Empowering Early Childhood Educators

International Pedagogies as Provocation

Naomi McLeod, Patricia Giardiello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351387811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This forward-thinking text challenges educators to think about and question the purpose of education and explores international understandings of the role played by early years professionals in promoting participatory, ethical and reflexive practice which benefits children as independent decision-makers.

By exploring the different perspectives, concepts and practices adopted in early childhood settings in Denmark, Finland, Aotearoa, New Zealand and Sweden, Empowering Early Childhood Educators demonstrates the potential of participatory and democratic approaches in day-to-day practice. Illustrating how pedagogical approaches such as Te Wh?riki, Reggio Emilia and the Montessori method may be understood and interpreted to maximise children's engagement in their socio-cultural context, chapters empower educators to question their professional experience, knowledge and initiative to find a balance between directives and ethical practice. A rich combination of case studies, commentaries, interviews and conversations, the text offers critical insight into the daily practices and challenges of early years educators around the world and inspires critical reflection on practices which empower them.

A powerful revaluation of the purposes and value of early childhood education, Empowering Early Childhood Educators will be of interest to early years practitioners, students and researchers.

PART 1

The foundations

Chapters 1 to 3 establish the foundations for Parts 2 and 3 of the book. More than ever before, with current pressures of accountability and an obsession with data collection, the need to question not only ‘what’ is taught but ‘how’ and ‘why’ is emphasised. Constructing our own self-awareness and making sense of different understandings can be challenging and uncomfortable, but it can also be empowering and can provide a sense of liberation and ownership, rather than a feeling of being manipulated as part of a political top-down data and outcome-driven model of education. In doing so, Part 1 disrupts and challenges thinking around political questions such as the purpose of early childhood education. The importance of reflexivity is presented as the key to appreciating different perspectives and new ways of thinking. In the spirit of the book, to empower educators and challenge some of the diverse issues and pressures in early years education, Part 1 identifies and examines the relevance of participatory and democratic practice (often associated with international approaches) for promoting respectful learning that acts consciously as part of socially just and ethical practice.

1

THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION TODAY

Naomi McLeod and Patricia Giardiello

This chapter offers the opportunity for early childhood educators to deconstruct and question different views around the purpose of knowledge in relation to education, in particular, Early Childhood Education (ECE) and personal experiences and values. We examine different historical, cultural, economic and political pressures on education, looking specifically at the impact of neo-liberalism and marketisation in relation to the requirements of a socially just, ethical approach to pedagogy. Here, the relationship between power dynamics, perceptions of children and the influence on the type of pedagogy offered is explored in terms of future implications.

The chapter begins by considering different historical and socio-cultural influences and perspectives on the purpose and value of education (Moss, 2006; Kingdon, Gourd and Gasper, 2017; McLeod, 2016). The legacy of Aristotle is used to explore how education is viewed and how this influences the purpose it serves. The distinction between education as a process or a product is examined as a starting point, in particular educational practices in which there is a focus on norms, expected ways of developing and measuring outcomes (Murris, 2013), in comparison to a democratic approach to learning and the paradigm of children as agents in their own lives where children are viewed as rich in their potential (Rinaldi, 2006; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005) and capable of voicing their opinions and participating in meaningful ways. As such, questioning skills and the need for practical wisdom to inform ethical judgments as a source of moral action is required by the educator (Carr and Kemmis, 1986; Kemmis, 2010). We conclude this chapter by recognising that becoming wise requires open questioning so that a critically reflective (reflexive) approach by the adult, educator or facilitator can be nurtured and developed (McLeod, 2011, 2015). Only then can a democratic approach to learning and teaching as a process of phronesis-praxis (action that is consciously committed to human well-being) be embedded.

It is our intention that this chapter will act as a provocation for the reader to reflect on the purpose of education in relation to personal values. We show how this self-awareness is the first step in valuing a socially just, ethical and democratic approach to pedagogy so that it can be considered on a personal level and inform practice.

A historical overview of the purpose of education: The legacy of Aristotle and knowledge as a process or product

In considering the purpose of education it is essential to look back as far as the Ancient Greeks and the legacy of Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Aristotle, very much a Platonist, shared Plato’s ideas regarding the importance of early childhood education but went further in arguing that children possessed differing talents and skills that should be nurtured and enhanced (Giardiello, 2014).

Aristotle was concerned with the philosophical understandings of epistemology (what knowledge is, how we develop knowledge and understanding ethics and the notion that actions should be good and moral) (Aristotle, 1925; original work published circa 334 BCE). Almost all of Aristotle’s work was concerned with what constitutes happiness, the ‘good life’ and seeking better ways of living (Noddings, 2003). He was concerned with the ethics of virtue and questioning aspects of everyday life. As Kristjansson (2013) suggests, for Aristotle developing one’s own virtues is not possible without at the same time benefitting others. As such his ideas are relevant to this book and ethical education.

The distinction between the technical (i.e., productive and product / outcome-related) and practical (process / questioning / knowing why) is important as a starting point in determining the function of education. Here the legacy of Aristotle and his classification of knowledge is drawn on as a way of showing how knowledge can be viewed and how this influences the purpose it serves (Barnes, 1976). If the purpose of knowledge is the pursuit of making action, its function is the attainment of knowledge to make or produce something. According to Aristotle, this kind of knowledge and enquiry is involved in productive disciplines. Aristotle associated this form of thinking and doing with the work of craftspeople or artisans. Making action is dependent upon the exercising of skill (what the Greeks called techne), which always results from the idea, image or pattern of what the artisan wants to make. In other words, a person has a guiding plan or idea. This way of thinking is dominated by the plan, and actions are directed towards the given end product (Grundy, 1987). Here a parallel can be drawn with the outcome-driven model of education dominant today in England, but also in Nordic countries (Åsén and Moberg, 2015; and Perry, 2009; Nygård, 2017; Sahlberg, 2010, 2016; Urban, 2017).

