Discourses in power: Policy and curriculum demands in the first year of compulsory school

Abstract

The influence of curriculum and policy documents on the decision-making of educators is of particular interest in the field of early childhood. Reports of competing pedagogical approaches with a ‘push-down’ of curriculum alongside advocacy for play-based pedagogies raise questions as to the potential of curriculum and policy documents to create tension through multiple discourses. This is significant in light of politically driven discourses in education and their potential to influence the decision-making of educators. This research draws on an interpretivist epistemology framed by a post-structural approach to induce and examine discourses that exist across curriculum and policy documents relevant to the first year of compulsory school in Western Australia. A discourse analysis revealed three powerful discourses: inclusivity, achievement and ‘PED’ – a discourse encapsulating the interrelationships between play, engagement and development. The power embedded within these discourses provided evidence of how persuasive and prescriptive language is used to engender distinct ethical responsibilities. The findings illuminate the potent influence of powerful discourses on the negotiation of priorities in pedagogical decision-making in the early years.

Keywords

curriculum discourse early childhood education policy power

Introduction

In 2009 in Australia, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians marked a new period of educational reform. This reform was promoted politically as an ‘Education Revolution’, which sought to drive a new direction for schools, including a desire to ‘reconceptualise children’ (Rudd and Macklin, 2007: 2). Children were now to be recognised as valuable commodities for making economic gains through greater investment in early childhood education, reinforced by the assurances of Heckman and Masterov’s (2005) research. Instrumental in the reform were a national curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, n.d.) and an Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, 2009) as part of a National Quality Framework (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2011), both of which included mandated material for the first year of compulsory school in Western Australia, when children are turning five by July in Pre-primary. The Australian Curriculum was contextualised by each state and territory, and implemented incrementally as each learning area was developed. A school-based review of Kindergarten to Year 2 settings was required in Western Australia to assess achievement of the National Quality Standard (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2011). Stringent state and national assessment of reporting was used to assess achievement of the Australian Curriculum content (Government of Western Australia, 2016b).

The mandatory curriculum and documents associated with the reform encapsulated a number of educational discourses. The revolutionary rhetoric of the government, and the timing and political intent of a mandated national curriculum, positioned these documents as powerful mediators of change in early childhood education. Researchers such as Fenech et al. (2012) and Moss (2017) have raised concerns about the gathering momentum of dominant discourses in education since 2009, and recognise the capacity of mechanisms, including a mandated curriculum and policy documents, to communicate truths and influence the thinking of educators. In early childhood, such truths, embedded in the documents that educators are accountable to adopt, have been found to challenge and shape educators’ beliefs and values about what is appropriate content and pedagogy (Gibson et al., 2015). Commonwealth educational reform has been designed to impact the nature and quality of education in the earliest years of life, with an agenda not only to bring about improved outcomes for children, but also to benefit society in the longer term (Ministerial Council, 2008). Moss (2017) identified that while measurable data has been drawn to indicate improvements in economic, health and academic spheres, the sociocultural impact of the reform agenda on how children are viewed and what participants in the process of early childhood education are afforded needs investigation. The documented push-down of academia into the earliest years of school in place of opportunities for children to play in Western Australia (Barblett et al., 2016) contributes to a growing body of evidence of the impact of political discourse in education. In Australia, 10 years on from Rudd and Macklin’s (2007: 2) Education Revolution, it is timely to take stock and examine how discourses are constructed and privileged to render them powerful in the mandated curriculum and policy documents for early childhood education.

Discourse as a mechanism of power in early childhood

Post-structuralist theory draws on the work of Foucault, who conceived that human interaction might be understood in terms of discourses – collective ways of seeing, thinking and feeling about a phenomenon (MacNaughton, 2003). In simple terms, a discourse may be understood as a frame of reference for constructing our knowledge, beliefs and values (Nolan and Raban, 2015). Foucault’s (1972) assertion that the nature of a discourse is to carry truth, and truths hold power, suggests that any discourse of early childhood education, dominant or not, must necessarily exercise some degree of power to influence the knowledge, beliefs and values of educators. On this premise, all of the discourses that educators are exposed to and directed by hold the power to influence the pedagogical choices they make. When considered alongside Foucault’s (1977: 30) politically imbued reference to ‘regimes of truth’, using mandated documents to communicate education ‘truths’ to educators can reasonably be viewed as a political mechanism for change.

