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Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education
Abstract
The early childhood services of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy has gained worldwide interest and admiration. Drawing on the 'Reggio approach', and others, this book explores the ethical and political dimensions of early childhood services and argues the importance of these dimensions at a time when they are often reduced to technical and managerial projects, without informed consideration for what is best for the child. Extending and developing the ideas raised in Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Care and Education the successful team of authors make a wide range of complex material accessible to readers who may have little knowledge of the various important and relevant areas within philosophy, ethics, or politics, covering subjects such as: post-structural thinkers and their perspectives the history and practice of early childhood work in Reggio Emilia globalization, technological change, poverty, and environmental degradation ethical and political perspectives relevant to early childhood services from Foucault and Deleuze, to Beck, Bauman and Rose. This book presents essential ideas, theories and debates to an international audience. Those who would find this particularly useful are practitioners, trainers, students, researchers, policymakers and anyone with an interest in early childhood education.
... In the world of neoliberalism, we are forced to face never-ending competitions [1]. We repeatedly make choices and calculations for personal advantage. ...
... People are living in a world with ways of thought and discussion that are composed of various discourses or stories. Narratives enable us to make meaning and interpret the world through discourses and stories [1]. There is an innate drive in human beings to make meaning of their existence through stories [27]. ...
... Early childhood education in Hong Kong is a marketized system under keen competition. The highest quality and efficiency are guaranteed by kindergartens at the lowest price, which enables parents in Hong Kong to select the best possible kindergarten according to their preferences and budget [1]. Meanwhile, unrealistic admission requirements and examination-driven curricula in Hong Kong secondary schools [30] have led to topdown pressures on primary schools and kindergartens. ...
The previous literature has strongly emphasized the professional aspects of teacher identity in terms of knowledge and pedagogical matters. However, teachers' emotions have also been academically discussed in recent decades. The voices of kindergarten teachers are critical for reflecting on professional identities within the community of kindergarten teachers. Regrettably, in Hong Kong, kindergarten teachers have become an oppressed professional community due to the marketization of kindergartens in this neoliberal city. Therefore, this arts-based participatory study aimed to investigate teachers' identities by discovering kindergarten teachers' emotional characteristics in Hong Kong. Teachers' voice has been collected through photo narratives. Twelve in-service kindergarten teachers participated in this study; all of them worked in local kindergartens in Hong Kong. The teachers were invited individually to take a photo of an object in their daily lives and share their own stories. Altogether 1080 min of interview data were recorded. Through a series of oral narratives by members of this marginalized professional community, this study unlocked the emotions and voices of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Through a photovoice approach, the findings revealed how the teachers' personal aspects were a neglected but important part of their teacher identity.
... Are codes of ethics ethical? Some argue that the reduction of ethics into universalized moral rules favours a scientific and technical rationality for solving problems over an ethical and political response to issues encountered in daily human and more-than human relations (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Todd, 2003). I begin this article by situating code of ethics in the broader professionalization movement in early childhood education and care (ECEC). ...
... Keeping Todd's questions in mind, I build on Dahlberg and Moss's (2005) extensive discussion of the instrumentalization of ECEC through the discursive-material logics of neoliberalism and psychological theories of child development and argue that the codification of ethics in ECE completes the transformation (dematerialization) of the educator into a workertechnician. According to the Oxford English dictionary, the verb dematerialize means "to deprive of material character or qualities; to render immaterial" (Oxford University Press, n.d.). ...
... I explore this transformation in conversation with the near dystopian film Sleep Dealer written and directed by Alex Rivera (2008) and specifically through the aesthetic device of the film's imagery of nodes and node workers from which I have derived the concept of "node-ified" ethics. I draw on the following quote by Dahlberg and Moss (2005), who described the ways that ECEs are shaped by the logics of neoliberalism and return to it again and again as I pick up its threads and weave them into my argument: ...
In this conceptual article, I argue that there is a difference between codified ethics and the ethical. I begin by situating code of ethics in the broader professionalization movement in early childhood education. Drawing upon Gunilla Dahlberg and Peter Moss (2005), I discuss the dematerialization of early childhood educators (ECEs) and the instrumentalization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Ontario through the implementation of the Code of Ethics by the College of Early Childhood Education ( 2017). Thinking with Eve Tuck’s (2018) question of “How shall we live?” (p. 157), I take up a critical invitation from Sharon Todd (2003) to consider how codified ethics in education may be rethought “as a relation across difference” (p. 2). I work conceptually with the imagery of nodes from the film Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera (2008) as an aesthetic device to examine the effect of codified ethics on ECEs. Finally, in conversation with Joanna Zylinska (2014) and Tim Ingold (2011), I re-frame instrumentalized nodes/codes of ethics within the complexity of knots and meshworks to recover the ethical in early childhood education. I offer this piece as a warning that solely relying on codified ethics completes the transformation of the ECE into a worker technician and may be leading us toward a dystopian future and as a call to activism to engage in the complex ethical work required in the small everyday spaces of the early childhood classroom. Keywords: early childhood education, codified ethics, ethical, nodes, dematerialization, instrumentalization
... According to Dahlberg and Moss (2005), within our education and care system, the dominant discourse suggests that children, through technical practice, are educated to "become the future solution to our current problems" (p. vii). ...
... vii). On the other hand, recognizing other stories, noted Dahlberg and Moss (2005), contests the premise of the dominant discourse, notably embracing alternatives derived from a multitude of origins and diverse theorists. While dominant narratives claim universality and righteousness, the presence of alternative narratives serve as a source of contestation. ...
... Other narratives permit us, students, educators, and scholars, to "abandon our preconceptions" and reframe thought and knowledge as the creation of "new understandings" (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 116). Other narratives enable educators to critically think about their practices beyond complying with the fixed and reprocessed curriculum that emerges as unending theories and thoughts parroted year after year (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). Other narratives allow us to recognize that dominant narratives are just one story. ...
In this paper, we, four students with diverse social locations, explore the development of preservice educators’ professional identities as political resisters. Through our experiences in an Ontario college, we found commonality in our emerging need to resist “alarming discourses” (Whitty et al., 2020, p. 8). By dissecting and analyzing the neoliberal narrative perpetuated by our educational institution, we refused the notion of being the good ECE (Langford, 2007). Rejecting the universalism and totalism of Western European curricular and pedagogical inheritances, we set out to create a space to embrace alternative narratives to critically question our role and the expectations of our profession in a neoliberal world. This space was used for ECEC advocacy and brought together our student community, creating an opportunity to mentor while fostering human connections from our stories. Through collaboration, we reaffirm the importance of building community and reciprocal mentorship for nurturing and developing political agency within our field. We are motivated to sustain this critical space, to serve as a place of resistance for other students who question “universal truths.” Education comes from more than the diploma received. Keywords: Early childhood educators, professional identity, resistance, student advocacy, post-secondary institutions, ethics of care
... Smith's new model of childhood offers an analytical lens to examine early childhood curriculum and pedagogies for ethical practice and to understand the image of the responsible child. This analytical lens is beneficial in a field where many educators, practitioners and researchers continue to be concerned with the prevalence of neoliberal and technocratic rationality in early childhood education policy, research and practice (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005;Diaz-Diaz et al., 2019;Moss, 2014;Roberts-Holmes and Moss, 2021). For those who envision early childhood education as a site of ethical significance (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005), neoliberal and colonial narratives co-opt ethical projects grounded in principles of relationality and collectivity (Diaz-Diaz, 2021). ...
