Alternative Narratives in Early Childhood

An Introduction for Students and Practitioners

Peter Moss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351966580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Challenging dominant discourses in the field of early childhood education, this book provides an accessible introduction to some of the alternative narratives and diverse perspectives that are increasingly to be heard in this field, as well as discussing the importance of paradigm, politics and ethics.

Peter Moss draws on material published in the groundbreaking Contesting Early Childhood series to introduce readers to thinking that questions the mainstream approach to early childhood education and to offer rich examples to illustrate how this thinking is being put to work in practice. Key topics addressed include:

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• dominant discourses in today's early childhood education – and what is meant by 'dominant discourse'

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• why politics and ethics are the starting points for early childhood education

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• Reggio Emilia as an example of an alternative narrative

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• the relevance to early childhood education of thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and of theoretical positions such as posthumanism.

An enlightening read for students and practitioners, as well as policymakers, academics and parents, this book is intended for anyone who wants to think more about early childhood education and delve deeper into new perspectives and debates in this field.

Chapter 1

Dominant discourses, alternative narratives and resistance movements

This groundbreaking new series questions the current dominant discourses surrounding early childhood and offers instead alternative narratives of an area that is now made up of a multitude of perspectives and debates.

Some years ago, I was invited to edit a new book series, along with my Swedish colleague, Gunilla Dahlberg. The book series was called Contesting Early Childhood, and we co-edited it for ten years before handing it over to the new editors, Michel Vandenbroeck from Belgium and Liselott Mariett Olsson from Sweden. At the time of writing, Contesting Early Childhood includes 17 titles (you can find a list of these at https://www.routledge.com/Contesting-Early-Childhood/book-series/SE0623). I have started this book with the stated aim of the series because my purpose is to explain this aim, to argue for its importance and to illustrate what it means in practice. I will introduce you to the ‘current dominant discourses’ and how and why they are questioned, as well as to a few of the ‘alternative narratives’ and some of the ‘multitude of perspectives and debates’ currently on offer in early childhood education.

Put another way, this book is an introduction to critical thinking about early childhood, and in particular early childhood education. Critical thinking, as understood here, has two sides to it. There is the process of identifying, questioning and challenging those views and opinions that forget they are just one of many possible ways of thinking and talking about a subject – say, early childhood education, and instead insist that they are the one and only way: we can call these ‘dominant discourses’, of which more in a moment The other side to critical thinking is to construct, present and explore alternatives, to demonstrate there are other ways of thinking and talking about a subject. So, critical thinking and this book are about both deconstruction and reconstruction, about scepticism and hope.

The book, then, is a beginner’s guide to contesting early childhood education. It is intended to serve as a bridge that leads readers away from more familiar ground to encounter new ways of thinking about and doing early childhood education. I hope it will encourage some to travel further into an exciting and provocative world ‘made up of a multitude of perspectives and debates’. But I recognise that the world of alternative perspectives and debates, exciting and provocative as it may be once encountered, can also seem on occasion rather forbidding and unwelcoming, shrouded sometimes in the mists of puzzling jargon and abstract writing, a place where it can be hard to make out what is going on. I’ve felt that way myself. My intention, therefore, is to disperse these mists as far as possible by plain writing and frequent examples of how people are actually putting new thinking, alternative perspectives and debates to work in early childhood education – not just theorising but doing. I will also tackle some of the questions that come up when dominant discourses are questioned and alternatives proposed, one of which is ‘What to do next?’

Who is this book for? The intention is to reach out and appeal to a wide readership: students and practitioners; but I also hope to engage with some policymakers, academics and parents – in fact, anyone who wants to think more about and delve deeper into early childhood education. Some readers may just be curious, wanting to find out what is going on in parts of early childhood education outside the mainstream and so broaden their understanding of the field. Others may be driven by disquiet with that mainstream, harbouring a sense of unease or distaste about the way things are going that makes them seek out critiques and alternatives that can help them to better understand and articulate their disenchantment.

Some may already have turned away from the mainstream and be heading towards what Stephen Ball, a British sociologist of education and critical voice in the world of education, calls a ‘politics of refusal’. This requires self-questioning, asking ‘What kind of self, what kind of subject have we become, and how might we be otherwise?’ (Ball, 2016, p. 5). This is a questioning of personal identity that involves the care of the self: ‘a continuous process of introspection, which is at the same time attuned to a critique of the world outside… . [This is] the art of voluntary inservitude, of reflective indocility’ (ibid., p. 8). For all those struggling with such questions of identity in relation to early childhood education, all those asking themselves (like Alice in Wonderland) ‘Who am I then?’, all those who want to become less accepting and more questioning – I hope this book will help in formulating some answers and casting off lingering feelings of servitude or docility.

But it is important to establish from the start that being critical – to be someone who chooses ‘reflective indocility’ as an integral part of their professional identity, an answer to the ‘Who am I then?’ question – is a choice and not a necessity. It’s been my choice as an academic, for reasons that will become evident as the book progresses. However, it was not always so; I only made the turn to a critical identity well into middle age. But you may not agree with such a choice of professional identity. You may prefer instead to choose another identity, to be, for example, a proficient manager or skilled technician of early childhood education, someone who is very competent at applying established best practice. You may choose the mainstream rather than alternative perspectives.

