Challenging Democracy in Early Childhood Education: Engagement in Changing Global Contexts

281 Pages·2019·5.167 MB·English

by  Valerie Margrain, Annica Löfdahl Hultman

International Perspectives on
Early Childhood Education and Development 28
Valerie Margrain
Annica Löfdahl Hultman Editors
Challenging
Democracy in
Early Childhood
Education
Engagement in Changing Global
Contexts
International Perspectives on Early Childhood
Education and Development
Volume 28
Series Editors
Marilyn Fleer, Monash University, Frankston, Australia
Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson, Gothenburg University, Göteborg, Sweden
Editorial Board
Jane Bone, Monash University, Frankston, Australia
Anne Edwards, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Mariane Hedegaard, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Eva Johansson, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
Rebeca Mejía Arauz, ITESO, Jalisco, Mexico
Cecilia Wallerstedt, Gothenburg University, Göteborg, Sweden
Liang Li, Monash University, Frankston, Australia
Early childhood education in many countries has been built upon a strong tradition
of a materially rich and active play-based pedagogy and environment. Yet what has
become visible within the profession, is essentially a Western view of childhood
preschool education and school education.
It is timely that a series of books be published which present a broader view of
early childhood education. This series seeks to provide an international perspective
on early childhood education. In particular, the books published in this series will:
• Examine how learning is organized across a range of cultures, particularly
Indigenous communities
• Make visible a range of ways in which early childhood pedagogy is framed and
enacted across countries, including the majority poor countries
• Critique how particular forms of knowledge are constructed in curriculum within
and across countries
• Explore policy imperatives which shape and have shaped how early childhood
education is enacted across countries
• Examine how early childhood education is researched locally and globally
• Examine the theoretical informants driving pedagogy and practice, and seek to
find alternative perspectives from those that dominate many Western heritage
countries
• Critique assessment practices and consider a broader set of ways of measuring
children’s learning
• Examine concept formation from within the context of country-specific peda-
gogy and learning outcomes
The series will cover theoretical works, evidence-based pedagogical research, and
international research studies. The series will also cover a broad range of countries,
including poor majority countries. Classical areas of interest, such as play, the
images of childhood, and family studies will also be examined. However the focus
will be critical and international (not Western-centric).
Please contact Astrid Noordermeer at [email protected] to
submit a book proposal for the series.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7601
Valerie Margrain • Annica Löfdahl Hultman
Editors
Challenging Democracy
in Early Childhood
Education
Engagement in Changing Global Contexts
Editors
Valerie Margrain Annica Löfdahl Hultman
Karlstad University Karlstad University
Karlstad, Sweden Karlstad, Sweden
ISSN 2468-8746 ISSN 2468-8754 (electronic)
International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development
ISBN 978-981-13-7770-9 ISBN 978-981-13-7771-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7771-6
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Foreword: Democracy as a Political Choice
Democracy as a fundamental value, relational ethic and pervasive practice of educa-
tion has a long and important history. It has been a defining feature of progressive
education, alongside criticism of traditional education, the nature of knowledge,
human nature and the development of the whole person (Darling & Norbenbo,
2003), a product of the late nineteenth century that achieved its greatest influence in
the middle part of the twentieth century. Democracy in education was espoused by
great educationalists from that century, including John Dewey, Janusz Korczak,
Célestin Freinet and Loris Malaguzzi.
Malaguzzi’s name is a reminder that the place of democracy in education has
included not only primary, secondary and higher education but also early childhood
education. Democracy is at the heart of the world-famous municipal schools in the
Italian city of Reggio Emilia. This commitment to democracy was a deliberate choice
following the dark days of authoritarian fascism suffered by Italy from 1923 to 1945,
an experience that ‘had taught them that people who conformed and obeyed were dan-
gerous, and that in building a new society it was imperative … to nurture and maintain
a vision of children who can think and act for themselves’ (Dahlberg, 2000, p. 177).
It can readily be agreed that ‘democracy’ is a complex and multi-layered con-
cept, not easily defined and packaged. One approach is to adopt a dualism, to say (as
I have done myself) that there is a formal side to democracy, about governing and
policy making, including therefore political decision-making by national or local
governments and an informal side, which is about a way of being and relating in
everyday life and institutions. Dewey’s definition is often cited for the latter take on
democracy: that democracy is ‘primarily a mode of associated living embedded in
the culture and social relationships of everyday life’; it is ‘a personal way of indi-
vidual life:… [I]t signifies the possession and continual use of certain attitudes,
forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations
of life’ (1939, p.2). This is democracy understood as an approach to living and relat-
ing, a culture and a relational ethos, that can and should pervade all aspects of
everyday living, not least in the school, where it is ‘a way of being, of thinking of
oneself in relation to others and the world … a fundamental educational value and
form of educational activity’ (Rinaldi, 2006, p.156).
v
vi Foreword: Democracy as a Political Choice
But while this dualistic approach may have its place, it may also (as with all dual-
isms) have its drawbacks. Democracy is a way of life and calls for the practice of
listening and dialogue, confrontation and negotiation and recognition of diversity,
multiple perspectives and the partiality and provisionality of one’s own knowledge
and understanding, in short an acknowledgement that there are always alternatives,
other understandings and narratives, and that these should be treated respectfully
and seriously. But, arguably, the same qualities should form as part of formal gov-
erning and decision-making, be it by government ministries, parliaments, local
councils or other bodies involved in the business of shaping policy and practice.