... This analytical lens is beneficial in a field where many educators, practitioners and researchers continue to be concerned with the prevalence of neoliberal and technocratic rationality in early childhood education policy, research and practice (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005;Diaz-Diaz et al., 2019;Moss, 2014;Roberts-Holmes and Moss, 2021). For those who envision early childhood education as a site of ethical significance (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005), neoliberal and colonial narratives co-opt ethical projects grounded in principles of relationality and collectivity (Diaz-Diaz, 2021). For Dahlberg and Moss (2005), an ethical approach allows children and adults 'to be able to confront dominant discourses that claim to transmit a new knowledge, and that seek to manipulate our bodies, mould our subjectivities and govern our souls' (p. ...
... For those who envision early childhood education as a site of ethical significance (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005), neoliberal and colonial narratives co-opt ethical projects grounded in principles of relationality and collectivity (Diaz-Diaz, 2021). For Dahlberg and Moss (2005), an ethical approach allows children and adults 'to be able to confront dominant discourses that claim to transmit a new knowledge, and that seek to manipulate our bodies, mould our subjectivities and govern our souls' (p. 2). ...
This article examines the curriculum and pedagogies for ethical practice in a childcare centre in Vancouver, Canada. I draw on Smith’s new model of childhood to examine narratives and practices around the ‘responsible child’ in a context where child developmental theories continue to influence pedagogical decisions. I argue that the elevation of self-regulation strategies as a pedagogical approach narrows children’s sense of responsibility to a mere individual trait. In addition, it fails to cultivate children’s interdependence and multiple relationships with humans and more-than-human others. Self-regulation-centred pedagogies also reinforce neoliberal and colonial discourses of the child anchored in human exceptionality, choice, autonomy and rationality. This article proposes that pre-service and in-service early childhood education needs to support educators in doing the analytical, embodied and reflective work to shift from educational paradigms founded in neoliberal and colonial rationalities towards an ethic that acknowledges children and educators’ interdependence and that cultivates good relations with humans and more-than-human others.
... Burrows and Wright (2020), following Harwood (2009), name these classed, gendered, ableist reiterations as biopedagogies: the pedagogical contours given to (normative, developmental, non-innocent) scientific knowledges as they become enacted in the name of health in education. The Guidelines participate in these reiterations as they center neoliberal conceptions of children as future citizens, personal responsibility, bodied legitimacy, and quantifiable educational attainment (Dahlberg and Moss 2004), and as declarations that early childhood education pedagogies must teach children the skills they need to be healthy or pedagogies that promote fundamental movement skills and fitness are crucial for children's healthy development become wrapped in affirmations of morality, care, and teleological learning that make them risky to contest. For example, the CSEP (2016b) accompaniment to the Guidelines purports that reaching the recommended sixty minutes of activity can help children "improve their health," "maintain a healthy body weight," "do better in school," "feel happier," and "have fun playing with friends" (para. ...
... Following from critical reconceptualist early years scholarship that has extricated pedagogy from universalized scientific evidence-based prescription ( Post-developmental conceptualizations of childhood begin from an appreciation of how stage-based theories of development, which claim that children reach adulthood through a series of universalized developmental milestones, privilege Euro-Western ontological and epistemological systems (Burman 2016; Dahlberg and Moss 2004;MacNaughton 2003). By constructing both childhood and development as common, linear, predictable, and stable experiences, scholars concerned with creating post-developmental pedagogies argue that Euro-Western developmental theories allow for precisely targeted education practices, which service settler colonial conceptions of citizenship, individualized responsibility, and productivity Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, and Rowan 2014;Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor 2015). ...
Thinking with a Canadian physical activity pedagogical resource, this article proposes that post-developmental early childhood education pedagogies can engage with physiological sciences beyond the instructive or instrumental relationships currently facilitated by contemporary physical activity pedagogies. To begin, I bring feminist science studies together with post-developmental pedagogies to detail how pedagogy and physiology become intertwined. I trace the tensions of weaving physiological knowledges with pedagogies, acknowledging the power-laden complexities of thinking with Euro-Western sciences in Canadian education. Finally, I work through two propositions aimed at making physiological knowledges differently entangled with the complexities of post-developmental pedagogies: (1) crafting physiological knowledges as a problem with pedagogies, while (2) deploying these physiological knowledges as pedagogical provocations that call us to engage differently with physiological knowledges.
... Detta synsätt har sitt ursprung i den dialogpedagogik som följde av Meads tankar. Särskilt aktuellt för denna studie är den undervisning som genereras när det pedagogiska förhållningssättet på en förskola drivs av en relationell syn på lärande (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Nilsson et al., 2018a). I en relationell syn betonas ömsesidig och mellanmänsklig dialog mellan barn och vuxna, vilket öppnar upp för synen på barn som medkonstruktörer av kunskap (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Nilsson et al., 2018b). ...
... Särskilt aktuellt för denna studie är den undervisning som genereras när det pedagogiska förhållningssättet på en förskola drivs av en relationell syn på lärande (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Nilsson et al., 2018a). I en relationell syn betonas ömsesidig och mellanmänsklig dialog mellan barn och vuxna, vilket öppnar upp för synen på barn som medkonstruktörer av kunskap (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Nilsson et al., 2018b). Detta innebär en holistisk syn där barns utforskande av sin egen identitet och olika kunskapsområden bildar en helhet. ...
Den här artikelns fokusområde placeras i forskningssamtalet om hur undervisning kan förstås i förskolans praktik. Mer precist undersöks kopplingen mellan förskollärares reflektioner om sin undervisning och förskolans kultur med stöd av forskningsfrågan Hur beskrivs och arrangeras undervisning i den här förskolan? Studiens deltagare representerar två arbetslag på en förskola som beskriver sig arbeta utifrån välkomnandets och lyssnandets pedagogik. Empirin består av material från ett reflektionssamtal utifrån dokumentationer som förskollärarna menar berört dem eller haft betydelse för undervisning i ett pedagogiskt hållbarhetsprojekt med fokus på växtrötter och teckenskapande. Utformningen och analysen av reflektionssamtalet utgick från kommunikation ur kulturellt förhållningssätt (Carey, 1992; Dewey, 1916) och en förståelse för förskolor som idiokulturer (Fine, 1979, 2012). Analysen resulterade i tre områden: Undervisningsprocesser i rörelse, Förskollärarnas deltagande och närvaro och Urskiljande av kunskapsområden genom lyssnande. Resultatet diskuteras genom förskolans undervisningskultur, hur läroplanen visar sig i barns göranden ochundervisningens relationer. ENGLISH ABSTRACT Teaching as listening in preschoolIn this article we focus on the ongoing research discussion concerning how the concept of teaching can be understood in preschool practice. In particular, we examine the connection between preschool teachers’ reflections on their own teaching and the culture of the preschool in which they work. This study is guided by the research question: How is teaching described and arranged for in the teachers’ preschool? The seven participating preschool teachers were drawn from two departmental teams that described themselves as working from a Pedagogy of Welcoming and Listening. The empirical materials are drawn from reflection conversations held with the preschool teachers in which the teachers discussed documentation they considered personally significant for their teaching in a recent education for sustainability project focused on play roots and semiotic production. The design and analysis of these conversations was based on cultural theories of communication (Carey, 1992; Dewey, 1916), and an understanding of preschool education as a situated cultural development process, preschools as idiocultures (Fine, 1979, 2012). Our analysis led to the description of three perspectives representative of the preschool teachers’ meaning-making in relation to teaching: Teaching processes in motion, Preschool teachers’ participation and presence, and Discernment of knowledge domains by listening to children’s actions. The result is discussed in terms of the preschool’s teaching culture, the ways in which the national preschool curriculum is manifest in the children’s actions, and the social and material relationships underpinning teaching.
... Pseudonyms are used for all settings, children, and teachers. We followed Dahlberg and Moss' (2005) ethical thinking in the research process. We adopted a relational data-collection process by engaging with children, educators, and the environment in conversations and playing. ...