I also want to make something very clear from the start. It is not the intention of this book to condemn such a chosen identity, this ‘kind of self’, or to rubbish anyone who decides that the story she or he likes best about early childhood education is the ‘dominant discourse’, the mainstream narrative that I will introduce shortly. What matters is not so much the choice itself but realising that a choice exists and must be made: a choice about identity, ‘what kind of subject’ you become, constructing an identity that feels right to you and that you can justify, both to yourself and others – and accompanying this, a choice too about which narratives you choose to assist you in making meaning of early childhood education, a choice made in the full knowledge that other narratives exist, that there are alternatives. So I can accept and respect those who have made a choice of the position they take and the identity they assume, acknowledging that it has been a choice carefully made from among alternatives; what I find harder to accept is the taking of a position and the assuming of an identity as if this involved no choice, as if both position and identity are self-evident, as if there are no alternatives.

I hope this book will leave you with a clearer idea of some of the ‘alternative narratives’ and ‘multitude of perspectives’ in early childhood education today, of the different ways of thinking, talking and doing early childhood education that are out there; ‘some’, note, not ‘all’, as I do not claim to know, understand and therefore cover the whole rich diversity of narratives and perspectives that are out there. I hope, too, that this book will leave you feeling unsettled and uncertain, questioning things you had previously taken for granted; more ready and able to be critical; but also excited, optimistic and more ready and able to explore new perspectives on early childhood education. Last but not least, I hope this book will encourage you to read further into the rich literature of books and articles that contest early childhood education and offer alternative narratives.

In the following chapters I will introduce you to two broad issues that are basic to contesting early childhood education: the importance of paradigm and the importance of politics and ethics. I will then look in some detail at four examples that very much question the current dominant discourses in early childhood education: first, the municipal schools in Reggio Emilia, which practice a very distinctive early childhood education far removed from the mainstream dominant discourse, offering a prime example of an alternative narrative; then some theoretical perspectives that though not specifically addressing early childhood education are being put to work in innovative and productive ways by researchers and practitioners in the field – just a sample of the ‘multitude of perspectives’ available to enrich early childhood education and that can help to create alternative narratives. In the final chapter, I look to the future, both for readers of this introductory book and for early childhood education.

But first things first. I want to start by unpicking some of the ideas underpinning the stated aim of the Contesting Early Childhood series, with which I started this chapter. I need to explain what that statement of intent is about and why it uses the language that it does – and one of the recurrent themes of this book is the importance of language, how it shapes the way we construct understandings of life.

Narratives, dominant discourses and alternatives

The stated aim of the Contesting Early Childhood series connects three important ideas: the importance of narratives or stories (I use the two terms inter-changeably); the power of certain narratives – or dominant discourses; and the existence of other narratives, alternatives that resist or contest dominant discourses. I will attempt to explain these ideas more clearly.

First, the importance of narratives, that is the stories we hear and tell, for how we interpret or make meaning – of ourselves and our lives, of our families and other relationships, and about what goes on in the world around us. As a species, mankind has an innate tendency to communicate and to make sense of existence through stories (Bruner, 1990). Stories are, in short, the way in which we make meaning of our world and our place in it, rendering our existence meaningful. This idea is captured by the Dark Mountain Project, an American environmental group of writers, artists and thinkers, who write that they ‘believe that the roots of [the converging crises of our times] lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves… . We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality’ (Dark Mountain Project, 2009a).

Stories, then, construct or weave reality for us and, as such, have consequences, sometimes bad ones, for example justifying the destructive relationship that mankind has developed with the environment (and other exploitative relationships). Confronting this, the Dark Mountain Project has

stopped believing the stories our civilization tells itself … [as the world enters] an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unravelling… . [Stories that] tell us that humanity is separate from all other life and destined to control it; that the ecological and economic crises we face are mere technical glitches; that anything which cannot be measured cannot matter. But these stories are losing their power. We see them falling apart before our eyes.

(Dark Mountain Project, 2009b)

Stories, then, are ubiquitous. They are how all of us ‘weave reality’; they help us explain and justify what we think and do. Depending on your perspective or viewpoint, stories can be good or bad, enchanting or disenchanting, can have beneficial or harmful consequences, can trap us in dysfunctional positions or help us to move on. But whatever their consequence, they are stories which we tell ourselves and others. Perhaps the biggest danger of all is when we forget that our stories are just that – stories – and come to believe instead that they are some revelatory and fundamental truth.

The importance of storytelling has been extended to the realm of policy making. Australian educator Allan Luke puts this idea eloquently when he says that ‘policies – successful and unsuccessful – are ultimately epic poems or stories, with problems to be solved, heroic agents, participants, false starts and dead ends, and with endings, at times happy and at times tragic’ (Luke, 2011, p. 17). Rather than policy making being a process of dispassionate technocrats carefully weighing up evidence to arrive at the best course of action, this view sees policy making as a contest between conflicting stories, different ways of weaving or viewing reality, with storytellers trying to persuade others of the virtues of their narratives.

