An interesting contrast can be made here between my own country, England, and
the Nordic countries. Since 1997, government in England has taken early childhood
far more seriously then ever before. A number of important developments have taken
place, including the integration of responsibility for all early childhood services within
the Department for Education and the development of Children’s Centres, an inte-
grated form of provision. A curriculum has also been introduced.
But this is very far from the framework type referred to above, and adopted in
Nordic countries: it does not support democratic practice.
The existing curriculum for 3- to 5-year-olds, running to 128 pages, is highly
prescriptive and linked to more than 60 early learning goals (QCA, 2000). A new
curriculum, to cover children from birth to 5, has been published in draft form and is
the subject of consultation (English Department for Education and Skills/Department
for Work and Pensions, 2006b). This is again long, detailed and prescriptive. It
contains, one overseas commentator has calculated, over 1500 pieces of specific
advice to teachers, some in the form of directives, others pointing out specific
10 P. Moss
developmental milestones that workers should attend to. Rather than broad princi-
ples, values and goals, open to interpretation by trusted professionals, as in the Nordic
countries, the draft curriculum comes across as a manual for technicians: it creates no
‘democratic space’ and gives no encouragement to democratic practice.
Another contrast is apparent between the curricula in England and the Nordic
states. Wagner (2006) argues that democracy is central to the Nordic concept of the
good childhood and notes, in support of this contention, that ‘official policy docu-
ments and curriculum guidelines in the Nordic countries acknowledge a central
expectation that preschools and schools will exemplify democratic principles and that
children will be active participants in these democratic environments’ (p. 292). Some
national examples illustrate the point. Near its beginning, the Swedish pre-school
curricula (just 19 pages in its English translation) discusses ‘fundamental values’ of
the pre-school, beginning this section with a clear statement: ‘democracy forms the
foundation of the pre-school. For this reason all pre-school activity should be carried
out in accordance with fundamental democratic values’ (Swedish Ministry of Educa-
tion and Science, 1998). The new Norwegian curriculum (34 pages) speaks of
kindergartens laying ‘the foundation for … active participation in democratic society’
(Norwegian Ministry, 2006). This objective is echoed in the Icelandic national curric-
ulum guide for pre-schools (47 pages), which asserts that one of the principle objec-
tives of pre-school education is ‘to lay the foundations to enable [children] to be
independent, reflective, active and responsible citizens in a democratic society’; the
guide adds later that ‘a child should be taught democratic practices in preschool’
(Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2003, pp. 7, 18).
Yet the existing or recently drafted English early years curricula contain no
reference to democracy, despite their much greater length. Thus while the Nordic
curricula explicitly recognise democracy as a value, the English curricula do not. Here
are clear examples of how national level decision-making can support democracy at
other levels, through policy documents that state unequivocally that democracy is a
nationally agreed value—and that create ‘democratic space’ at more local levels for
democratic interpretation of national policy, in this case of national curricula. Of
course, in England, there are many instances of individual institutions that practise
democracy. But the absence of democracy from key national policy documents
reflects the priority given to technical practice and managerialised politics and the
consequences of understanding large swathes of early childhood education as busi-
nesses selling a commodity.
I shall move now to the local level of government. In doing so, I am conscious of
omitting a level of provincial, state or regional government that is important in many
countries, for example Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain and the United States. A
full discussion of democratic practice in early childhood education would need to take
account of this level of government, located between national and local. However,
this article will skirt around it on grounds of space but also lack of personal knowledge
coming, as I do, from the most centralised country in Europe.
I have already suggested that a democratic system involves each level leaving space
for democratic practice at other levels. This means strong decentralisation to the local
Bringing politics into the nursery 11
level (Power Inquiry, 2006). What does democratic practice in early childhood insti-
tutions involve at this level?
