Rethinking Readiness in Early Childhood Education

Implications for Policy and Practice

Jeanne Marie Iorio, Will Parnell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137485120
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation de la petite enfance

This book challenges traditional conceptions of readiness in early childhood education by sharing concrete examples of practice, policy and histories that rethink readiness. This book seeks to reimagine possible new educational worlds for young children.

C H A P T E R 1

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A Cultural History of “Readiness” in Early Childhood Care and Education: Are There Still Culturally Relevant, Ethical, and Imaginative Spaces for Learning Open for Young Children and Their Families?

Marianne N. Bloch and Koeun Kim

According to several recent national and international reports, improving children’s “readiness” to enter kindergarten and first grade is now one of the most pressing issues around the globe just as in the US early childhood policy and practice (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009; OECD, 2006). According to a recent UNICEF report, the term “school readiness” has been variously theorized and discussed in three dimensions: “children’s readiness for school; schools’ readiness for children; and the readiness of families and communities to help children make the transition to school” (UNICEF, 2012, p. 2). In this chapter, we use these international and national reports as a starting point to speak about how to think about the history of “readiness” for school. And, clearly, as we think globally, we must think about all the children who are not in school, too—where prenatal and postnatal nutrition and the health status of the mother and family are an important part of readiness for life. In addition, the growth of global inequalities and of poverty across and within nations reminds us that readiness for school is only one part of a very large and complex set of issues.

But with these points kept in mind, we turn our attention to a more limited set of issues that we have focused on in this chapter. What is a history of readiness for school? What might such a history tell us? Are there important issues to be learned, or critical questions that still need to be asked? In this chapter, we look at these three points, with a special focus on a history of readiness for school for young children in the United States.

What Is a History of Readiness for School? What Might Such a History Tell Us?

In the late 1980s, a small grant from the Spencer Foundation for an archival project eventually led to several chapters and articles related to “a” history of early childhood education and child care in the United States (e.g., Bloch, 1987, 1991). While we summarize a small amount from that project here, first we emphasize that the project resulted in “a history,” not “the history” as the “doing” of historical research varies with the theoretical perspective(s) used, the perceived purposes and audience for research or writing, and the selections of “how” one both does and presents a history. In Bloch’s (1987) study, many primary and secondary archival resources were used, but they were primarily limited to what were considered principal philosophical writings focused on ideas about young children’s education and care, pedagogical curriculum texts, and descriptions of practices that occurred at schools from the seventeenth through the latter part of the twentieth century. In looking at the perceived “aims and effects of early education,” it was possible to discern ways in which social factors or societal “structures” heavily influenced the cultural re/production of a gender, class, and racially differentiated system of early education and child care.

While we could say that this differentiation continues today, the point of this introduction to the chapter is to illustrate that histories vary. This is not a record of the history of early education and child care “as we all know it,” but, instead, a focus on the importance of recognizing the many different ways in which historical research can be done, and its constructed nature. The sources used (e.g., curriculum texts, parent diaries, superintendent of school’s records of meetings, or women’s labor union meeting minutes) present different ways of examining and interpreting a history. The background of the writer and his or her particular research questions and approaches influence how “historical ideas” are researched and presented. The ways in which one intertwines contexts with events and so on all affect the narration of “history” and other complexities of the research and writing process.

In Bloch’s (1987) chapter, “covering” three centuries in 40 pages, the emergence of different outside-of-the home programs for young children in the United States seemed especially important. It was not only the different schools and programs—from infant schools to day nurseries (day care), from kindergartens (which originally included two- to seven-year-olds in the nineteenth century) to nursery schools (now called preschools) and the age-segregated kindergartens for five-year-olds by the mid-twentieth century—but also the different views on why these different programs were developed, and for whom (individuals or groups) that were fascinating to read. It was in the intertwining of a critical theoretical framework, an examination of different contexts within historical moments, that class, gender, and racial differences in programming and provision emerged, as did a stratification by class, race, and gender in the beliefs expressed about children’s need for different “schooling” and “child care” depending upon perceptions of family background and (family, but often mother’s) character. It was in this analysis that one could easily see the division between early education and child care; in the United States, especially, child care was perpetually pathologized (mothers were expected to be at home with children and work part-time or not at all) and to be used as a last resort. Beliefs about the need to intervene in young children’s (and their parents’) lives to make them more “normal,” or to assimilate them to/toward middle- and upper-class morality and conduct were prevalent.