This article chronicles three stories selected from a post-intentional phenomenological study conducted by the first author. The authors aim to investigate affective connections in children’s silent play by addressing three research questions: (a) How do children engage in dialogue with the teacher, their peers, and the material environment without words? (b) What emotions are produced in silent play? and (c) What changes in children’s affective connections occur through silence? We drew on the notion of intentionality in post-intentional phenomenology to illuminate meanings of the phenomenon for individuals about what they felt and experienced. With a focus on intentionality, we delved into the ways children meaningfully communicated with others and connected to the environment in their unspeaking moments. We also took on a posthuman notion of intra-actions to rethink silence as an inaudible yet sensible sound communicated between children and things. The prior studies showed that children’s silence was a mode of expression. Through storying the silent play-stories, we offered two alternative meanings of silence––intra-active communication with people and things and inaudible inner wellbeing, in addition to a mode of nonverbal expression as identified in prior studies. The findings are significant in enriching and renewing our understanding of children’s silence in inclusive ECE environments. Silence is re-defined as a mode of embodied communication and affective connections. This article invites researchers and educators to genuinely “listen” to children’s stories, even in silent play.
... Relationships between children and adults are structured, rebuilt and redefined continuously, with processes that are directly related to the formation and use of space. They are a meeting place with peers, a space of communication, exchange of views, interactions and, of course, expression of emotions and transferring cultural, social and economic information (Dahlberg and Moss 2005). ...
... Det relationella potentialitetsfältet är hela tiden genomkorsat av olika krafter och vitalitet och bär med sig oändlig potentialitet i olika situationer i förskolan som pedagoger kan välja att synliggöra och bejaka. För att intensitet och potentialitet ska kunna bli till i ett relationellt potentialitetsfält förutsätts ett aktivt lyssnande som utgår från barnens egna frågor och teorier (Dahlberg & Bloch, 2006;Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). Genom lyssnandet kan barns meningsskapande inom exempelvis naturvetenskapliga ämnesområden och hållbarhetsfrågor synliggöras. ...
I föreliggande artikel belyses utifrån en studie av förskollärares gruppreflektioner inom ett nätverk hur ett förskoledidaktiskt perspektiv på undervisning växer fram inom ett avgränsat kunskapsområde. Särskilt fokuseras hur förskollärarna lyssnar in och fångar upp barns frågor och engagemang inom naturvetenskap och hållbar utveckling. Studiens empiri innehåller tolv inspelade och transkriberade fokusgruppssamtal genomförda vid tre träffar i nätverket. I samtalen framkommer hur förskollärarna utgår från barnens inspel (frågor, framväxande teorier, ageranden) som underlag för planering och genomförande av en undervisning kring naturvetenskapliga fenomen och processer samt hållbarhetsfrågor, där estetik, lek och utforskande ses som viktiga delar i relation till ämnesinnehållsliga frågor. Med utgångspunkt från begreppet lärande som ett relationellt potentialitetsfält, som formulerats i relation till Deleuzes filosofi (se Dahlberg & Elfström, 2014), framträder i analysen av samtalen även att barns och förskollärares frågor sammanfaller, går isär och att det sker parallella processer. Det framkommer också vilken betydelse förskollärarnas ämneskunskaper har för ett fortsatt utforskande när utgångspunkten är barnens frågor ENGLISH ABSTRACT Listening to children’s questions - a didactic challengeThis article is based on a study of preschool teachers’ didactic group discussions within a network. It follows how a preschool didactic perspective on teaching emerges within a specific subject matter concerning natural science and sustainable development, with extra focus on how preschool teachers listen to and follow up children’s questions and engagement in the subject. The study is empirically based on twelve conversations in focus groups, from three meetings in the network, which were recorded and then transcribed. The conversations show how the preschool teachers take children’s input (questions, emerging theories, hypotheses, actions) as guidance for planning and carrying out the teaching of phenomena in natural science and processes where esthetics, play and exploration are seen as important parts in relation to subject related issues. With the concept learning as a relational field of potentiality (Dahlberg & Elfström, 2014) as a starting point, the study also sheds light on how and when the questions of children and preschool teachers overlap, diverge, when there are parallel processes, when and how preschool teachers latch on to children’s questions, and how participants knowledge of the subject matter affects the process.
... Formulated in this way, the practice of documentation makes listening visible because it starts from the ethical encounter between the documenter and the occasion to witness (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). It is a concretization of listening because it starts from the relational perspective and the language of the relationship. ...
The pedagogy of listening was born and developed in Reggio Emilia’s schools in northern Italy. This article analyses the pedagogy of listening in the light of the fundamental texts of the Reggio Approach literature. The aim is to explore some key concepts such as language, context, relationship, and evaluation, and also to link them to Jerome Bruner’s work and contributions. Moreover, the authors attempt to offer an in-depth view of “documentation” as the crucial tool to ground listening into the dynamics among the many educational actors involved. In the last part of the article, we underline the importance of democratic values in the Reggio Approach and in its socio-constructivist approach to active citizenship and children’s rights. Keywords: pedagogy of listening, Reggio Emilia, Bruner, psychodynamic relation, narrative, documentation
... Bu gelişmeler, Yeni Zelanda'da erken çocukluk eğitiminin kalitesini kısa bir süre içinde önemli ölçüde arttırmıştır (Blaiklock, 2010). Bu durumun bir sonucu olarak Yeni Zelanda'da erken yaşta eğitime yapılan kamu harcamaları önemli ölçüde artış göstermiştir (Cooper & Tangaere, 1994;Duhn, 2006;Moss, 1999;Moss & Dahlberg, 2005). Programın tarihsel gelişimine bakıldığında, birçok kez üzerinde değişiklikler yapıldığı görülmektedir. ...
Dünyadaki erken çocukluk eğitimi programları arasında yer alan ve Màori dilinde “dokuma halı” anlamına gelen “Te Whàriki” programı, Yeni Zelenda’nın ulusal eğitim programıdır. Programdaki “Dokuma halı” felsefesi, özgün niteliği ve benimsediği farklı kültürlerin birliği anlayışıyla, erken çocukluk eğitimine farklı bir bakış açısı getirmiştir Çocuğun öğrenme deneyimleri, içinde bulunduğu toplumdan ve toplumsal yapıyı şekillendiren kültürel anlayıştan bağımsız değildir. Bu görüşü temel alan Te Whàriki Programı’nda çocuğun eğitiminde ve çok yönlü gelişiminde kültür ve toplum;
programın temel yapısı ve sahip olduğu anlayışı şekillendiren mihenk taşı olarak kabul edilmiştir. Te Whàriki programı hakkında, ülkemizde yapılmış birkaç çalışma olmakla birlikte çok fazla tanınmayan bir programdır. Bu nedenle yapılan çalışmada, Te Whàriki Programı’nın benimsediği eğitim anlayışının geniş bir kapsam çerçevesinde değerlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Derleme makalesi olarak hazırlanan çalışmada Te Whàriki Programı’nın tarihi, felsefesi, eğitim programı, öğrenme ortamı, çocuk, öğretmen ve aile rolleri, programın güçlü ve zayıf yönleri ve program hakkındaki eleştiriler ile ilgili detaylı bilgiler çalışmanın kapsamını oluşturan öğelerdendir. Bu bağlamda Te Whàriki Programı’nın çocuğun eğitimine farklı bir bakış açısı getirmesi yanı sıra kültürel değerler, çevre ve toplum etkileşimli bir program olarak ülkemizde yapılan erken çocukluk eğitimi hizmetleri ile program çalışmalarına örnek oluşturarak katkı sunacağı düşünülmektedir.