Some years ago, I visited an Italian city with a rich experience in early childhood
education. The head of the services in this city—not, as it happens, Reggio Emilia—
described their work over 30 years as a ‘local cultural project of childhood’. This term
has stayed with me, because it captures what democratic practice at its best and most
active can mean and achieve in a local authority or commune or municipality. It
captures that idea of political commitment, citizen participation and collective deci-
sion-making that may enable a community to take responsibility for its children and
their education (in its broadest sense): responsibility not just for providing services
but for how they are understood, for the purposes they serve in that community and
for the pedagogical practice that goes on within them. Some other Italian communes
(including, but not only, Reggio) have undertaken such collective, democratic
ventures, and no doubt there are examples in other countries.
There are other ways of thinking about such local projects: as Utopian action or
social experimentation or community research and action. What these terms all have
in common is an idea of the commune creating a space for democratic enquiry and
dialogue from which a collective view of the child and her relationship to the commu-
nity is produced and local policy, practice and knowledge develops. This in turn is
always open to democratic evaluation and new thinking. In some cases, such projects
may be actively encouraged by national levels of government; in others, such as Italy,
they may be made possible be a weak national government and local governments
with strong democratic traditions, willing and able to use space made available to
them by default not intention.
How local cultural projects of childhood can be actively encouraged, what other
conditions they need to flourish and what structures and processes may sustain
them are all important subjects for research into democratic practice in early child-
hood education. Nor should we expect that these projects can happen in all local
areas—you cannot legislate for them. But even where they do not happen, demo-
cratic practice can still play an important part at local government level. Local
authorities should have an important role in interpreting national frameworks such
as curricula documents. They can affirm the importance of democracy as a value,
and they can support democracy in the nursery. They can also foster other condi-
tions favourable to democracy: for example, actively building up collaboration
between services—networks not markets; or providing a documentation archive, the
importance of documentation in democratic practice being a theme discussed
below.
Finally, I want to consider democratic practice in the early childhood institution
itself: bringing politics into the nursery—or the crèche, preschool, kindergarten, nurs-
ery school or any of the other terms we use to describe settings for collective early
childhood education. The starting point needs to be how we imagine, construct or
understand this institution: what do we think the nursery is? I have already mentioned
two common understandings, at least in the English-speaking world: the early
childhood institution as an enclosure where technology can be applied to produce
12 P. Moss
predetermined outcomes (the metaphor is the factory); and the early childhood
institution as business, selling a commodity to consumers.
But there are many other understandings, some of which are more productive of
democratic practice: in particular, the early childhood institution as a public forum in
civil society or as a place of encounter and dialogue between citizens, from which many
possibilities can emerge, some expected, others not, and most productive when rela-
tionships are governed by democratic practice. This image is richly expressed in For
a New Public Education System, a declaration launched in summer 2005 at the 40th
Rosa Sensat Summer School in Barcelona: the term ‘school’ here is used as a generic
term to cover institutions for all children, both of and under compulsory school age.
In the new public education system, the school must be a place for everyone, a meeting
place in the physical and also social, cultural and political sense of the word. A forum or
site for meeting and relating, where children and adults meet and commit to something,
where they can dialogue, listen and discuss, in order to share meanings: it is a place of infi-
nite cultural, linguistic, social, aesthetic, ethical, political and economic possibilities. A
place of ethical and political praxis, a space for democratic learning. A place for research
and creativity, coexistence and pleasure, critical thought and emancipation. (Associació de
Mestres Rosa Sensat, 2005, p. 10)
The early childhood institution in which democratic politics, along with ethics, is first
practice creates one of the new spaces that is needed if democracy is to be renewed.
In particular, it offers democratic practice that is not representative (through electing
representatives) but direct: the rule of all by all. This space offers opportunities for all
citizens, younger and older, to participate—be they children or parents, practitioners
or politicians, or indeed any other local citizen. Topics ignored or neglected in tradi-
tional politics can be made the subjects of democratic practice.
Bringing democratic politics into the nursery means citizens engaging in at least
four types of activity. First, decision-making about the purposes, the practices and the
environment of the nursery. Second, evaluation of pedagogical work through partici-
patory methods. In the book Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care
(Dahlberg et al., 1999), the authors contrast ‘quality’ as a technical language of
evaluation with a democratic language: ‘meaning making’. Third, contesting dominant
discourses, what Foucault terms regimes of truth, which seek to shape our subjectivi-
ties and practices through their universal truth claims and their relationship with
power. This political activity seeks to make core assumptions and values contestable.