Yet even more important—for this chapter, perhaps—were the variations in perceptions about what young children needed to learn or develop, or could learn to be ready for life and/or later schooling that became so important and interesting. In that 1987 article, it seemed clear that, across time, social habits, social-emotional skills, language skills, intellectual or problem-solving or cognitive skills (labels varied with time), physical (fine and large motor) skills, and moral skills and attitudes were important. How they were phrased, and which children were expected to learn which types of skills, nonetheless, depended, in that research, on whether they were perceived as destined for poverty or a working-class life, or were supposed to be given an opportunity, or expected to succeed at a level equal to others from wealthier homes. Whether skills were considered “academic,” “cognitive,” or “intellectual,” young children were thought to be ready to learn at various ages, and, also, by some, according to interests.

Nonetheless, in the majority of the archival writings reviewed, it was children’s social and moral conduct and behavior, their ability to play, and to learn proper physical and moral habits, language, and social behavior/conduct through play with others that appeared most important in most school programs; it was also clear that learning to follow orders, to be quiet and obedient, played an increasingly important role in teachers’ and other educators’ perspectives by the end of the nineteenth century. In the Bloch (1987) analysis, this was because many programs outside the home were developed and targeted for poorer children.

In others’ studies (e.g., Beatty, 1995;Polakow, 1993, 2007; Rose, 2010; Weber, 1969), authors/researchers were able to focus on more detailed and varied perspectives, as well as use different theoretical and personal frameworks. Each offers a continued examination of social/emotional, language and literacy, intellectual, academic or cognitive development, physical skills, and morality as aspects of children’s behavior to which teachers and caregivers were to attend to help children “get ready” or make the transition to school.

With the growth of expectations for children going to school, and staying in school, expectations for preparing children for certain types of life behavior and success in school also grew. Through awareness of what children might learn, and how programs could affect children differentially from early ages, came greater expectations for prenatal, infant-toddler, and preschool programs that, when high quality, were perceived to have positive benefits for young children (see Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 2007, with reference to critique of the term “high quality”). Yet, in policies and programs, perceived aims and effects of diverse early childhood programs have remained tied to certain constructions of groups as “lacking” in relation to others more likely to succeed in school and life. Child care programs have remained a poorly subsidized and regulated program for children whose parents work outside the home; preschool readiness programs, often still with a half-day program, have continued to be the focus of readiness for school efforts, with family involvement and interventions with parents as a secondary but important focus to help children become ready.

But ready for what? As Graue’s (1993) book Ready for What? Constructing Meanings of Readiness for Kindergarten illustrated, families, communities, and schools may differ in the ways in which they interpret and enact a sense of what “being ready” for school means for individuals and groups. Her study of the cultural meaning making of readiness in three neighborhoods and schools in one city in the United States reminded many that readiness is a culturally, as well as historically, constructed concept. Others have drawn from cross-national frameworks to examine the ways in which ideas vary by national or cultural context (Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist, & Popkewitz, 2003, Michel & Mahon, 2002; Popkewitz, 2005; Wollins, 2000). Given the many research studies we could draw on, however, we want to focus on the work of Joe Tobin and his collaborators (Tobin, Hsueh, & Karasawa, 2013; Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989) in which both cross-national and a short historical (1980s–2010s) window were used to shed light on the ways in which both cultural belief systems and historical/social patterns interact allowing for variations in perceptions about what young children should learn in preschools to get them ready for school or a successful life. Cultural-historical “frameworks” that value multiple contexts and framings to examine a history of perspectives can be very useful to understanding, again, the very complex ways in which history can be told or the multiple and complex ways in which it might be understood. From these limited research studies, we show the importance of theoretical framing in the telling of “a” history, as well as the ways in which history must be seen as complex, not as a “truth,” but as constructed through the lens of theory, methods, authors’ own perspectives, archives or artifacts used and their analysis, and the broader purposes, values, and ethical and activist engagements of the narrators of “histories”; we also show that these too are nested within power/knowledge relations in and across societies.

In the sentiments and detailing above, we have provided multiple research studies of different histories of early education and child care that have been done, and attempted to emphasize the importance of viewing history as constructed, not as “the truth.” In several research studies above, an intellectual history of early educational programs is given—marked by the ideas that the present is informed by the past, that history is linear—moving from past to present with some continuity, and that some contextual factors may influence or even be causally related to what people or groups think and/or do. In the next section, we turn toward a more postmodern historical methodology, known as cultural history, and attempt to use present-day reasoning as a way to interrogate history in terms of how we come to reason now, as well as in the past—but without an assumption of linear development, or an ability to determine cause. First we explain briefly what we mean by “cultural history,” and then move to some examples and analyses to illustrate what this approach might add to our analysis of readiness for school.