Keesing-Styles and Hedges (2007: 21) theorise that discourses of childhood and early childhood education are constructed and reconstructed, with a discourse’s ‘pedagogical imperatives always responding to the social, political and economic times in which they have been enacted’. Politically, early childhood education itself is a change mechanism, used to achieve policy goals not only in education, but also in health, equity, social welfare and inclusion, and the economy (O’Connell et al., 2016; Weston and Tayler, 2016). The positioning of education, and more specifically early childhood education, as a mechanism for achieving broader political goals is informed by the findings of international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and UNESCO, and positivist academic researchers, who collectively project a regime of truth that investment in early childhood education will afford society a better future (Moss, 2017). Heckman and Masterov (2005) underscore this view, describing children in terms of human capital and advocating that early investment in the education of a child is cost-effective, delivering some of the strongest returns on investment of all social programs. The weight of international findings and political agendas for social welfare and prosperity has positioned government discourses of early childhood education as credible in macro-culture, compounding its power to influence the pedagogical decisions of educators.

Foucault (1977) proposes that discourses subliminally guide, inspire and perhaps even prescribe actions, including those of teachers. In contemporary early childhood education literature, developmentally appropriate practice (Copple and Bredekamp, 2009), neo-liberal reform (Rudd and Macklin, 2007) and the National Quality Framework (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2011) continue to be powerful discourses influencing early childhood education in Australia, with a drive towards an economically viable and future-oriented approach to childhood. These discourses are tempered by notions of children’s well-being (Jay et al., 2014) and postmodern thinking (Moss, 2017), motivating an ethos of resistance to neo-liberal reform. Gibson (1982) explains that a discourse is empowered by truths that emerge and are transformed through a sociocultural process of describing, understanding and perpetuating the demands these truths impose. In early childhood education discourse, the nature of the linguistic and visual elements used to communicate what is ‘true’ to educators holds the power to demand a response.

Moss (2017) stresses that, should overriding discourses dominate, their power to demand acceptance of truths and influence the thinking of educators and their pedagogical choices requires investigation. This research clarified the discourses that are dominant in the mandated curriculum and policy documents in early childhood education. Building on the work of Fenech and Wilkins (2017) and Moss (2017), the study investigated the nature of the power that particular discourses hold to influence the pedagogical decision-making of educators. Corpus-assisted methods were adopted as suitable to identify power-laden words and contextualised ideas emphasised through repetition (Wang, 2005), and linguistic analysis was used to illuminate the use of persuasion or prescription to communicate truths and elicit demands impacting the pedagogical decisions of educators (Pedersen and Bang, 2016).

Theoretical underpinnings

The study was founded on a constructionist ontology, with an understanding that different discourses of a single phenomenon exist and are socially constructed through bidirectional forces within society (Bryman, 2015). A post-structuralist perspective was taken so that interpretation might extend beyond ‘what’ truths powerful discourses hold to explore the intricacies of the power dynamics that explain ‘why’ these truths are purported. Furthermore, the stability of the emerging discourses was critiqued, and the multiplicity of how the truths embedded in these discourses inform power relationships, and what they might afford social actors, was considered. As such, discourses in early childhood education have been understood to be a social ontology. From this perspective, the objectivity of early years educators in making pedagogical decisions as a collective has been contemplated philosophically, in the knowledge that multiple context-specific realities exist for educators, and diverse perspectives will be held as a result (Ormston et al., 2014).

Method

Qualitative methods of research were required to investigate the discourses, as they were understood to emerge from the perspectives and particular agendas of the participants – in this instance, the authors of the documents for analysis. Through the use of qualitative methods, the researchers moved beyond what might be attained through surface-level and literal observations, and developed deeper understandings inductively from both the interpretation of language and its functions in a series of documents, and from reflection on the contextualised data (Ormston et al., 2014). From a theoretical platform of interpretivist constructionism, research questions were designed to gain understanding of powerful discourses and generate theories for understanding the social phenomenon of pedagogical diversity in early childhood education documents.

The following questions formed the direction for research. Question 1: What discourses are powerful in curriculum and policy documents used by early childhood educators in the first year of compulsory schooling in Western Australia? Question 2: What are the inherent demands embedded within the discourses identified in these documents?