... They gain many skills that they will use in the process of maintaining their daily lives in the relationships they will establish with their environment through pre-school institutions. Moreover, pre-school educational environments are ethical practice areas where the teachers make decisions about and for the individuals for whom they are professionally responsible in general during daily activities (Dahlberg & Moss 2004;Dunn, 2003;Vasconcelos, 2006). Within this context, it can be said that it is necessary to provide the appropriate educational environment for the children in pre-school education. ...
This study aims to examine the opinions of the preschool education teachers on ethics. The study has been designed pursuant to the qualitative and case study techniques. The study included 32 preschool education teachers during the academic year 2020-2021. The general information form and structured questionary form, prepared by the researcher, were used to collect the data. Due to the epidemic period, the participants filled out the forms online and then sent them to the researcher. Data were transcribed in a text format and analyzed using an inductive approach. Descriptive and content analysis were used in the analysis of the data. First, similar data were combined, codes were created, and categories were reached from interrelated codes. The study's findings revealed that participants view ethics as having a social, personal, and global dimension. Moreover, the participants related professional ethics to the teachers' rules and competencies. In addition, findings showed that the participants took equality and justice as the basis for acting ethically in working with children, that they respected children's rights and individual differences, and that they were aware of the importance of the issue of values as it was related to ethical values. Finally, it was found that participants perceived ethical violations that inadequate communication with families in the distance education process, and difficulty reaching children. The themes that emerged from the research were compared with the ethical standards of national and international organizations.
... FÖRSKOLANS UTBILDNING -HISTORISKA OCH NUTIDA PERSPEKTIV Förskolan kan beskrivas som en plats där specifika historiska, ideologiska och teoretiska traditioner och arbetsmetoder utvecklats, tillsammans med samtida förståelse av barn, barndom och barns lärande. En plats som möter och påverkas av de rådande politiska diskurserna i samhället och den rådande utbildningspolitiken (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). ...
Förskolebarnet har historiskt setts som utvecklings- och framtidsprojekt i strävan för ett bättre samhälle. I den senaste Läroplan för förskolan (Skolverket, 2018) har det politiska begreppet hållbar utveckling (HU) lagts till både i förskolans värdegrund och i förtydligande målskrivningar. I denna artikel presenteras en narrativ studie om förskolans utbildning med fokus på förskolans roll ochförskolebarns lärande i antropocen. Studien har en kritisk teoretisk bas där empirin utgörs av förskollärares berättelser om sitt arbete med utbildning för hållbarhet i förskolan. Kritisk forskning om utbildning för hållbarhet har gett stöd i analysen av förskollärarnas narrativa berättelser. Specifikt har frågor om vilka kunskaper som ses som avgörande kunskapsinnehåll för förskolebarn och vilken roll förskolan har i den tid som definieras som antropocen studerats. Resultatet visar att antropocen som begrepp inte används i förskollärarnas beskrivningar av utbildningen. Dock, framträder i deras berättelser en utbildning där arbetet för en hållbar jord ses som ett grundläggande innehåll och där barns lärande innebär att lära om hållbar resurshantering, källsortering och att lära i och om naturen. Slutligen ger en svag styrning och ledarskap sig tillkänna där hållbar utveckling som begrepp inte ger stöd för tolkningar och förståelser om att arbeta i en utmanande tid i relationen människa och natur.
... They gain many skills that they will use in the process of maintaining their daily lives in the relationships they will establish with their environment through pre-school institutions. Moreover, pre-school educational environments are ethical practice areas where the teachers make decisions about and for the individuals for whom they are professionally responsible in general during daily activities (Dahlberg & Moss 2004;Dunn, 2003;Vasconcelos, 2006). Within this context, it can be said that it is necessary to provide the appropriate educational environment for the children in pre-school education. ...
This study aims to examine the opinions of the pre-school education teachers on ethics. The study has been designed pursuant to the qualitative and case study techniques. The study included 32 pre-school education teachers during the academic year 2020-2021. The general information form and structured questionary form, prepared by the researcher, were used to collect the data. Due to the epidemic period, the participants filled out the forms online and then sent them to the researcher. Data were transcribed in a text format and analyzed using an inductive approach. Descriptive and content analysis were used in the analysis of the data. First, similar data were combined, codes were created, and categories were reached from interrelated codes. The study's findings revealed that participants view ethics as having a social, personal, and global dimension. Moreover, the participants related professional ethics to the teachers' rules and competencies. In addition, findings showed that the participants took equality and justice as the basis for acting ethically in working with children, that they respected children’s rights and individual differences, and that they were aware of the importance of the issue of values as it was related to ethical values. Finally, it was found that participants perceived ethical violations that inadequate communication with families in the distance education process, and difficulty reaching children.
... El trabajo con la primera infancia requiere un proceso de vinculación de sentimientos hacia niños, niñas, y a quienes integran la comunidad educativa (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). En Chile, en las Bases Curriculares de la Educación Parvularia (Ministerio de Educación [Mineduc], 2008), se reconocen algunos atributos vinculados a la formación socioemocional de las educadoras de párvulos. ...
Resumen El presente artículo realiza una discusión acerca del “Imaginario de felicidad” en la construcción de una identidad profesional en estudiantes de educación parvularia. Se entiende que los imaginarios sociales constituyen esquemas de flujos e interpretación de la realidad socialmente legitimados. Sobre esta base se analizaron catorce narrativas de estudiantes de la carrera de Educación Parvularia, que tratan el imaginario de su identidad profesional. En dicho análisis se visualizó el concepto de felicidad como una idea transversal a distintos componentes de la construcción identitaria.
... Care research has been dominated by European and white-settler feminists so texts by Collins (1990), Combahee River Collective (1983), Crenshaw (1991Crenshaw ( ), hooks (1992, and Sharpe (2016) provide necessarily perspectives. In early childhood education, see Dahlberg and Moss (2005), Hodgins (2019), and Langford (2019). suggests that Janine, the baby's real mother, come see the baby. ...
... Therefore, other possible didactic approaches appear. First of all, a post-modern inspiration expressed in early childhood by Dahlberg and Moss (2005), Dahlberg, Moss and Pence (2007), Jensen (2013) and Lenz Taguchi (2009) argues for a process-oriented practice like 'Didaktik of the now', forward planning and a readiness to continue from the child's 'beginning' in order to bring democratic space into the preschool. Thus, a linear practice with pre-described educational goals, objectives and content are replaced by an imminent, co-operative, intra-active and rhizomatic practice that gives the child power and agency. ...
The paper presents a review process of Didaktik and curriculum theories, one that suggests that a German Bildung Didaktik approach seems to be suitable ground for the development of a critical-democratic Didaktik in preschool. The paper examines fundamental dimensions in Bildung Didaktik as point of departure for the modelling of a Didaktik in preschool. Among other things, a circular situation-oriented and dynamic didactical model is constructed. In order to take the preschool tradition into consideration, different forms of play-based learning are stated. These form an outline of a critical-democratic play Didaktik, including the concept playworld.
... If compiled in order to produce a simulated reality, documentation cannot be used as an instrument for promoting reflection on actual practice. It does not provide space for thinking about fundamental political questions relevant to teachers' work and is, instead, a technical activity devoid of transformative potential (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). In our project, the awareness of the work developed by the teachers was of a very different nature as it urged them to critically consider what they did with the children, why they did so, and what consequences their work could have. ...