Yeatman (1994) refers to this third activity as ‘postmodern politics’ and offers
some examples: a politics of epistemology, contesting modernity’s idea of knowledge;
a politics of representation, about whose perspectives have legitimacy; and a politics
of difference, which contests those groups claiming a privileged position of objectivity
on a contested subject. But we could extend the areas opened up to politics, that are
re-politicised as legitimate subjects for inclusive political dialogue and contestation:
the image of the child, the good life and what we want for our children; what educa-
tion can and should be; gender in the nursery and home—these and many other
subjects can be the subject of democratic engagement within the early childhood
institution, examples of bringing politics into the nursery.
Bringing politics into the nursery 13
It is through contesting dominant discourses that the fourth political activity can
emerge: opening up for change, through envisioning utopias and turning them into
utopian action. For as Foucault (1988) also notes, there is a close connection between
contesting dominant discourses, thinking differently and change: ‘as soon as one can
no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both
very urgent, very difficult and quite possible’.
Conditions for democracy
The early childhood institution as a site for democratic practice is unlikely to occur
by chance. It needs intention—a choice must be made. And it needs supportive condi-
tions. I have already referred to the importance of the image of the institution. But
other images or understandings are also important for bringing politics into the nurs-
ery; for example, the image of the child, parents and workers. The child is understood
as a competent citizen, an expert in her own life, having opinions that are worth
listening to and having the right and competence to participate in collective decision-
making. It is important to recognise, too, that children (and adults) have a hundred
languages to express themselves, and democratic practice means being able to ‘listen’
to these many languages. Parents too are seen as competent citizens ‘because they
have and develop their own experience, points of view, interpretation and ideas …
which are the fruits of their experience as parents and citizens’ (Cagliari et al., 2004,
p. 30). Workers assume what Oberhuemer (2005) has termed ‘democratic profession-
alism’, understanding their role as practitioners of democracy. While recognising that
they bring an important perspective and a relevant local knowledge to the democratic
forum, they also recognise that they do not have the truth nor privileged access to
knowledge.
Democratic practice needs certain values to be shared among the community of the
early childhood institution, for example:
● respect for diversity, which relates to the ethics of an encounter, a relational ethics
foregrounded by Dahlberg and Moss (2005) in their discussion of ethics in early
childhood education;
● recognition of multiple perspectives and diverse paradigms—that there is more
than one answer to most questions and that there are many ways of viewing and
understanding the world, a point to which I shall return;
● welcoming curiosity, uncertainty and subjectivity—and the responsibility that they
require of us;
● critical thinking, which in the words of Nikolas Rose is ‘a matter of introduc-
ing a critical attitude towards those things that are given to our present
experience as if they were timeless, natural, unquestionable: to stand against
the maxims of one’s time, against the spirit of one’s age, against the current of
received wisdom … [it is a matter] of interrupting the fluency of the
narratives that encode that experience and making them stutter’ (Rose, 1999,
p. 20).
14 P. Moss
The importance of such values for fostering democratic practice is captured in these
words by three pedagogistas from Reggio Emilia, on the subject of participation in
their municipal schools:
Participation is based on the idea that reality is not objective, that culture is a constantly
evolving product of society, that individual knowledge is only partial; and that in order to
construct a project, everyone’s point of view is relevant in dialogue with those of others,
within a framework of shared values. The idea of participation is founded on these concepts:
and in our opinion, so, too, is democracy itself. (Cagliari et al., 2004, p. 29)
As well as shared understandings and values, democratic practice in early childhood
institutions needs certain material conditions and tools. A well-qualified workforce,
educated to be democratic professionals, is one important example. Another may be
the role of critical friend, such as the pedagogista of northern Italy, an experienced
educator working with a small number of centres to support dialogue and critical
thought about pedagogical practice. A third example is pedagogical documentation,
by which practice and learning processes are made visible and then subject to critical
thought, dialogue, reflection, interpretation and, if necessary, democratic evaluation
and decision-making.