Data collection

To address the research questions, a discourse analysis of curriculum and policy documents relevant to the first year of compulsory school (Pre-primary) in Western Australia was conducted. Data was collected in two stages. In Stage 1, a web search using keywords related to early childhood curriculum and policy was conducted to identify documents for analysis that were in use by early childhood educators in 2018 and had evolved during the 10-year period following the Australian government’s 2008 Education Revolution. The search was narrowed based on their reach, mandatory nature and/or relevance to the education of children in their first year of compulsory school. Thirteen curriculum and policy documents were identified by the researchers as applicable to educators of five-year-old children in their first year of compulsory school (Table 1).

Table 1.

Documents included in the study.

Documents	Publisher (year)
Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia	Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (2009)
Educators Belonging, Being and Becoming: Educators’ Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia	Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (2010)
Revised guide to the National Quality Standard for Western Australian public schools	Government of Western Australia (2018b)
National Quality Standard revised guide (professional development slideshow)	Department of Education, Early Childhood Branch (2018)
Early Childhood (K-2) Operational Handbook	Government of Western Australia (2014)
Western Australian Curriculum mandated materials (background information)	Government of Western Australia (2016a)
Policy standards for Pre-primary to Year 10: Teaching, assessing and reporting	Government of Western Australia (2016b)
Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians	Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (2008)
Australian Curriculum and Standards Authority’s general capabilities	Australian Curriculum and Standards Authority (n.d.)
Australian Curriculum and Standards Authority’s cross-curriculum priorities	Australian Curriculum and Standards Authority (n.d.)
Early Childhood Australia: Code of Ethics	Early Childhood Australia (2016)
Directions for schools, focus 2019: An initiative of the Director General’s Classroom First strategy	Government of Western Australia (2018a)
The early years of schooling: An initiative of the Director General’s Classroom First strategy	Government of Western Australia (2011)

They met the criteria of being:

Mandated as curriculum for the Pre-primary year in Western Australia;

Used to inform mandated curriculum documents for the Pre-primary year in Western Australia; or

Used to provide guidance for how mandated curriculum documents for the Pre-primary year in Western Australia should be interpreted.

In Stage 2, data was analysed from the 13 documents for the purpose of identifying discourses of significance. In order to induce powerful discourses in the documents, a corpus-assisted method was employed that allowed the elicitation of dominant ideas through repetition to be cross-referenced with linguistic analysis. In this way, the relative power of ideas across the documents was induced and relationships between these ideas recognised for the next stage of analysis. Frequently occurring themes in the documents were identified through word frequency (WF) queries in NVivo, finding the 20 most frequently occurring words in the documents. Commonalities among these words and their meanings were summarised and, from these, 35 representative nodes were created in NVivo and their associated WFs documented. St Pierre and Jackson (2014) caution the limitations of WF data or ‘brute data’ as falling short of qualitative interpretation and unreliable for determining the strength of a discourse. Therefore, the nodes were also used for qualitative coding of all text and images in all of the documents, and the contextual frequency (CF) was recorded. CF was defined as the frequency of a node concept beyond just its representative word. Extracts were frequently coded to more than one node to bring reliability to the frequency of the contextualised ideas. The nodes were then grouped into seven themes, derived through qualitative analysis of the contextualised data references associated with each of the 35 representative nodes. For example, the node ‘socio-emotional development’ could be linked to a number of themes, but was attributed to ‘content and curriculum’, as this was the theme to which it was most frequently coded in the documents. The overall CFs of the themes were ranked, providing a starting point for discovering possible discourses for investigation. Interpretation of the content, context and positioning of images within the documents was also documented as a complimentary data source.

Data analysis

A Foucauldian lens for critical discourse analysis was applied to the process of analysing the relationship between power and language embedded in the identified documents (Wall et al., 2015). To examine possible regimes of truth communicated through discourse (Foucault, 1977), explicit and implicit demands require investigation (Gibson, 1982). In this study, discourses in early childhood education were induced through a multifaceted analysis of linguistic mechanisms used for asserting truth and demanding response. The analysis used an iterative process of cross-referencing the language used across themes and nodes to deduce power-laden words, truths and demands within the documents. The process required detailed analysis of linguistic tools for exerting power. Critically, the linguistic analysis enabled the power of themes in the texts to be discovered beyond literal content or sheer frequency. Ideas emerging as powerful garnered reliability through the triangulation of frequency, use of language and contextually bound images in the documents, and, ultimately, representative discourses of power were induced.