This article explores the potential of a networked learning community for supporting teachers' professional development and transforming children's life in an educational institution. It draws on a small-scale action research project carried out by a team of Polish early childhood educators and academics who collaborated to create conditions for strengthening children's participation in preschool. The mode of work combined the teachers' individual investigation and actions in their settings with monthly meetings of the whole team serving as a space for the participants to support, inspire and challenge each other. Besides the implementation of concrete solutions by the teacher-researchers that enhanced their students participation, the project contributed to the emergence of the teachers' habit of critically observing, documenting, and reflecting on their practice, increased their confidence as autonomous professionals and change agents, and augmented their view of children as competent decision makers. It is argued that it is the combination of continuous individual critical reflection and regular collaboration that is instrumental in triggering and sustaining such changes.
... Following Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (1999) we see pedagogical documentation as a political act that situates observation as a process of coconstruction embedded in concrete and local situations and not as a representation of universal objective representation of children's learning. Because pedagogical documentation shifts away from observation as a normalizing tool that offers measurable truths (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005), it allows us to craft layered, multifaceted stories that highlight the intricate interplay of children and the more-than-human. Here we hope that in layering stories of the cemetery we so often visit we are able to challenge innocent, simplistic views of children in nature by highlighting the messy entanglements ever present in human/more-than-human assemblages. ...
... Thinking with Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (1999) I situate pedagogical documentation as a non-innocent, political act. The choice of pedagogical documentation as method in itself challenges dominate discourses of developmental psychology and scientific rationality as it divorces itself from long-held ideas of normalising techniques for objective observation in early childhood education (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). In the following section I offer an example of pedagogical documentation co-constructed during my research. ...
... First, FCE speaks to the priority of care in ECE, where care is often fractured from and marginalized in relation to education. Second, while we are familiar with other ethical frameworks, such as Levinas's ethics of an encounter (discussed extensively in Dahlberg and Moss, 2005), we find the feminist orientation of FCE critical for understanding why and how care work is assigned in many societies to women and racialized groups. Third, we follow Robinson's (2019: 14) thinking that care as a critical ethical and political theory locates contextual sensitivity and therefore 'difference at the very core' of care relations. ...
This article offers a theoretical provocation through conceptualizing a pedagogy of care as a means of caring with students and each other to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism in Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs. The authors’ conceptualization of care -full as pedagogy is rooted in the premises that education is always ethical and political, and caring about, for and with others is necessary to establish equitable, democratic spaces at the post-secondary level. In contrast to the developmental framework embraced in many Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs, the authors describe how a critical, care -full overarching pedagogical framework provides room for educators and students to deeply and meaningfully explore developmentalism and other theoretical frameworks. They argue that a pedagogy of care rooted in feminist care ethics and Freire's critical theory can contribute to establishing a safe learning climate where developmentalism can be critiqued and alternative ways to think about children's development can be contested, explored and debated. As the authors are conceptualizing it, a care-full pedagogical framework intentionally supports the intellectual, ethical and political risk-taking necessary for critique and alternative thinking. They follow this provocation through by imagining what a care -full pedagogy might look and feel like in a post-secondary early childhood education course on child development.
... First, drop-off and pick-up times offer the opportunity to share current and individual child-related information on a daily basis for both parents and professionals (e.g., Brooker, 2010;Perlman & Fletcher, 2012;Swartz & Easterbrooks, 2014;Weiss et al., 2014). Second, a welcoming atmosphere can be established by greeting the parent during child drop-off by name and with eye contact (e.g., Dahlberg & Moss, 2004). And finally, in these situations parents can observe how the professionals interact with the child, giving them an idea of how competent professionals are in interacting with the child and what occurs in the preschool setting when they are not present (e.g., Coelho et al., 2018;Shpancer et al., 2002). ...
Research Findings: Trust is considered to be a crucial element of effective parent-preschool partnerships and an important prerequisite of parental involvement in their children’s educational processes. The present study examines the role of child and family characteristics and aspects of parent-preschool communication in parents’ trust. 735 families at 169 preschools participated in the study. All data were obtained in the context of the evaluation of a governmental preschool initiative in Germany. As well as trust, child and family characteristics were assessed using questionnaires. Aspects of parent-preschool communication were assessed with questionnaires and standardized observations. Structural equation modeling analyses indicate that a child’s behavioral disorder and their family’s language predict parents’ trust in their child’s preschool. In addition, the results highlight that the quality of informal communication during transition times is crucial in trusting relationships. Thus, all aspects of parent-preschool communication (parents’ perceived quality of communication, parents’ satisfaction with communication, and observed interaction quality between parents and professionals) are positively related to parental trust. Practice or Policy: Consequently, training programs should make use of these results to enhance professionals’ communication strategies and thereby to establish a trustful relationship with all parents.
... The provincial curriculum, which was inspired by social constructionist perspectives on early childhood pedagogy (see Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Dahlberg et al., 2013), described a vision based on the idea that images of childhood are constructed and therefore always shifting within ethical and political parameters (Government of British Columbia, 2008). Four areas of early learning -well-being and belonging; exploration and creativity; languages and literacies; and social responsibility and diversity -replaced the traditional developmental domains. ...
Despite the burgeoning literature that describes the most effective ways of engaging early childhood educators in professional learning, very little empirical work in North America has examined the processes, dialogs, and engagements in which educators participate to address quality as a social construct. This article (1) describes a model of professional learning trialed in western Canada that supports educators to engage with social constructionist scholarship on quality and (2) reports on the educators’ and pedagogical facilitators’ experiences with this model. Using a qualitative methodology, the article analyzes data from interviews, focus groups, and open-ended questionnaires completed by educators and pedagogical facilitators. The study’s findings suggest the importance of creating professional learning opportunities that respond to contextual and current conditions over extended periods of time. More importantly, our results show that PD that engages quality as a social construct requires both a multidimensional approach with a wide variety of learning modalities, and the critical role of a skilled pedagogical facilitator who challenges educators to interrogate the ethico-political aspects of early education. The findings of this study have implications not only for the professional learning of early childhood educators but also for early education systems in Canada and abroad.
In this article, we envision a holistic approach to the education of children within a participatory paradigm, which integrates inner and outer worlds in a new understanding of consciousness. The inspiration for our reimagining arose from a research study undertaken in partnership with Kids Planet Day Nurseries which included inquiring into the impact of Covid-19 on children in early childhood education and care. It was discovered that, although parents and practitioners identified Covid as a traumatic event, there was little awareness of the potential effects on children’s inner worlds. Similarly, the government in its post-lockdown policymaking focused on catch-up with learning, rather than addressing wider psychological issues. In this reimagining of the education system, the neoliberal principle of ‘profit as primary’ has been eradicated, along with its long-term positivist partner ‘scientism’, which proclaims all valid knowledge is quantifiable. Instead, the focus is on the intra-active dimensions of learning, grounded in the idea of a ‘triangle of trust’ developed in the early years and continued into a relational pedagogy in primary schools. The challenges involved in replacing a positivist Newtonian worldview with a participatory paradigm, where inner and outer worlds are entangled and equally important, are discussed.
This article is the first of four articles exploring democratic schools co-founded by teenage students in Norway and Sweden. Our larger project explores the relationship between democracy in education and educational dialogism. Both democracy in education and educational dialogism are partially rooted in the idea that education should be a personal meaning-making practice where the participants can create and organize their lives in ways that make sense to them and explore their interests, values, and desires. We describe the processes of founding two schools – one in Oslo, Norway, and the other in Gothenburg, Sweden – in which students practiced the right to democratic governance. We describe the process of the founding of these schools against the background of the students’ movements in the late 1960s and the 1970s and the social and political conditions in Norway and Sweden at that time. We explore the students’ perspectives on the possibility, desirability, and legitimacy of the students’ voices in ethical-ontological dialogues in which the participants jointly examine their relationships with the world, with others, and with themselves. Further, we explore the forms of democratic school governance that Norwegian and Swedish students created and identified tensions that appeared between the legitimacy of individual students’ rights to ownership of their learning, teachers’ ownership of teaching, and the conventional normative educational policies in Norway and Sweden.
