Transcript Early childhood education and care: dangers, possibilities

Early childhood
education and care:
dangers, possibilities and choices
Peter Moss
Thomas Coram research Unit
Institute of Education University of London
[email protected]
Critical thinking and hope
“My point is not that everything is bad, but
that everything is dangerous, which is not
exactly the same as bad”(Michel Foucault)
“The world suffers under a dictatorship of no
alternatives. Although ideas all by
themselves are powerless to overthrow
this dictatorship we cannot overthrow it
without ideas” (Roberto Unger)
Menu
• Dangers: growth of hegemonic discourse
of governing and markets (predetermined
outcomes and individual choice)
• Possibilities: exploring an other discourse
(democratic experimentalism)
• Choices: there are alternatives and there
are (collective) choices to be made
Dangers
Discourse of ‘governed markets’
National and international interest in ECEC: priority
for the ‘social investment’ welfare state
Capture by hegemonic discourse:
• ECEC offers high returns (predetermined
outcomes) IF apply effective and prescribed
technologies (quality)…‘Early intervention’ +
‘evidence-based practice’  answer to social
and economic problems

• Market delivery‘choice’, ‘efficiency’, ‘best
value’
Too good to miss!
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Childhood intellectual performance
Teen school achievement
Fewer teen births
Placements in regular classes
High school graduation
Adult earnings
Fewer crimes
Up to $16 return on the dollar
Short- and Long term Effects from 3 Studies
(Lawrence J Scheinhart, President, High/Scope Educational Research
Foundation, to ‘Early Matters’, a European Symposium on Improving
ECEC organised by DG EAC, Brussels, 14 October 2008)
Dangers
Hegemonic discourse driven by:
• Extreme ‘cognitive-instrumental’ rationality
• Narrow theoretical perspective and
modernistic paradigm
• Naïve analysis of problems and belief in
technical mastery
• Positivistic research in its technical role
• Strong neoliberal influences
Dangers
Inscribed with certain understandings:
• The child as reproducer, as nature, as
redemptive agent … the ‘poor child’
• The worker as technician, applying
technologies for predetermined outcomes
• The parent as consumer – calculating
homo economicus, autonomous subject
• The centre as business and factory
Dangers
Inscribed with certain values:
• Competition
• (individual) Choice
• Certainty/predictability/closure
• Standardisation
• Objectivity
Dangers
Expressed in:
• Increasing marketisation of service supply
(with/without increasing privatisation)
• Increasing techno-managerialism of
practice – control, conformity to procedure
and norm
• The growth of ‘managed markets’ (“quasimarkets and the evaluative state”)
Managed markets:
the case of England
• ‘Childcare’ and ‘early education’: strategy
of markets and competing providers
• ‘Childcare’: 80% by for-profit providers;
demand subsidy; law places duty on l.as
to manage the market - “diverse market
(is) the only game in town”
• ‘Early education’: mostly by schools but all
providers can get grant if meet conditions
– aim to increase competition & choice
Managed markets
the case of England
Centralised control:
• Detailed 0-6 curriculum (160 pages)
• 69 early learning goals (+5 overarching
outcomes for all services)
• National assessment regime
• National inspection regime (Ofsted)
• ‘Competence based’ training regime,
based on nationally defined standards
Governing & Markets
“The increasing authoritarianism evident in neoliberal
states such as the US and Britain…(is) consistent with
the neoliberal agenda of elite governance, mistrust of
democracy, and the maintenance of market
freedoms…[But it has reshaped neoliberal practices in
two fundamental respects: first, in its concern for order
as an answer to the chaos of individual interests, and
second, in its concern for an overweening morality as the
necessary social glue to keep the body politic secure in
the face of external and internal dangers” (David Harvey)
Alliance of neoliberalism, neoconservatism and managerial
fraction of middle class (Michael Apple)
‘Social investment’ welfare state: markets to supply, but
management to get returns on investment
Dangers
Growth in ECEC increases risk of:
• Increasingly effective human technologies
applied to whole child population
• Increasingly governed and subjectified
child (e.g. ‘developmentality’)
• Increasingly atomised ‘control society’
• Wasted opportunities for ECEC
contributing to a more democratic, diverse
and solidaristic education and society
Possibilities
Rethinking ECEC – an alternative discourse:
• Other rationalities, e.g.’aestheticexpressive’, ‘moral-practical’
• More theoretical perspectives – bordercrossing…welcome multiple perspectives,
different paradigmatic positions
• Critical and deconstructive approach
• Cultural role of research
• Contesting neoliberal influences and
putting technical practice in its place –
‘what works?’ is not a critical question!