These are essential conditions for a democratic politics of education, a politics
based on recognising education as first and foremost a political practice organised
around political questions and political choices, political questions defined by hav-
ing no one right answer but, instead, alternative and often conflicting answers,
requiring choices to be made by citizens through democratic practices. Some of the
questions are as follows: ‘What is our image of the child? ‘Of the teacher’? ‘Of the
early childhood centre’? ‘What do we mean by knowledge?’ ‘What are the purposes
of education?’
At the same time, governing and decision-making reach down into the very fab-
ric of education, into the everyday life of the early childhood centre, especially in a
polity that believes in and enacts strong decentralisation, for example, giving
municipalities and centres or schools wide scope for interpreting and developing the
national curriculum or for engaging in experimentation, in particular what Roberto
Unger terms ‘democratic experimentalism’:
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 pro-
duction 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. (Unger, 2005b, pp.179,182)
So perhaps we should think of democracy as on a continuum, running from the
profoundly democratic, in which democracy as a value, a relational ethic and a
practice pervades all aspects and all levels of education from classroom to govern-
ment and from teacher to politician to the minimally democratic, where education
at all levels is instead pervaded by technical practice, managerialism and a belief
that there is only one right answer – that there are, in fact, no alternatives, and that
democracy is of little or no value or concern.
This book focuses on challenges faced by democracy in early childhood educa-
tion, exploring a wide range of ‘contemporary issues such as migration, refugees,
and changes in teacher education, early childhood regulations, transition and assess-
ment expectations’. For me, one of the main challenges is posed by the hegemony
of a particular politico-economic regime, neoliberalism and its attendant mindset or
paradigm, neopositivism. Under neoliberalism, everything (including the political
and social) has collapsed into the economic, so that everything becomes
conceptualised, rationalised and practised in economic terms. The image of a child
and an adult are essentially economic: the child as potential human capital and the
Foreword: Democracy as a Political Choice vii
adult as ‘homo economicus’, an autonomous individual, flexible and calculating.
The role of the early childhood centre is to realise the child’s human capital, hence
enabling child and society to survive in a ruthless, dog-eat-dog world of markets
and hyper- competition. To this end, ever more powerful ‘human technologies’ are
applied to the child and her teacher, to ensure high returns on early intervention. In
this scenario, democracy has no value, no place and no purpose; political questions
are ditched for technical questions, including the manager’s insistent ‘what works?’
(For further discussion of neopositivism and neoliberalism and their relationship to
contemporary early childhood education, see Moss, 2013, 2018.)
The onwards march of a neoliberal narrative of early childhood education –
instrumental, technical and economistic – can be illustrated by the approach taken
to the field by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). Between 1996 and 2006, under the leadership of the much-missed John
Bennett, OECD conducted a landmark comparative study of early childhood poli-
cies in 20 countries, distinguished by the richness and depth of the material gar-
nered from each country, and then expertly worked with to produce two important
reports, Starting Strong I and II, which remain an essential reading even up to this
day (OECD, 2001, 2006).
Both reports are inscribed with a commitment to the importance of children’s
rights and also of democracy as a value and practice. Indeed, the whole project is
framed in terms of democratic purpose: the project’s first report, Starting Strong I,
observes that ECEC policies reflect mainly implicit assumptions:
which are deeply embedded in how societies are organised and in cultural and social
views…While different views may co-exist within countries, they are rarely made explicit
in policy discussions. Recognising these diverse perspectives can help shed light on why
countries make certain choices with regard to early childhood policy and provision…Our
objective is to make these complex political and ethical issues more visible so that they can
be subject to critical and democratic debate. (OECD, 2001, p.39: emphasis added)
On several subsequent occasions, Starting Strong I highlights actual or needed
democratic practices in early childhood services: ‘establishing a democratic system
of checks and balances, in which genuine decision-making, access to information
and some powers of supervision are given to parents’ (ibid., p.75); ‘in democratic
ECEC institutions, the approach of professionals is to share responsibility for young
children with parents, and learn from the unique knowledge that parents from
diverse backgrounds can contribute’ (ibid., p.117); ‘defining, ensuring, and moni-
toring quality should be a participatory and democratic process that engages staff,
parents, and children’ (ibid., p.126); and ‘creating a forum for discussions about the
social constructions of childhood, the goals of ECEC policy and provision, and the
roles of different stakeholders would be an important starting point toward develop-
ing a shared vision for the future’ (ibid., p.136).