Findings and discussion

The frequency of data attributed to themes was considered relevant (Table 2), as repetition of an idea increases familiarity and the potential for normalisation (Foucault, 1972). In total, 120,333 words and 59 images were analysed across the 13 documents. The frequency data was triangulated with data coded according to the language used to persuade or prescribe action from educators and to privilege ideas. This included examination of auxiliary verbs – for example, the use of power-laden verbs such as ‘must’ and ‘will’ to prescribe and communicate expectations in relation to others, in comparison to ‘may’ and ‘could’, which were viewed as less powerful to influence what an educator may prioritise in their decision-making. The persuasive impact of literacy tools such as hyperbole, detailed descriptions, referencing in and between documents to create credibility and a ‘shared view’, and the inclusion and omission of images, as well as the content and representation of children within those images, was also examined to find out how power had been engendered through privileging some ideas and marginalising others.

Table 2.

WF and CF of parent and child nodes from analysis of curriculum and policy documents applicable to the first year of compulsory school in Western Australia.

Parent nodes ranked from highest to lowest CF	Child nodes emerging from high-frequency words in documents analysed	WF (including word variations)	CF			Persuasive language	Prescriptive language
Parent nodes ranked from highest to lowest CF		WF (including word variations)	Text(CFT)	Image(CFI)	Total(CF)	Persuasive language	Prescriptive language
Inclusivity	Cultural / competence	370/136	116	21	137	20	9
	Parents and families	711	70	6	76	17	7
	Australia / local	585/99	42	10	52	7	4
	Identity / belonging	121/245	43	3	46	10	2
	Equity	58	35	1	36	9	4
	Community	359	29	2	31	8	2
	Total	2684	335	43	378	71	28
Rights and responsibilities	Opportunity / provision	238/392	91	17	118	41	9
	Rights / responsibilities	99/141	71	1	72	21	21
	Care	223	48	8	56	12	4
	Well-being	160	15	10	25	2	1
	Economic responsibility	0**	22	0	22	3	0
	Total	1253	247	36	283	79	35
Pedagogy	Early development	612	77	12	89	18	6
	Play	399	47	17	64	9	0
	Engagement	275	46	17	63	7	2
	Pedagogical / practices	58/438*	43	3	46	25	3
	Environment	357	32	2	34	11	4
	Lifelong / learning	0*/1927	23	1	24	8	1
	Total	4188/*1701	225	49	274	78	16
Authority	Authority	46	57	4	61	21	7
	Requirement	151	33	3	36	9	23
	Policy	135	29	2	31	5	16
	Professional	156	24	3	27	11	6
	Priority	55	22	2	24	7	10
	Principals	52	19	1	20	3	6
	Total	595	184	15	199	71	68
Quality	Quality	345	49	0	49	24	13
	Reflection	271	46	0	46	24	10
	Guidance / support	188/580	38	5	43	20	1
	Change	96	33	2	35	19	7
	Research	63	23	0	23	12	2
	Total	1543	189	7	196	83	33
Content and curriculum	Socio-emotional /development	159/48	58	1	59	17	6
	Basic skills	2**	39	14	53	10	8
	Content / curriculum	59/411	33	1	34	10	15
	Creativity / innovation	135/0**	23	0	23	9	0
	Total	814	153	16	169	46	29
Assessment	Standards / achievement	361/249	62	3	65	14	24
	Assessment	368	58	0	58	8	19
	Reporting	136	21	0	21	2	11
	Total	1114	141	3	144	24	54

Total frequency of node words representing the theme ‘pedagogy’ without WFs for ‘learning’ or ‘practice’ and their variations.

Nodes created to represent ideas with high CF but low WF.

Emerging discourses holding power in early childhood education

Three discourses emerged from the study as holding particular power to influence the pedagogy and practice of early childhood educators in Pre-primary in Western Australia. Each discourse draws on data from multiple nodes to form the overarching titles of ‘inclusivity’, ‘achievement’ and what will be referred to as ‘PED’ – the interdependent discourses of play, engagement and development. The findings in relation to these discourses will now be discussed.

