Pence, Alan TITLE Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 433 943 PS 027 925 AUTHOR Dahlberg, Gunilla; Moss, Peter; Pence, Alan TITLE Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives. ISBN ISBN-0-7507-0769-0 PUB DATE 1999-00-00 NOTE 214p. AVAILABLE FROM Taylor and Francis, 47 Runway Road, Levittown, PA 19057; Tel: 800-821-8312 (Toll Free); e-mail: bkorders ®tandfpa.com; Web site: http://www.taylorandfrancis.com ($15.95). PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Children; *Day Care; Definitions; Discourse Analysis; *Early Childhood Education; *Educational Philosophy; Educational Principles; *Educational Quality; Ethics; Political Science; Program Evaluation; Value Judgment; Values IDENTIFIERS *Day Care Quality; Postmodernism ABSTRACT Working with postmodern ideas, this book questions the search to define and measure quality in the early childhood field and its tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical and managerial issues of expert knowledge and measurement. The book argues that there are ways other than the "discourse of quality" for understanding and evaluating early childhood pedagogical work, and relates these to alternative ways of understanding early childhood itself and the purposes of early childhood institutions, resulting in a reconceptualization of early childhood education and care. Taking a broad perspective, the book relates issues of early childhood to the sociology of childhood, philosophy, ethics, political science, and other fields. The book maintains that the concept and language of quality cannot accommodate issues such as diversity and multiple perspectives, contextual specificity, and subjectivity and asserts that a new concept is required, called "meaning making." The book places these issues in a global context and draws on work from Canada, Sweden, and Italy, including the nurseries in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Contains approximately 200 references. (KB) ******************************************************************************** *. Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION --) Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as eceived from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. °Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy 1111117'!"Js:1,1e i PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 0 os o ern Vi ersPC IVPS e ta I 8 0 (EST CONAVALABLE Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care 3 Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss and Alan Pence UK Falmer Press, 1 Gunpowder Square, London, EC4A 3DE USA Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc., 325 Chestnut Street, 8th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106 © Dahlberg, Moss and Pence 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 1999 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7507 0770 4 cased ISBN 0 7507 0769 0 paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dataare available on request Jacket design by Caroline Archer Typeset in 10/12 pt Times by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd., Guildford and King's Lynnon paper which has a specified pH value on final paper manufacture of not less than 7.5 and is therefore 'acid free'. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. 5 B EST COPY AVAILABLE Contents Acknowledgments vi Chapter 1: What this Book is About 1 Chapter 2:Theoretical Perspectives: Modernity and Postmodernity, Power and Ethics 19 Chapter 3:Constructing Early Childhood: What Do We Think It Is? 43 Chapter 4:Constructing the Early Childhood Institution: What Do We Think They Are For? 62 Chapter 5:Beyond the Discourse of Quality to the Discourse of Meaning Making 87 Chapter 6:The Stockholm Project: Constructing a Pedagogy that Speaks in the Voice of the Child, the Pedagogue and the Parent 121 Chapter 7:Pedagogical Documentation: A Practice for Reflection and Democracy 144 Chapter 8:Minority Directions in the Majority World: Threats and Possibilities 159 References 187 Index 201 v Acknowledgments In preparing this book we have benefited from the comments of a number of colleagues, including Chris Pascal, Tony Bertram, Mary Jane Drummond, June Statham, Sally Lubeck, Katie Cooke and Bob Glossop. We appreciate their support, while emphasizing that the views expressed in the book, as wellas any mistakes, are entirely our responsibility. We would also like to acknowledge the many people with whom we have worked in the First Nations and Stockholm Projects recounted later in the book, as well as from Reggio Emilia. Their commitment, enthusiasm and insights have been a great inspiration. vi Chapter 1 What this Book is About The Language of Early Childhood' Over the last 30 years, increasing attention has been paid to 'early childhood edu- cation and care services' by governments, by parents, by employers, by local com- munities and by researchers. The reasons have been varied. As women have joined men in the labour market, the demand for non-parental care has grown. The import- ance of early learning has been increasingly recognized, both in its own right and because many believe it may enhance subsequent academic performance. Early intervention has come to be seen as a means of preventing or ameliorating problems in families with young children and in later childhood, as well as protecting children deemed to be at risk. Early childhood education and care services are discussed as a condition for urban and rural development and as part of the social and economic infrastructure of healthy and wealthy local communities. There are wide national variations in how early childhood services are delivered, organized, staffed and funded, as well as in the number of places available (cf. Lamb et al., 1992; Woodill et al., 1992; Cochran, 1993; EC Childcare Network, 1996a). But in many countries, increasing demand for non-parental care, education for young children, social intervention and local infrastructure has produced the same response more early childhood institutions (we discuss later in the chapter why we use the term institutions) and more young children attending them. This can be seen as part of a process by which reproduction, in particular the care and education of children, has gone increasingly public, emerging from the 'private' domain of the household in response to new economic and social conditions (Benhabib, 1992). As early childhood rises on the agenda of private and public issues, more and more voices are to be heard in more and more settings talking about early child- hood education and care. Yet despite the growing volume and diversity of these voices, most seem to talk the same language of early childhood. Not only is it often literally the same language, as English becomes ever more dominant in the worlds of business, culture, science, technology and research2, but it shares the same vocabu- lary: promoting development; ensuring readiness to learn and readiness for school; enhancing school performance; early intervention for children deemed to be in need, at risk or otherwise disadvantaged; developmentally appropriate practice and desir- able outcomes; models and programmes; plans and cost effectiveness; regulation, standards; and most pervasive of all, the language of quality. This dominant' language of early childhood generates its own questions. How do we measure quality? What are the most cost effective programmes? What standards 1 Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education do we need? How can we best achieve desirable outcomes? What works? The common feature of such questions is their technical and managerial nature. They seek techniques that will ensure standardization, predictability and control. They aspire to methods that can reduce the world to a set of objective statements of fact, independent of statements of value and the need to make judgements. They avoid the ethical dimension arising from what Rorty (1980) refers toas the 'burden of choice', the responsibility for making judgements, instead reducing choice toan issue of managerial rationality in which questions of value are systematically trans- formed into technical questions (Gergen, 1992). They are not questioningques- tions, which ask about value, acknowledge the probability of multiple perspectives and meanings, diversity and uncertainty, and which open up for democratic participa- tion, dialogue and further questioning. In short, they expressa desire for a clean and orderly world, devoid of messiness and complexity. During its three years in the making, this book has become an exploration of ways of talking about early childhood and its institutions.