Most policies and teaching practices in early childhood education and care (ECEC) are based on the developmental paths of children from mainstream middle-class, White, European, heterosexual households. The common discourse often summed up as universalism significantly minoritizes children deviating from this “norm” and pathologizes their differences. Efforts toward bringing about changes in the ECEC field can start by examining individual ECEC teachers’ views on and teaching practices for minoritised children in various contexts. Set in South Korea, which has recently been populated by a relatively small yet exponentially growing minoritised population, this qualitative study examines ECEC educators’ approaches to teaching ethnolinguistically minoritised children. We interviewed nine ECEC teachers who have taught a small number of minoritised children throughout their careers. We found that the ECEC teachers valued sameness and harmony over difference and emphasised good teaching practice and caring for the minoritised children’s emotional needs. The teachers’ approaches seemed to be propelled by the ECEC’s dominant discourse, developmentally appropriate practice, and traditional Confucian beliefs. Using critical race and feminist theories that illuminate participants’ lived experiences and identities, we discussed that the teachers’ good-willed yet neutral approaches may have inadvertently led to inequitable practices and oppressive experiences for minoritised children.
This research aimed to examine the dialogical engagement of early childhood educators in an artmaking space. A descriptive-qualitative research model was used for this phenomenological case study. The study’s findings reveal that pedagogical listening can facilitate dialogue among educators and children. Moreover, when educators are in this dialogical and pedagogical space with children, and if they genuinely and attentively listen with all their senses to children’s words, thoughts, desires, and needs by maintaining a responsive and respectful attitude, the fluxes and movements of both children’s and educators’ thinking and learning will be generative, creative, and relational.
The aim of the study is to deepen understanding of educators’ daily practices in the Northern ECEC through the lenses of culturally responsive teaching. The research material consists of two-staged peer interviews with 10 educators, which were selected from the whole research material for detailed analysis. The main finding of this study is ethical balancing, which permeates the work of educators in the culturally diverse North. Ethical balancing is presented through four dimensions: (1) educators’ struggles between equality and cultural diversity in everyday ECEC life, (2) educators’ values confronting the requirements of culturally responsive teaching and diverse educational communities, (3) educators balancing between diverse perspectives in collaboration with families and (4) educators’ experiences of inadequacy in culturally diverse settings. In addition to new empirical knowledge, the study provides a new methodological approach to the ECEC research field. The peer interview method has the potential to support educators with the dilemmas of everyday practice, and the method can also be extended to teacher education to support student teachers during their studies. The study challenges educators, education providers and policymakers to engage more deeply with the aims and practices of culturally responsive teaching to respond better to the needs of a diversifying society.
This study examines preschool practitioners’ accounts of managing newly arrived children's double transition into rural preschools with little previous experience of migration. The narratives are analysed through Bakhtin's theory of dialogism. The analysis reveals that the practitioners at first found the migrant children's double transition troublesome and challenging. Eventually, they started to reflect critically on their own culturally endorsed beliefs and practices, and took a dialogical approach that helped them to adjust their practices to the needs of the newly arrived children. The results show that in order to support the inclusion of the migrant children, the practitioners themselves had to go through a process that included a change of mindset and a change of practice. Hence, to manage the children's double transition, the practitioners needed to make a dual adjustment.
Curricula and policy documents in Australia and elsewhere commonly call for early childhood teachers to nurture cultural belonging for young children and their families. Meanwhile, there remains a critical gap in addressing teachers’ cultural belonging. In this article, the authors consider early childhood teachers’ culture stories and identities, drawing on an exploratory project involving four teachers from early childhood settings in Melbourne. They use Julia Kristeva's philosophy on subject formation and the Other to explore teachers’ identities as never fully knowable, even to themselves. Reflecting on teachers’ stories through Kristeva's philosophical approach to the subject in process (through the elements of the semiotic, love, abjection and revolt) offers the potential for increasingly nuanced insights into intercultural relations within teaching teams. Thinking through these culture stories creates a space for teachers’ identity constructions to strengthen cultural well-being, belonging and intercultural understanding in early childhood teaching teams and communities.
The main purpose of this article is to explore and develop a basic understanding of a new formulation of children’s learning within ECEC policies in Norway. In the Nordic Countries, one question of importance is the shift in ECEC policy from a social-pedagogical approach and a holistic perspective on children’s learning towards a heavier emphasis on school readiness, mathematics, and linguistic skills. And it is this latter approach which is our topic here. The research question is as follows: What transformations can be identified in learning discourses in the Norwegian government’s White papers? Analysing political reports will help us identify discourses, including the power and resistance of the ECEC professionals. For this purpose, Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model is an appropriate way to analyse dynamic processes of recontextualization and reconceptualization. His analysis includes three levels: social structure, social practices and social events, with the aim being to discover how the existing order of discourse is being reproduced or reconstructed. Further, the concept of interdiscursivity describes how texts draw on previous and existing discourses. The article identifies movements and complexity both in policies and among professionals. The learning discourses are strongly influenced by New Public Management in the way of individualization, assessment and accountability. There are signs of silence and acceptance, but resistance and countermovements are also present in the field of ECEC.
The early childhood workforce in England has experienced periods of policy attention and more recently policy neglect. During the past two decades (2000–2022) the extent of interest in workforce policy has fluctuated with episodes of investment followed by phases of disinvestment. Throughout this period, early childhood educators have been subjected to multiple, often conflicting and shifting demands upon them, which have evolved with varying political priorities.
This paper builds on earlier analyses and exposes how neoliberal logic has been advanced in the intervening years and continues to permeate the terrain. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of nine English early childhood workforce policies numerous, dominant, institutional discourses and reciprocal obligation are discerned. This analysis uncovers how policies of standard setting, credentialising and surveillance create discursive borders which are established and maintained to create the ‘ideal’ professional identities of early educators.
It is contended that these conceptual and discursive borders delimit versions of professional identities and thereby curtail capacity to imagine and act beyond such boundaries. The paper concludes that identifying and naming these borders are important prerequisites for contestation of such institutional discourses and for asserting alternative subject positions.
In this article, the authors illustrate some of the challenges and dilemmas that Norwegian early childhood education and care teachers experienced when completing a global screening tool (UPSI-5: Universal Psychosocial Indicator for 5 Year Old Boys and Girls) concerning the psycho-social well-being of five-year-olds as part of an international research project. Based on interviews with 31 teachers, the authors present in-depth analysis of the critical reflections of 19 teachers concerning the assessment forms. While previous research has criticized standardized testing and screening in early childhood education and care, there is a need for the critical voices of practitioners to be heard. The aim of this article is to illustrate which aspects teachers find challenging and how they respond when in doubt. The authors found that teachers' assessments are inextricably linked to the early childhood education and care context, and the values, ideas and norms that are prevalent in Nordic early childhood education and care settings.
This is a pre-print, reviewed and accept version of the manuscript.
This chapter explores what is known about preparing early childhood teachers for science teaching. A review of recent research literature revealed findings closely related to those from elementary teacher preparation, with the majority addressing how various interventions, predominantly in science methods courses, shape preservice teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about science, the nature of science, and science teaching. A subset of studies examines preservice teachers’ interactions with children, the development of science teaching practices, and issues of equity and access. These studies are complementary with emergent perspectives on science in early childhood that privilege children’s innate curiosity about the world and drive to figure things out; consider the whole child, including their multiple and embodied ways of knowing; and foreground disrupting unjust interactions in science. Building from the review findings, the authors call for a holistic, asset-based approach to designing and studying teacher preparation for science in early childhood, including opportunities for candidates to investigate science alongside children. The authors raise questions about expertise, language, and power for the field, and expand the emphasis on teacher knowledge to address identity, a pedagogy of listening and responsiveness, an inquiry stance toward teaching and learning, and a strong social justice orientation.