Pedagogical documentation has a central role to play in many facets of the early
childhood institution: evaluation, professional development, research—and demo-
cratic practice. Malaguzzi saw it in this democratic light, as his biographer Alfredo
Hoyuelos writes:
[Documentation] is one of the keys to Malaguzzi’s philosophy. Behind this practice, I
believe, is the ideological and ethical concept of a transparent school and transparent
education … A political idea also emerges, which is that what schools do must have public
visibility … Documentation in all its different forms also represents an extraordinary tool
for dialogue, for exchange, for sharing. For Malaguzzi it means the possibility to discuss
and to dialogue ‘everything with everyone’ (teachers, auxiliary staff, cooks, families,
administrators and citizens … [S]haring opinions by means of documentation presupposes
being able to discuss real, concrete things—not just theories or words, about which it is
possible to reach easy and naïve agreement. (Hoyuelos, 2004, p. 7)
Carlina Rinaldi also speaks of documentation as democratic practice: ‘Sharing the
documentation means participation in a true act of democracy, sustaining the culture
and visibility of childhood, both inside and outside the school: democratic participa-
tion, or “participant democracy”, that is a product of exchange and visibility’
(Rinaldi, 2005, p. 59).
Documentation today is widely practised in various forms and for various purposes.
An example with which I am very familiar is the Mosaic approach developed by my
colleague Alison Clark. Inspired by pedagogical documentation, the Mosaic approach
has been used for a range of purposes, including enabling the participation by young
children in the design of new buildings and outdoor spaces. Here is yet another example
of how pedagogical documentation is a key tool for democratic practice, in this case
young children’s contribution to decision-making (Clark, 2005; Clark & Moss, 2005).
It is important to keep in mind that pedagogical documentation is not child
observation; it is not a means of getting a true picture of what children can do nor a
Bringing politics into the nursery 15
technology of normalisation. It does not, for example, assume an objective, external
truth about the child that can be recorded and accurately represented. It adopts
instead the values of subjectivity and multiplicity: it can never be neutral, being
always perspectival (Dahlberg et al., 1999). Understood in this way, as a means for
exploring and contesting different perspectives, pedagogical documentation not only
becomes a means of resisting power, including dominant discourses, but also a means
of fostering democratic practice.
Time precludes discussing other conditions and tools for democratic practice, apart
from flagging up what seems to me a major issue: time. Democratic practice in the
nursery, indeed anywhere, takes time—and time is in short supply today when we are
so unceasingly busy. A strange feature of English policy in early childhood, but also
in compulsory schooling, is the emphasis given to ‘parental involvement’ when parents
appear never to have been busier. So on the one hand, policy values employment for
fathers and mothers; while at the same time, policy values parents being involved in
their children’s education and the services they attend. There is an interesting tension
here—although less so than might at first appear as involvement is primarily under-
stood in policy in terms of parents reinforcing taken-for-granted objectives and targets:
involvement understood as critical democratic practice is likely to make more demands
on time. So far more thought needs to be given to the question of time, and how we
might be able to redistribute it across a range of activities and relationships. Ulrich
Beck, for example, addresses this when he raises the concept of ‘public work’ that
would provide ‘a new focus of activity and identity that will revitalize the democratic
way of life’ (Beck, 1998, p. 60) and suggests various ways of paying for public work.
Four concluding observations
I want to conclude by making four observations on my theme of early childhood
education as a democratic practice—or that this is a possibility. First, establishing
democracy as a central value in early childhood institutions is, in my view, incompat-
ible with understanding these institutions as businesses and adopting a market
approach to service development. Businesses, or at least those owned by an individual
or company, may of course want to listen to their ‘customers’ and take their views into
account; they may even exercise some social responsibility. But they cannot allow
democratic practice to be first practice because their primary responsibility is to their
owners or shareholders; business decisions cannot be made democratically. Similarly,
a system of early childhood services based on choices made by individual consumers
is fundamentally at odds with one that values collective decision-making by citizens.