Technical and cultural roles for
research
“In the technical role, research is producer
of means, strategies and techniques to
achieve given ends…the provision of
instrumental knowledge…[T]here is at
least one other way in which research can
inform practice. This is by providing a
different way of understanding and
imagining social reality…the cultural role
of research” (Gerd Biesta)
Possibilities
Discourse of ‘democratic
experimentalism
Inscribed with certain understandings:
The rich child - “A child born with great potential
that can be expressed in a hundred languages;
an active learner, seeking the meaning of the
world from birth, a co-creator of knowledge,
identity, culture and values; a child that can live,
learn, listen and communicate, but always in
relation with others; an individual, whose
individuality and autonomy depend on
interdependence; a citizen with a place in
society, a subject of rights.”(Children in Europe)
Possibilities
Inscribed with certain understandings:
• The worker as a co-constructor of knowledge, a
researcher and experimenter…democratic
professionalism
• “Based on participatory relationships and
alliances…collaborative, cooperative action
between professional colleagues and other
stakeholders” (Pamela Oberhuemer)
• Offers her ‘reading of the world’, but her role is
to “bring out the fact that there are other
readings of the world” at times in opposition to
her own (Paulo Freire)
“The education of young children
as a community project”
“[The early childhood worker needs to be] more
attentive to creating possibilities than pursuing
predefined goals…[to be] removed from the
fallacy of certainties, [assuming instead]
responsibility to choose, experiment, discuss,
reflect and change, focusing on the organisation
of opportunities rather than the anxiety of
pursuing outcomes, and maintaining in her work
the pleasure of amazement and wonder.”(Aldo
Fortunati)
Possibilities
Democratic experimentalism
Inscribed with certain understandings:
• EC services as…public spaces - places of
encounter for citizens & collaborative
workshops
• expressing community’s responsibility for
children (‘local cultural project of
childhood’)
• potential for many, many purposes,
projects and outcomes – some predefined,
others not amazement & wonder!
Some purposes and projects of a
collaborative workshop
• Learning, e.g. collective production of
knowledges, values and identities
• Researching, e.g. children’s learning
processes, gender roles, local injustices
• Supporting, e.g. solidarity between
citizens, support for individuals, families,
communities; accessing services
• Inclusion, e.g. children, marginalised and
excluded groups into the community
Some (more) purposes and
projects
• Sustaining diversity, e.g. languages,
cultures
• Economic development, e.g. ‘childcare’
for employment
• Promoting equalities & rights, e.g.
gender, children’s rights
• Democratic practice
• ???????????????????????????????
Possibilities
Democratic experimentalism
Inscribed with certain values:
• Collaboration
• Diversity
• Uncertainty
• Subjectivity
• Democracy (collective choice),
• Experimentation
Democracy
“To aspire towards ECEC systems that support
broad learning, participation and democracy
…The vision of early childhood services as a life
space where educators and families work
together to promote the well-being, participation
and learning of young children is based on the
principle of democratic participation” (OECD)
“Democracy forms the foundation of the preschool. For this reason, all pre-school activity
should be carried out in accordance with
fundamental democratic values” (Swedish preschool curriculum)
Democracy
• Varying forms and functions; e.g. more <>
less formal
• A way of life and relating, not a subject to
be taught…”Primarily a mode of
associated living embedded in the culture
and social relationships of everyday
life”(John Dewey)
• Enables reclaiming of ‘choice’ as a value
Reclaiming choice as a value
“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 decisions
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 individual but
for the collective as a whole or for a significant
part of that collective” (Power Inquiry)
Democracy in the nursery
Some possibilities
1. Decision-making: purposes, practices,
environments…including children & adults
“All those who are affected by social
institutions must have a share in producing
and managing them” (John Dewey)
e.g. Mosaic approach, multi-method tool for
enabling children’s participation…in ‘Living
Spaces’ project, young children work with
architects on design of new centres
Democracy in the nursery
Some possibilities
2. Production : co-construction of knowledges,
values, identities…democratic learning…
’pedagogy of listening’
“The potential of the child is stunted when the
endpoint of their learning is formulated in
advance” (Carlina Rinaldi)
3. Evaluation: through participatory methods;
deliberation on evidence and its meaning…
pedagogical documentation
Pedagogical documentation
“Documentation represents an extraordinary tool
for dialogue, for exchange, for sharing. For
Malaguzzi, it means the possibility to discuss
and 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” (Alfredo Hoyuelos)
Experimentation
“Experimentation is about bringing something new
to life, whether that something is a thought,
knowledge, a service or a tangible product. It
expresses a willingness, a desire in fact, to
invent, to think differently, to imagine and try out
different ways of doing things, to go beyond
what already exists, not to be bound by the
given, the familiar, the predetermined, the norm.