The theme is picked up again in the second report, Starting Strong II, where
frequent reference is made to democracy, and in particular to a notion of participa-
tory democracy. Devolved management of services (to local areas) is an issue of
‘democracy, community responsibility for children, parental rights, participation
and ownership’ (OECD, 2006, p.50); ‘learning to live together (within the early
viii Foreword: Democracy as a Political Choice
childhood centre, in a democratic way, respectful of difference)’, should be a goal
of education (ibid., p.127); the effectiveness of regulation is greatly assisted, inter
alia, by ‘a participatory and democratic approach to standards definition, imple-
mentation and quality improvement’ (ibid., p.129); ‘[p]ost-modernists point out that
other scenarios for young children are possible and valid…[including] conceptual-
ising the school as a space for child participation and inter-culturalism, where young
children and their families acquire democratic and positive attitudes’ (ibid., p.195);
and a ‘major underlying lesson from the OECD reviews is that sound policy cannot
be a quick fix from outside but more a matter of democratic consensus generated by
careful consultation with the major stakeholders’ (ibid., p.206). The culmination of
this sustained commitment to participatory democracy is expressed right at the end
of the Starting Strong II, where this commitment is linked with another: to a broad
approach to education and learning. This important OECD report ends by urging
governments to consider ‘[aspiring] to ECEC systems that support broad learning,
participation and democracy’.
What has happened since? OECD, an international organisation that exerts great
influence over the whole field of education, turned its back on the precious legacy
of Starting Strong I and II, including its focus on and advocacy of democracy in
early childhood education. Instead, it took a very different techno-managerial direc-
tion, producing a ‘quality toolbox’ for early childhood education and another report
on ‘monitoring quality in early childhood education and care’, before, most recently,
launching the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS), an
international standardised assessment of children aged 5 years old across four ‘early
learning domains’ (early literacy and numeracy skills, self-regulation and social and
emotional skills). This seems to be an attempt to replicate, for young children, what
the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become for
15-year-olds. True, the first round of testing has only recruited three countries to
participate (England, Estonia, the United States), but the suspicion might be that
OECD hopes to sign up an increasing number of countries for future rounds, hoping
eventually to gain the global reach achieved by PISA, which now includes ‘72 coun-
tries and economies’.
Democracy finds no place in this new venture. There is no mention of it on the
IELS website (http://www.oecd.org/education/school/international-early-learning-
and-child-well-being-study.htm); and the implementation of IELS has eschewed
any attempt at democratic engagement with the early childhood community: there
has been no effort to inform or consult, no willingness to respond to the extensive
criticisms of the IELS and no recognition of diversity and multiple perspectives.
The richness and openness of the earlier Starting Strong study has been replaced by
the poverty and insularity of the IELS, part of a global web of OECD educational
measurements intended to ensure increasing uniformity and conformity to a univer-
sal norm of education – with OECD as the keeper of the norm (for some critical
responses to IELS, see Carr, Mitchell, & Rameka, 2016; Moss et al., 2016; Moss &
Urban, 2017; Urban & Swadener, 2016).
Depressing as this all is, we should not despair. There is a growing, global resis-
tance movement that contests the dominant narratives of neoliberalism, what I have
Foreword: Democracy as a Political Choice ix
termed ‘the story of quality and high returns’ and ‘the story of markets’ (Moss,
2013). This book is yet more evidence that the resistance movement is alive and
kicking, exploring a great diversity of theoretical and cultural perspectives, creating
new narratives and, above all, putting them to work. In these narratives, democracy
as a value, as an ethic and as a practice plays a major part. Moreover, as our world
moves deeper into multiple crises, a flourishing and inclusive democracy is needed
more than ever, providing a framework within which we can come together to
address the daunting prospects confronting us.
But how do we create a flourishing and inclusive democracy? Both generally and
specifically, as regards early childhood education, we need to ask the following
question: Under what conditions can democracy spread and succeed? Like Loris
Malaguzzi and the schools of Reggio Emilia, we need to combine utopian goals
with intense practicality. We can learn much from the sort of cases and other exam-
ples discussed in this book and elsewhere. But we also need to move from the indi-
vidual centre to the overall system, analysing and discussing what conditions would
promote and sustain a democratic system of early childhood education. This raises
issues about the education and support of the workforce; about the management of
services, for example, through elected committees consisting of representatives of
parents, citizens and educators; and about developing forms of participatory evalu-
ation, including tools such as pedagogical documentation. Again, it calls for politi-
cal choices in response to political questions, starting with explicit commitment to
democracy itself as a fundamental value of education, followed by other political
choices commensurate with democratic values, ethics and practices. And it involves
how the system is conceptualised and organised: I would argue that an early child-
hood system that relies heavily on private providers competing for parent- consumers
in ‘childcare’ markets is unlikely to be compatible with a democratic system. For all
these, and other reasons, Sweden is far closer to having a democratic system than
my country, England, where democracy is largely invisible in the system.
So I welcome another instance of the resistance movement, with the contribu-
tions to this book of people and places doing democracy. Such contributions can and
should provoke thought and new understandings. But I hope we can also use this
rich material to help our thinking about how to move towards more democratic
systems bearing in mind the wise words of the neoliberal guru Milton Friedman,
written in 1962:
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs the
actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic
function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until
the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. (Friedman, 1982, p.ix)
Emeritus Professor, Peter Moss
T homas Coram Research Unit, [email protected]
UCL Institute of Education
University College London,
London, UK