In contrast, the practical (process of knowing why), according to Aristotle (Barnes, 1976), deals with an awareness of ethical and political life; the intention is on developing practical wisdom and knowledge involving the making of moral judgments and human interaction (Carr and Kemmis, 1986). By reflecting on collective and individual action and its consequences, Kemmis (2010) argues that this is ‘how we learn wisdom and how we develop what Aristotle called phronesis-praxis or the “knowing-why”’, the source of moral action. Likewise, Winch (2015) considers the importance of ‘know how’ for professionalism, but acknowledges knowing ‘why’ for excellence in performance. In this respect the activity form of Aristotle’s phronesis-praxis is the key to understanding how knowledge is learnt. In the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle suggests that knowledge should be learnt in the same way as the knowledge unfolds itself:

We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we have to do when we have learnt it. For instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp. Similarly we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

(NE19; 2.2. 103b1)

Phronesis-praxis

Praxis is an open form of reasoning or an intentional and committed action with moral intent that involves behaving ‘for the good of humankind in acts consciously and collectively performed to contribute to the good’ (Kemmis, 2010, p.419). Praxis involves a continual interplay between ends and means so that action is informed with a moral intent. Echeverria and Hannam (2016, p.4) describe educational praxis as

an intervention that intentionally opens up the conditions for change, and the deliberate change intended is to enable children and young people to exist in the world as an integral part of a well-informed democratic citizenry.

Freire (1972) considered ‘praxis’ as action supported by reflection (examining one’s own experiences and views) but requiring theory to illuminate it (Barnes, 1976). This process or phronesis, results in a doing-action or praxis, and is therefore process-centred. The ‘idea’ in the interaction is personal, subjective and never fully formed, rather it is constantly being formed and influenced by the situation in a very organic way (Grundy, 1987). This process is held together by a way of ‘saying, doing and relating, so that each informs the other’ (Kemmis, 2010, p.419).

For Aristotle, phronesis-praxis was guided by a moral disposition to act truly and rightly, a concern to further human well-being and the good life. This process of phronesis-praxis begins with a question or situation, which then leads to thinking about a situation in the light of personal understandings of what is good, ethical or what makes for human flourishing (Kemmis, 2010). Such a process is influenced by the identity of an individual as a result of their experiences, beliefs, values and understandings of education as a whole (Reed and Canning, 2010). The difficulty here, as Hassan (2005) acknowledges, lies in the fact that everything we do is based on a lifetime of values, beliefs and biases which influences consideration of what is desired, and might alter the way something is achieved or done. This is also advocated by Kernick’s comment that honesty is the best way forward in relation to practitioner research and positionality for informing professional practice (1998). Rokeach (1973), in his conceptualisation of values, notes the added complication of ‘good and bad’ values which include both moral values (what a person feels is the ‘right’ thing to do) and competency values (what an individual believes is the most effective way to go about doing something). He also identifies ‘terminal values’, which relate to what the educator wants to achieve for themselves (personal values) and how they wish society to function. Schwartz and Bilsky (1987) developed these concepts further and defined values as ‘(a) concepts or beliefs, (b) about desirable end states or behaviours, (c) that transcend specific situations, (d) guide selection or evaluation of behaviour and events, and (e) are ordered by relative importance’ (p.551). The virtue of this definition is that it distinguishes values from attitudes by pointing at their generalised nature, whereas attitudes are people’s beliefs about specific objects or situations (Roe and Ester, 1999). With this intermingling of belief systems, achieving a system of shared values and approaching controversial issues constructively can best be done through an attitude of critical affirmation. As Ashton and Watson (1998, p.191) point out ‘critical affirmation has something in common with the idea of the “impartial sympathetic observer” as developed by Dewey (1932)’. As Dewey and Tufts contend:

To put ourselves in the place of another, to see things from the standpoint of his [or her] aims and values, to humble our estimate of our own pretensions to the level they assume in the eyes of an impartial observer, is the surest way to appreciate what justice demands.

(Dewey and Tufts, 1932, p.275)

There is a close connection between values and education with a high degree of super imposing mutuality between the two. This includes political and educational values and beliefs as Stenhouse discusses in his seminal texts (1975, 1983). Stenhouse argues that being an ‘extended professional’ involved three main elements: ‘the commitment to systematic questioning of one’s own teaching as a basis for development the commitment and skills to study one’s own teaching, and the concern to question and to test theory in practice’ (Stenhouse, 1975, p.143). An understanding of education as a process in this sense involves personal and professional attributes that merge as one and ownership of why different approaches are taken as part of practice / teaching. During this process, the relationship between theory (the thinking process) and practice (the action as a result) fuse and the educator develops a personal responsibility for the outcomes experienced by the learner.

Current educational pressures: The influence of neo-liberalism and marketisation

The field of early childhood education is increasingly dominated by a strongly positivistic (outcome-driven) and regulatory discourse (over assessment, testing and Ofsted), so the focus is on assessing performance of predetermined outcomes where there is often no room for creativity and experimentation (Moss, 2017). This is recognised most recently in the expectations around testing, accountability and competition manifested in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the launch of the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS), which focus very narrowly on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Our reasons for writing this book: Reflections from the editors
• Introduction
• PART 1: The foundations
• PART 2: Five international pedagogies as provocation
• PART 3: A way forward
• Afterword A meeting place
• Index