What Is Cultural History in Relation to a More Traditional History? Global and Local, Nonlinear, Noncausal

As suggested above, in many of the accounts of historical presentations on early education, we look at a linear conception of time and a notion of context (space, culture, historical happenings) “causing” certain events to happen or policies or programs to emerge. Thus, as one example, we link Friedrich Froebel’s philosophy and experimentation with the emergence of what is known as “kindergarten” today in the United States, but we often fail to understand that Froebelian kindergartens emerged in Germany during a time of philosophical and political turmoil, and that his ideas, while not well received in Germany, became very influential in different ways in many countries of the world during the latter half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century in many cases (see Wollins, 2000).

Similarly, John Dewey’s ideas traveled within the United States in the early twentieth century, but became influential in various ways and at different times outside the United States (Popkewitz, 2005). The ways different discourses (ideas, language, knowledge systems, and reasoning) travel and enter into different spaces is an important part of the cultural historical approach, which we can see as influential through the means we spread ideas of the importance of preschool education for readiness for school, notions of what constitutes a “quality” program, and the various ways in which we shift our policies and our words in relation to the spread and influence of ideas (Bloch et al., 2003; Bloch, Kennedy, Lightfoot, & Weyenberg, 2006). A cultural historical approach sees history as contingent upon particular events in a context at a moment. History is not seen as linear, or caused by a particular event, but rather a way of reasoning that relates to different ways of understanding the relations between knowledge, power, and social change (see also Foucault, 1980; Popkewitz, Franklin, & Pereyra, 2001, p. ix–x).

A Cultural History of Readiness Begins with Present Ways of Reasoning

Drawing on the notions expressed above related to a “cultural history” of readiness, we begin with a recent study of Head Start programs in the United States done by Koeun Kim in her recently completed dissertation (Kim, 2014). We present data from interviews done within four Head Start programs, and within classrooms for four-year-olds who were attending “Four K” or kindergarten for four-year-olds in 2011–2012. The interviews and the analysis and interpretation by Kim (2014) allow us to see, and then discuss, current discursive reasoning and material practices and effects related to constructions of “readiness” in one context. Subsequently, we discuss what Kagan (2013) and Moss (2013) recently discussed as “schoolification” and “Readiness,” and draw on Graue’s (1993, 2006) suggestion that “readiness” is a socially constructed discourse that takes on meaning when one looks closely at a cultural community and also societal expectations related to “Readiness for What?” We also briefly look at the notions of culturally relevant pedagogy (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1994) or “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992), and final...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1   A Cultural History of “Readiness” in Early Childhood Care and Education: Are There Still Culturally Relevant, Ethical, and Imaginative Spaces for Learning Open for Young Children and Their Families?
• 2   Ready for School? Lessons from a Sociohistorical Investigation into Mechanisms of Preparation and Classification of Children for Primary School from 1911 to 1979
• 3   Something Isn’t Right: Deconstructing Readiness with Parents, Teachers, and Children
• 4   The Early Development Instrument: A Bioecological View of School Readiness
• 5   “Daddy, Look at the Video I Made on My iPad!”: Reconceptualizing “Readiness” in the Digital Age
• 6   Cracking the Walls of the Education Matrix: Are you Ready to Educate Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students?
• 7   “Are You My Dawg?”: Socially and Politically Marginalized Children Desiring to Be Seen and Valued by Their Teachers
• 8   Rethinking the Discourse of Readiness in Preschool
• 9   Transition to School: Times of Opportunity, Expectation, Aspiration, and Entitlement
• 10   “Who They Are and What They Have to Say Matters . . . ”: How an Emergent Preschool Experience Shapes Children’s Navigation of Kindergarten
• 11   Puffins, Butterflies, and Clouds in the Preschool: The Importance of Wonder
• 12   Juan, Melina, and Friends: Guides for Reconceptualizing Readiness
• 13   Inserting Postmodern Epistemological Perspectives into Discourse on Readiness: Privileging Assets, Capacity Building, and Diversity to Increase Equity
• 14   Reimagining Possible Worlds for Young Children
• Notes on Contributors
• Index