This chapter provides an account of studies on educational interactions, including approaches based on the sociology of childhood, sociology of education, conversation analysis, and social pedagogy. It provides an account of the approach of sociology of childhood to education and investigates the limitations of educational interactions based on specific social structures in the education system. In particular, the chapter introduces a sociological approach to educational interaction, based on social systems theory showing functions and structures of the education system, as conveyance of knowledge and evaluation, and the relevance of interaction of teaching in this system, comparing this approach to other approaches insisting on structural constraints of education. It deals with changes concerning teaching interactions, such as scaffolding, child-centered education, and dialogic teaching, and with the meaning and effectiveness of this change. It investigates the value of children’s participation in the education system and in educational interactions and the relation between the interpretation of the child as a learner, and thus as a “medium” for education, and the interpretation of the child as social agent. Finally, it deals with the meaning of cultural differences, intercultural communication, and language barriers in the education system.
This chapter explains the social conditions of children’s agency, produced in facilitated interaction in the education system, local communities, and global society. It distinguishes facilitation from child-centered education and exemplifies facilitation through the initiatives of local and international movements, based on participatory planning, children’s consultation, and children’s involvement in decision-making. The chapter stresses the paradoxical meanings of facilitation and deals with the specific structures enhancing facilitation, with the possible construction of a facilitation system, based on reflexive coordination and coordination of reflection, and with studies concerning types of dialogic facilitative actions. It shows that a facilitation system can produce the conditions for children’s trusting commitment and management of conflicts. The chapter also stresses the link between facilitation and construction of cultural differences and identities, stressing that facilitation is not only the basic condition for all the expressions of children’s agency, but it can also be a specific condition for hybrid negotiation of cultural differences and identities, when these differences and identities arise as results of personal cultural trajectories narrated in facilitated interactions. The final question is if it is possible to introduce facilitation in the education system.
The stubborn dominance of objectivity in child observation in pre-service early childhood education warrants letting go of as we confront its limitations as outdated, problematic, Eurocentric, neo-liberal and even racist. In the context of recent aims to establish ‘critically reflective’ practices, such as ‘pedagogical documentation’ and ‘collaborative inquiry’ as the ‘new way’ to ‘do’ early childhood curriculum planning in Ontario, Canada, the authors are concerned that the hard work of naming and creating conditions to ‘think together’ with concepts of subjectivity has been missed and misunderstood. The risk of missing this shared thinking and not persevering in the struggles of subjectivities, especially in curriculum courses and placement, underestimates and ‘under-minds’ the intellectual capacity of students and positions theory as neutral in its relation to practice. How, then, does one take up subjectivity and recognize its affordance in building the intellectual and relational capacity of pre-service students? What conditions need to be created to lead with critical thinking and engage in subjectivities in the context of early childhood education pre-service programs? Drawing on critical educational perspectives, the authors work to define subjectivity in the context of early childhood education; identify the conceptual barriers that they have encountered in their work as a professor and a field liaison; and propose potentially generative conditions for pre-service programs.
Im Lichte des für die Kindheitsforschung ebenso wie aus intersektionaler Perspektive bedeutsamen Konzeptes generationaler Ordnung analysiert der Beitrag die Machtförmigkeit pädagogischer Institutionen. Dies geschieht, indem Kindheiten als Effekte von Subjekt- und Ordnungsbildungen perspektiviert werden. Nach einer einleitenden Abgrenzung von Macht und Gewalt in pädagogischen Institutionen, geht der Beitrag am Beispiel der Kindertageseinrichtung den Fragen nach, wie sich Macht in pädagogischen Institutionen konstituiert, wie hierdurch Kinder als Subjekte pädagogischer Institutionen geordnet und hervorgebracht werden sowie welche Konsequenzen sich hieraus ergeben, Kindheit und Kindheitsforschung intersektional zu denken.
Early childhood educators have been encouraged to pedagogically engage with children, materials, and their given environments. However, neither dialogue nor the creation of a space for practicing the pedagogy of listening have received considerable attention. This article describes a phenomenological research study that aimed to examine the pedagogical engagement of early childhood educators in an artmaking space. I observed art/drawing events of young children and two early childhood educators in two different early childhood centers and interviewed the educators to gather and explore narratives that could become part of the phenomenological reflection and understanding of the phenomena under review. The study’s findings highlight the potential of drawing and artmaking as pedagogical tools in early education, and they also offer insights into how and why early childhood educators might practice radical dialogues with children within a pedagogy of listening.
Present-day early childhood educators face the challenge of producing their professional identities in highly neo-liberal contexts, negotiating contested discourses on professionalism, education quality and the overall purpose of early childhood education. While it has been suggested by critical scholarship that the early childhood workforce responds to these challenges by developing a unified professional identity, the author contends that particular contexts of practice (such as schools) and the schoolification of early childhood education may produce fragmentation within the workforce. This is crystallised in the figure of the school-based early childhood educator, whose professional practice lies somewhere between that of a kindergarten educator and a schoolteacher. As school-based early childhood education is not perceived as proper early childhood practice by kindergarten educators, school-based educators struggle to identify with this group of practitioners. Drawing on a psychoanalytically informed qualitative study with early childhood educators, the author discusses some of these tensions and proposes the notion of liminal identity (an intermediate space of becoming where identities – among other possibilities – may be examined and reimagined) as a starting point for the exploration of this emergent type of professional subjectivity in the context of an increasing provision of early childhood education in school settings. The author calls for a destabilisation of oversimplified understandings of the relation between educators and their contexts of practice, and the acknowledgement that educators experience and respond to the struggles of the profession in diverse and complex ways.
The 2018 anti-Trump protest in London is dominated by an effigy, in the form of a balloon, that morphs President Donald Trump and childhood. Whilst this can be interpreted as a humorous act to ridicule Trump, a critical reading of the scene through a postmodern lens suggests that the image is an appropriation and manipulation of childhood. Trump masquerading as a baby becomes the ‘vagabond’ who is denied citizenship; she is a focus for negativity and fears, symbolising the values of hate and intolerance. The Trump Baby is vexing in the way it obscures knowledge of the agentic and competent child known within the nursery. The protesters exercise power as they mock and humiliate the Trump Baby in the protest and on social media. Such actions legitimatise hostile acts against children and prompt questions about the interdependency between children and adults in the both the construction of values and the realisation of children’s citizenship. This paper considers a range of positions that adults could adopt in order to co-construct values with children and respect their status as citizens. In this way, nurseries can become forums where children’s citizenship is both defended and nurtured.
This paper traces school manager's practice of egoism and utilitarianism through school and ministry procedures as ethical norms. The educational process has many conditional disciplines which regulate the ordinary learning schedules at schools. In particular, some of these disciplines are issued by the school itself to maintain a healthy and harmonious school life. In this case, regulations are formed by the school management and staff members. On the other hand, there are some disciplines do not relate to the school regulations and decisions. They are regulated by a higher authority i.e., the ministry of education. Ministry decisions are applied to all schools of a certain country or region. Here, the conditional disciplines might have different points of view which could not satisfy the school's normal vision. Both school decisions and ministry decisions sometimes contradict each other. This is because there are no common or mutual solutions to the moral problems concerning the school community. Accordingly, the contradiction between the school and the ministry results is moral problem including the norms of behavior. These norms are directed to comply with specific rules or policies which cannot be followed by the school students because of their social ethics.