Like democracy, it represents a way of living and
relating, that is open-ended (avoiding closure),
open-minded (welcoming the unexpected) and
open-hearted (valuing difference)”(Peter Moss)
Experimentation –
at different levels
Community: Reggio Emilia…’cultural project of
childhood’
Institution: Sheffield Children’s Centre…innovative
projects…“a grassroots social movement” (Broadhead et
al., 2008)
Group: Movement and Experimentation in Young
Children’s Learning by Liselott Marriet Olsson… young
children and learning are tamed, predicted, supervised,
controlled and evaluated according to predetermined
standards…challenge to practice and research is to find
ways of regaining movement and experimentation in
learning.
Democratic experimentalism
“The provision of public services must be an
innovative collective practice, moving forward
the qualitative provision of the services
themselves. That can no longer happen in our
current understanding of efficiency and
production by the mechanical transmission of
innovation from the top. It can only happen
through the organisation of a collective
experimental practice from below
Democracy is not just one more terrain for the
institutional innovation that I advocate. It is the
most important terrain” (Roberto Unger)
Choices
• Hegemonic discourse is driven by strong forces
– but these are resistible and weakened…don’t
accept ‘capitalocentric’ thinking!
• There are alternatives – imagined and in
practice…we can think, speak and do differently!
• There are alliances to be made…we need to
travel beyond ECEC!
• There are choices to be made about the
common good
“Any vision of education that takes democracy
seriously cannot but be at odds with educational
reforms which espouse the language and values
of market forces and treat education as a
commodity to be purchased and
consumed…’Freedom of choice’ will be a major
principle in determining educational policy, [but]
the notion of ‘choice’ will not simply refer to the
rights of individuals to pursue their narrow selfinterests in a competitive marketplace. Instead it
will be recognized that, in a democracy,
individuals do not only express personal
preferences; they also make public and
collective choices related to the common good of
their society” (Wilfred Carr & Anthony Hartnett)
Broadhead, P., Meleady, C. and Delgado, M. (2008) Children, Families
and Communities: Creating and sustaining integrated services.
Maidenhead: Open University Press
Carr, W. and Hartnett, A. (1996) Education and the Struggle for
Democracy. Buckingham: Open University Press
Children in Europe (2008) Young Children and their Services:
Developing a European Approach.
http://www.childrenineurope.org/docs/PolicyDocument_001.pdf
Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005) Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood
Education. London: Routledge
Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. & Pence, A.(2007) Beyond Quality in Early
Childhood Education and Care (2nd ed). London: Routledge
(published in Spanish)
Fortunati,A. (2006) The Education of Young Children as a Community
Project. Azzano San Paolo: Edizioni junior
Moss, P. (2007) Bringing politics into the nursery.
http://www.bernardvanleer.org/news/2007/bringing_politics_into_the
_nursery
Moss, P. (2007) Bringing politics into the nursery.
http://www.bernardvanleer.org/news/2007/bringing_politics_into_the
_nursery
Moss, P. (2008) Early Childhood Education: Markets and Democratic
Experimentalism, http://www.bertelsmannstiftung.de/bst/de/media/xcms_bst_dms_24015__2.pdf
Moss, P. and Petrie, P. (2002) From Children’s Spaces to Children’s
Services, London: Routledge
Olsson, L.M. (forthcoming, 2009) Movement and Experimentation in
Young Children’s Learning: Deleuze and Guattari in Early Childhood
Education. London: Routledge
Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia. London: Routledge
Unger, R.M. (2005) What should the Left propose? London: Verso