Inclusivity

Inclusivity was the only discourse to retain the title of the original theme. This was due to its very high CF (378) in relation to other themes and frequent cross references within other high-ranking interrelated themes: ‘pedagogy’ (274), in which educators were explicitly persuaded to adopt inclusive pedagogical practices, and ‘rights and responsibilities’ (283), in which teachers were reminded repeatedly of their ethical responsibility to prioritise inclusive practices for supporting all children and their families, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Table 2). This was further evidenced by the highest frequency of images overall being attributed to ‘cultural competence’ (CFI = 21), with half of these including recognisable images of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples. A close relationship was noted between the nodes ‘cultural competence’ (CF = 137) and ‘opportunity and provision’ (CF = 118). These ideas were most frequently discussed in relation to universal access to quality early childhood education, with ‘cultural competence’ being ‘at the heart of our aspiration for everyone to be strong and confident’ (Department of Education, 2010: 21).

At the conception of the Education Revolution, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council, 2008: 5) explicitly stated: ‘Australia has failed to improve the educational outcomes for many Indigenous Australians’. There was clear evidence that policy documents, particularly those referencing universal access to preschool (Department of Education, 2009; Ministerial Council, 2008), were being used in early childhood education as a mechanism to demand a response to this failure. However, while universal access aims to improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Miller (2017) suggests that such federal policies continue to cultivate colonial thinking. The high frequency of references to the inclusivity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, further emphasised in the recent Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019), confirmed the observations of O’Connell et al. (2016) that early childhood education is viewed as a strategic point for political interventions. Furthermore, it is considered powerful for attaining broader social and economic benefits through ‘closing the gap’ (Australian Government, 2020), and thus the inclusion of disempowered Indigenous groups must continue to be supported (John, 2019).

Children with additional needs surfaced as a marginalised group, with a very low frequency of references (CF = 11), making them almost invisible. The absence of any discussion of anti-ableism (Baglieri and Lalvani, 2019) across the documents was indicative of the empowerment of other priorities in early childhood, and reinforced the broader findings of the National Disability Strategy’s ‘Shut Out’ report (Department of Social Services, 2014). The only specific references to this group were made in relation to practical arrangements for physical accommodation (Government of Western Australia, 2016a), demanding educators to physically include disabled children, but not demanding pedagogical action in response to the challenges experienced by children at the social periphery of integration (Lalvani and Bacon, 2019).

The inclusivity discourse, which draws data from the themes of both ‘inclusivity’ and ‘rights and responsibility’, was unchallenged in terms of the sheer frequency of word and contextual references (Table 2). The node ‘opportunity and provision’ was further empowered by the highest frequency of persuasive language (41). From this, the inclusion of all children was found to be a powerful ‘truth’ shared across all documents. Foucault (1977) warns that if one discourse gains power and remains unchallenged, there is potential for an imbalance, which may be dangerous if left unchecked. This prompts consideration of what potential issues inclusion may belie. However, while inclusivity was frequently mentioned in the documents, it was rarely linked to prescriptive language. For example, there were more than twice as many uses of persuasive language (71) than prescriptive language (28). Persuasive language was used repeatedly to encourage educators to advocate for the equal accommodation and respect of all children. For example, educators were to take ‘a strong approach to countering racism and bias’ (Department of Education, 2010: 22). The comparatively infrequent use of language to elicit accountability in relation to inclusion rendered action in response to the inclusivity discourse heavily reliant on the demands of a post-colonial perspective for educators to be culturally competent, and adopt ethical principles associated with the inclusivity discourse (Shonkoff, 2010).

Achievement

The representative title of the achievement discourse was formed in response to the emphasis on prescriptive language identified in relation to the themes of ‘assessment’ (54) and ‘authority’ (68), which demanded high achievement for both children and educators (Table 2). Although the CFs of these themes were lower-ranking (184 and 141, respectively), the use of prescriptive language such as ‘Schools will’, ‘Principals and teachers will’ and ‘Schools must’ (Government of Western Australia, 2016b) was significantly higher than all of the other themes, clarifying their import for educators. The achievement discourse also drew from the theme of ‘quality’ (CF = 196), which was prioritised through the highest frequency of persuasive language (83). Quality early childhood education was described through multiple contextual references subtly demanding reflective practices, guidance and support for boosting achievement by ‘mov[ing] beyond pre-conceived expectations about what children can do and learn’ (Department of Education, 2009: 9).