This leads me to a second idea: the existence of dominant discourses. We live in a world of stories, or discourses, ways of thinking and talking about things: when I use the term ‘discursive’ later on, I refer to the way we make meaning of life through stories or discourses. But within the multitude of stories or discourses, certain ones can become particularly influential. For the Dark Mountain Project, as crises multiply and worsen, stories of human separation from and mastery over the environment become increasingly incredible and lose their power to convince. But they have been and still (at least in some quarters) remain potent – they have wielded great influence, shaping economies, societies and how many people think and act, in short weaving reality. They have become, in the words of Michel Foucault (a French philosopher who will figure prominently in this book), ‘dominant discourses’, a term you will recall that appears in the aim of the Contesting Early Childhood book series as something to be questioned.

‘Dominant discourses’ are stories that have a decisive influence on a particular subject, for example early childhood education, by insisting that they are the only way to think, talk and behave, that they are the only reality. They seek to impose, in Foucault’s words, a ‘regime of truth’ through exercising power over our thoughts and actions, directing or governing what we see as ‘the truth’ and how we construct the world or weave reality. Typical of dominant discourses is how they make ‘assumptions and values invisible, turn subjective perspectives and understandings into apparently objective truths, and determine that some things are self-evident and realistic while others are dubious and impractical’ (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005, p. 17). In dominant discourses, fictional stories claim to be non-fictional statements, presenting themselves as natural, unquestionable and inevitable. This is simply how things are, the dominant discourse asserts: no need to add any qualifications, to say ‘in my opinion’ or ‘it seems to me’ or ‘from my perspective’.

By behaving in this way, by insisting they are the one and only truth, dominant discourses also stifle alternative discourses or stories. They exclude, or attempt to, other ways of understanding and interpreting the world, of weaving reality, marginalising or drowning out other stories. A person putting forward an alternative view or story is treated as out of touch with reality, to be living in the past, to not know what they are taking about, or some other put down that insists their position is irrelevant or absurd. Put another way, and this time using the powerful image offered by the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Unger (2005a), dominant discourses seek to impose a ‘dictatorship of no alternative’ – there is no alternative, they assert or imply, this is the only reality there can possibly be.

Shortly I will introduce what I think is the most dominant discourse in today’s early childhood education, but for the moment let me offer a simple and very different example, the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, told by Hans Christian Andersen, a 19th century Danish writer best remembered for his fairy tales. This is a story about how two dishonest weavers attempt to weave reality – in this case by weaving a reality about weaving! They promise an arrogant and foolish emperor that, for a large sum of money, they will make him a wonderful new suit of clothes; these clothes, they say, will be invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. The king is persuaded, telling himself that ‘if I wore them I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools’. In actual fact, the two weavers do nothing, pocket the money and proffer the Emperor a non-existent set of clothes. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his ‘new clothes’, which are of course non-existent and leave him stark naked, no one dares say that they don’t see any clothes on him for fear they will be decried as unfit, stupid or incompetent. It is left to a child to challenge this charade and to cry out in the crowd, ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’

It would be wrong to claim that this story is a perfect example of a dominant discourse. Those who subscribe to and tell such discourses or stories are not in general foolish, deluded or dishonest and may well believe what they say and that what they say is for the common good. But Andersen’s tale does capture the idea of how a dominant discourse, by determining what can and can’t be said, closes down other views or perspectives, other stories. Those with doubts about the dominant discourse are often reluctant or unable either to voice their doubts or to suggest alternatives, afraid of the reaction, while others have no doubts but simply accept the story as true.

Andersen also illustrates how a dominant discourse is closely bound up with power. Such a story finds favour for some reason among those in power, who help ensure its dominance by endorsing it; having first been told the story, they constantly re-tell it through privileged channels of communication, increasing its reach and impact. And because the powerful – the Emperor in Andersen’s story or, in early childhood education today, those who make policies and disperse funding – adopt the story, those dependent on them do so also. In this way, through such mutual reinforcement, a story gathers momentum and influence, becoming the story on everyone’s lips.

Which brings me to the third idea: the existence of other narratives resisting or contesting dominant discourses. A discourse may be dominant, yet it never manages totally to silence other discourses or stories. Some, like the small boy, will always speak out and contest the dominant discourse, for, as Foucault contends, ‘where there is power, there is resistance’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 95). Put another way, if there was to be no resistance, the relationship would no longer be one of power but simply of slavery, and we are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Dominant discourses, alternative narratives and resistance movements
• 2 The importance of paradigm
• 3 Politics and ethics as first practice
• 4 Reggio Emilia: a story of democracy, experimentation and potentiality
• 5 Michel Foucault: power, knowledge and truth
• 6 Gilles Deleuze: thought, movement and (more) experimentation
• 7 Posthumanism, the posthuman child and intra-active pedagogy
• 8 What next?
• References
• Index