The Power Inquiry draws the distinction clearly: ‘Individual decisions made on behalf
of oneself and one’s family cannot substitute for mass deliberation in the public
realm—which is an absolutely crucial process in a democratic and open society’
(Power Inquiry, 2006, p. 159).
Second, democracy is risky. It can pose a threat not only to the powerful but also
to those who are weak. People come to the democratic process not only with different
perspectives, but also with different interests and power; conflict is likely, in which the
16 P. Moss
weaker may lose out. Inequality then may increase, not lessen. An argument against
decentralisation, that the English government might well make in defence of a highly
centralised and prescriptive approach to policy, is that strong central regulation of
early childhood education is necessary to ensure equality of treatment for all children;
without it, you open the floodgates to inequality, risking some children getting far
worse provision than others—and with those from poorer backgrounds being most at
risk. There is some truth in this, the case for less centralisation and more democratic
practice being weaker in an unequal society where early childhood education and its
workforce are less developed and have suffered from long-term public disinterest and
underinvestment.
There is no final and definitive answer to this dilemma. The tense relationship
between unity and decentralisation, standardisation and diversity is long-standing
and never ultimately resolvable—it is an eternal dialectic, a relationship in constant
flux and always a contestable political issue. As implied above, the relationship needs
deciding in relation to current conditions—but also in relation to where you want to
be. Even if you judge the current situation calls for strong centralisation, you may
decide this is not where you want to be in the longer term. Then the question is what
conditions are needed to move towards more decentralisation and democracy. This
process of movement from centralisation to decentralisation can be observed in the
history of early childhood education in Sweden, which has moved from a rather
centralised and standardised approach, to one today that is strongly decentralised.
Even then, the relationship must always be under critical scrutiny. How is decentral-
isation working in practice? Who is benefiting and who is losing? How can democratic
practice be better balanced with concerns for equitable treatment?
My third observation concerns the subject of paradigm. I proposed earlier that
recognition of diverse paradigms is an important value for democratic practice. But
such recognition is rare today. Instead, the early childhood world faces a deeply trou-
bling, but largely unspoken, issue: the paradigmatic divide between the majority (be
they policy-makers, practitioners or researchers) who are situated within a positivistic
or modernistic paradigm, and the minority who situate themselves within a paradigm
variously described as postmodern, postpositivist or postfoundational. The former
espouse ‘the modern idea of truth as reflective of nature … [and believe] that the
conflict of interpretations can be mediated or resolved in such a way as to provide a
single coherent theory which corresponds to the way things are’ (Babich et al., 1995,
p. 1). While the latter adopt ‘postmodern questions of interpretation, valuation, and
perspectivalism … [and] an infinitely interpretable reality where diverse, divergent,
complementary, contradictory, and incommensurable interpretations contest each
other’ (ibid.). For the former, early childhood education is progressing inexorably to
its apotheosis, based on the increasing ability of modern science to provide indisput-
able evidence of what works. While for the latter, early childhood education offers the
prospect of infinite possibilities informed by multiple perspectives, local knowledges,
provisional truths.
Each side has little to do with the other. Communication is restricted because the
modernists do not recognise paradigm, taking their paradigm and its assumptions and
Bringing politics into the nursery 17
values for granted. While the postmodernists recognise paradigm but see little virtue
in the paradigm of modernity or at least have made the choice not to situate
themselves within that paradigm. The one group, therefore, see no choice to make;
the other has made a choice, which involves situating themselves beyond modernity.
Communications issued from one camp are dismissed by the other as invalid,
unintelligible, uninteresting or incredible.
Does this distant and non-communicative relationship matter? Is it not the role of
the postfoundationalists to develop alternative discourses and critical thinking, rather
than fraternise with those with whom they appear to have nothing in common? And
shouldn’t modernists focus their attentions on what they believe in, the production of
true knowledge? I think it does matter. The absence of dialogue and debate impover-
ishes early childhood and weakens democratic politics. ‘Mainstream’ policy and prac-
tice are isolated from an important source of new and different thought, policy-
makers having little or no awareness of a growing movement that questions much of
what they take (or have been advised to take) for granted. A dominant discourse is
given too much uncritical space and increasingly undermines democracy by the
process of depoliticisation already mentioned. Rather than such a discourse being
regarded as a perspective privileging certain interests, it comes to be regarded as the
only true account, the only questions being about the most effective methods of
implementation. In this situation, policy and practice choices are reduced to narrow
and impoverished technical questions of the ‘what works?’ variety (for a fuller discus-
sion of this important issue, see Moss, forthcoming 2007).