Although the COVID-19 crisis has generated research on its impact on children, few investigations have interviewed children. The purpose of this research was to gain the perspectives of young children directly rather than ask adults to interpret for them. Between October 2020 and February 2021, most activities in Slovenia were in lockdown, including preschool that remained open only for those children whose parents carried out essential jobs. In March 2021, after the face-to-face pedagogical process resumed, we designed an interview focusing on the major issues surrounding COVID-19 and interviewed 40 preschool children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Twenty-one of these children spent the entire period at home, 15 attended preschool, and the rest divided their time between home and attending preschool classes in person. Their parents (33) and preschool teachers (11) were interviewed as well. For the children who spent the entire lockdown at home, the biggest problem was being separated from friends and/or teachers, even though many preschoolers also mentioned that they enjoyed spending more time with their parents and relatives. Most of the children who attended classes were satisfied to be there, but some missed their best friends who were at home. Thus, regardless of their location, during the lockdown most children missed their absent peers, what was noticed also by their teachers and parents. The teachers also mentioned the differently organized classes as a problem for some children. Another key finding of the study was that preschool children who participated in our interviews were exceptionally well informed about COVID-19 and the measures to fight it. Some children had very innovative suggestions about the concerns and actions to be taken during the COVID-19 epidemic. Contrary to the prevailing view of adults that real-life situations need to be explained using childish metaphors, the preschoolers in our sample demonstrated an understanding of the crisis as well as a willingness to behave responsibly. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
This paper reports on the South African findings from an international mixed methods study between the LEGO Foundation, Dubit and the Universities of Sheffield (England) and Cape Town (South Africa) on young children’s learning with digital technology. The findings of the study, the first of its kind in South Africa, show the consistency of qualities and experience of play, but also reveal socio-economic, linguistic, ethnic, gender and racial inequalities in the play environments of both groups of 3–11-year-olds. Yet, despite these structural inequalities, the play ecologies of children in resource-constrained environments show their creativity within the digital/non-digital environment. The paper discusses some of the analytical tools used and the geo-political issues raised, and considers these in conjunction with selected data. We conclude that the different socio-cultural conditions and geo-political realities offer new insights about the role global education research can play in helping combat structural inequalities in resource-constrained environments.
Every child has rights, not only as a human being but also as a participant in early childhood education and care (ECE). The rights of children are well documented in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in Finnish steering documents for ECE. This paper specifically focuses on children’s participation as one of the key rights in Finnish ECE. In a previous study (Mansikka and Lundkvist, Nordisk tidsskrift for pedagogikk & kritikk 5:111–129, 2019), it became clear that the focus of current Finnish ECE is more oriented towards learning than nursery care, more towards children’s participation than simply teacher-oriented activities and more towards children’s own perspectives and rights. This study examines in detail the views of 10 early childhood education teachers on important aspects of children’s right to participation in early learning environments in Finland. The data used in this paper is based on interviews with early childhood education teachers in ECE. Content analysis was performed on this empirical data to identify key themes in teachers’ understanding of children’s rights to participation in ECE. The results indicate that teachers are aware of the importance of the curriculum and the idea of children’s participation, but that the concept of rights generally needs to be deepened in pedagogical activities.
Purpose
The new Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2018) strongly highlights pedagogical knowledge and practice, demanding teachers to develop their pedagogical thinking, evaluation, judgment, and operating culture. Since ethics is viewed as vital characteristics of the teaching profession, our objective is to make these complex ethical issues more visible to be subject to democratic discussion and change.
Design/Approach/Methods
The framework comprises a broad theory base of codes of ethics and professional codes of ethics of teaching. The research materials were national curricula of early childhood education and care (ECEC)- and preprimary education. The eight-step qualitative analysis process was applied to identify and shed light on the codes of ethics laying the foundations for purposeful and ethical early childhood education (ECE) teacher.
Findings
The results indicate that through both theoretical lenses, the Finnish ECEC curricula comprise several ethical codes. For the future purposeful ECE teachers as ethical professionals, the results raise questions for further discussion. Particularly, issues related to the ethics of care, intellectual freedom, inquiry stance, and professional competence, and diversity may further enhance our ECEC curricula.
Originality/Value
During recent decades, the ethics concerning ECEC have gained increasing global attention. Particularly, there is a large international consensus considering ECEC as a prominent policy equalizing opportunities.
The article artues that the concept of quality is neither neutral nor objective, but permeated by values and socially constructed within the project of modernity. It embodies a modernist belief in the possibility of definitive and universal criteria that will offer certainty and order; it has no place for complexity, values, diversity, subjectivity, indeterminacy and multiple perspectives. Quality is only one way of evaluating early childhood services and their pedagogical work; its current prominence is due in part to the growing influence of new managerialism. Other choices exist for evaluation, and the article outlines one of these, the concept of meaning making; situated within a postmodern perspective, this concept foregrounds provisionality, multiplicity and subjectivity. Getting ‘beyond the problem of quality’ does not mean reworking the concept of quality: rather it turns out to mean that we have a choice, with ethical and political dimensions, about whether or not to work with that particular concept.
To assess the effects of providing daycare facilities for young children on the health and welfare of disadvantaged families.
Randomised controlled trial. Eligible children from the application list to a daycare facility were randomly allocated to receive a daycare place or not.
Early Years daycare centre in Borough of Hackney, London.
120 mothers and 143 eligible children (aged between 6 months and 3.5 years).
A place at the centre, which provided high quality day care. Control families used other child care that they secured for themselves.
Maternal paid employment, household income, child health and development.
At 18 months' follow up, 67% of intervention group mothers and 60% of control group mothers were in paid employment (adjusted risk ratio 1.23 (95% confidence interval 0.99 to 1.52)), but were no more likely to have a weekly household income of above pound 200 (risk ratio 0.88 (0.70 to 1.09)). Intervention group children had more otitis media with effusion (risk ratio 1.74 (1.02 to 2.96)) and used more health services (1.58 (1.05 to 2.38)), but both estimates were imprecise.
The provision of child day care may have increased maternal employment, but it did not seem to increase household income. The results suggest that providing day care may be insufficient as a strategy to reduce poverty. The study shows how random allocation can be used to ration and evaluate interventions where demand exceeds supply.
Sociology and social sciences in general have developed as part and parcel of the tension between social regulation and social emancipation that underlies the project of modernity. This tension seems to have vanished as social emancipation has become the double, rather than the opposite, of social regulation. Therefore, the reinvention of the social sciences presumes a new start for the social sciences focused on the generation of powerful interrogations and destabilizing images, made possible by the supersession of the modern equation of roots and options and by a shift from the conventional duality between structure and agency to a new, enabling duality between conformist action and action-with-clinamen.
Developmental psychology as a modern, western (minority-world) discipline has been wedded to an individualist model of child development that treats the baby or child as an isolated unit of development. Heir to both romantic and functionalist traditions within its Euro-American context of formulation, within this paradigm the child develops according to regular, predictable patterns (sometimes described as stages) that are presumed to be largely universal in their structure. Yet this universality is actually culturally specific: it represents the cultural white, western, middle class, masculine subjectivity of the mid twentieth century. As a result cultural diversity is subordinated to this naturalised and normalised linear model of development.The challenge is therefore to find ways of opening up discussions of how children develop within diverse cultural, class and geographical contexts that both draws on the strengths of available theories without reproducing their cultural privileges and globalisation. Drawing upon examples from diverse cultural contexts, I argue that this involves departing from the prevailing isolationist research and policy focus on young children. Instead we should analyse how diverse contexts and environments not only support or surround children's development but also how the cultural ‘bathwater’ enters into the shaping and elaboration of the baby it supports.