Finally, I want to mention one more level where democratic practice is needed, in
addition to the national, regional, local and institutional: the European. The Euro-
pean Union (EU) has a long history of involvement in early childhood policy and
provision, though it has tended to talk rather narrowly about ‘childcare’ since its
interest has mainly arisen from labour market policy goals (including gender equality
in employment). Here are two recent examples of this involvement, and a third where
early childhood education should appear—but does not.
In 2002, EU governments agreed, at a meeting in Barcelona, that ‘Member States
[should strive] to provide childcare by 2010 to at least 90% of children between 3
years old and mandatory school age and at least 33% of children under 3 years of age’.
This purely quantitative target says nothing about the organisation or content of these
places; no reference, for example, is made to the criteria agreed 10 years earlier by
member state governments when they adopted a Council Recommendation on
Childcare, which set out a range of principles and objectives to guide the qualitative
development of services. Instead, member states are left to pursue the Barcelona
targets ‘in line with [national] patterns of provision’.
In April 2006, the so-called Bolkestein Directive—or the Services Directive, to give
it its proper name—was amended substantially by the European Council and the
European Parliament, dropping the country of origin principle and excluding the
health and social services sectors (including childcare). Without these amendments,
this proposal for European legislation from the European Commission would have
permitted private providers to set up nurseries in other countries, applying the
18 P. Moss
regulatory standards from their own country, so risking a process of levelling down to
the lowest common denominator (Szoc, 2006).
In July 2006, the European Commission issued a Communication Towards an EU
Strategy on the Rights of the Child, in which it proposes ‘to establish a comprehensive
EU strategy to effectively promote and safeguard the rights of the child in the
European Union’s internal and external policies’. The good news is that the EU has
recognised its obligation to respect children’s rights. The bad news is that the
Communication makes few concrete commitments and has nothing to say about chil-
dren’s rights in the EU’s policies on ‘childcare’, such as the Barcelona targets outlined
above, policies which until now have been mainly driven by policy goals concerned
with employment and gender equality.
With some honourable exceptions, the early childhood community in Europe has
failed to engage with these and other initiatives; we have created no European politics
of early childhood, no ‘democratic space’ for discussing policy initiatives coming from
the EU as well as creating demands for new initiatives. I do not think it possible, nor
would I want to see, a uniform European approach across all aspects of early child-
hood policy, provision and practice. But in my view it is both feasible and desirable
to work, democratically, to identify a body of agreed values, principles and objectives
for early childhood services: in short, to develop a European approach or policy on
early childhood education. As evidence in support of this contention, I would refer
you to Quality Targets in Services for Young Children, a report produced by a working
group drawn from 12 member states through a democratic process of consultation,
discussion and negotiation (EC Childcare Network, 1996). Quality Targets sets out
40 common goals achievable across Europe over a 10-year period, to implement the
principles and objectives agreed by member state governments in the 1992 Council
Recommendation on Childcare. Revisiting the document recently, I was struck by
how well it has aged, but also how it shows the potential of democratic practice for
defining a European framework for early childhood education.
During 2007, Children in Europe, a unique multi-national and multi-lingual maga-
zine, intends to stimulate a democratic debate within EU member states on whether
we should and can work towards defining a European approach to services for young
children. The intention is to put forward, for discussion and contestation, a declara-
tion proposing certain shared values and principles. Children in Europe will not be
starting from scratch but building on existing European foundations such as the
1992 Council Recommendation on Childcare and the Quality Targets, as well as the
invaluable OECD Starting Strong reports (OECD, 2001, 2006). I hope that many
others will participate in the democratic space that Children in Europe hopes to open
up, so bringing European politics into the nursery—but also the nursery into Euro-
pean politics.
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