There was a clear emphasis on children’s academic achievement within the node ‘standards and achievement’, which returned the sixth highest frequency of all nodes (CF = 65). References to academic achievement were predominantly linked to literacy and numeracy (‘Basic skills’: CF = 53), with the fifth highest frequency of depiction in images (CFI = 14). Literacy and numeracy outcomes were linked to prescriptive language to demand rigorous assessment practices. The achievement of basic skills was found to be an underlying ‘truth’ empowering the achievement discourse, and a strong manifestation of the neo-liberal impetus for education reform (Rudd and Macklin, 2009). The mandated materials in the report ‘Policy standards for Pre-primary to Year 10: Teaching, assessing and reporting’ (Government of Western Australia, 2016b: 3, 11–12) include specific requirements for how and when schools ‘will’ assess and report on student achievement in the first year of compulsory school and beyond, but specify only that the reporting of basic skills is mandatory. In comparison, ‘creativity and innovation’ (CF = 23) was mentioned infrequently across the documents, suggesting that prioritisation of basic skills in the early years sits incongruously with the high-profile goal to nurture ‘confident and creative individuals’ in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council, 2008: 2). This aligns with the findings of Gibson et al. (2015), who documented the economic roots of prioritising basic skills to compete in international rankings (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2008; UNICEF, 2008) at the expense of less measurable outcomes.

The nodes ‘assessment’, ‘reporting’ and ‘standards and achievement’ sat closely in the data and were frequently coded together. Notably, ‘assessment’ was the least frequent theme (CF = 144) overall. In light of the strong neo-liberal influences in the literature (Heckman and Masterov, 2005), this low frequency of references to assessment appeared to be an inconsistency in the data. However, prescriptive language, including auxiliary verbs in phrases such as ‘must’, ‘will’ and ‘required’, was ubiquitous with assessment and reporting in the documents. Curiously, the use of auxiliary verbs to demand appeared in relation to assessment and then disappeared in relation to pedagogy in the same document (Department of Education, 2009; Government of Western Australia, 2016b; School Curriculum and Standards Authority, n.d.). This bias of language prioritised assessment and implied that teachers require explicit directions for assessment practices so data can be obtained and monitored – a necessity of neo-liberal reform. However, means by which teachers might raise children’s academic achievement were recommended but not explicitly demanded. Instead, literary tools of persuasion to support a ‘culture of continual reflection and renewal of high-quality practices in early childhood’ (Early Childhood Australia, 2016: 3) were used to inspire a degree of pedagogical freedom.

Educators’ achievement was also a significant thread in the data, being coded frequently to the nodes of ‘quality’, ‘reflection’, ‘guidance and support’ and ‘change’. In contrast to the prescriptive language of ‘assessment’, persuasive language was used to inspire teachers to adopt the ambitious goal of ‘shaping the next chapter in the history of Australia’ (Department of Education, 2010: 3), and to advocate ‘children’s fundamental right to access high quality programs’ (School Curriculum and Standards Authority, n.d.). Persuasive mechanisms beyond this were also noted in the Educators’ Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, which used case studies of educators changing their thinking about their practice to garner support for a ‘shared vision’ (Department of Education, 2010: 14). Foucault (1972) has argued that, over time, decisions made consistently in line with a particular discourse have a cumulative effective and normalise a discourse. His theory of power through governmentality asserts that a population, such as early childhood educators, can become controlled advocates for a particular discourse by presenting guidance clearly and systematically about what is ‘true’ and how things ought to be. The notion of a ‘commitment to a shared vision about children’s learning’, championed in the Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009: 14), suggests an intent to align the thinking of educators and hold them responsible for achieving political goals through the federal government’s revolutionary reform (Rudd and Macklin, 2009).

The ambition for high achievement was exemplified in the aspirational language and tone of the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council, 2008). Teachers were emboldened to raise their expectations for student achievement and ensure families and communities were ‘well-informed’ of ‘what is important’ (Ministerial Council, 2008: 7). What was considered important was of particular interest, as it was followed with a clear and powerful statement of fiscal accountability to taxpayers:

the community should have access to information that enables an understanding of the decisions taken by governments and the status and performance of schooling in Australia, to ensure schools are accountable for the results they achieve with the public funding they receive, and governments are accountable for the decisions they take. (Ministerial Council, 2008: 17)

The government’s prioritisation of fiscal responsibility to taxpayers positioned achievement as a powerful discourse in shaping community views of education and projecting a ‘truth’ about the economic value of children. Not surprisingly, the well-documented concerns of parents and early childhood educators about the development of emotional, physical and communication skills, and school readiness (Puccioni, 2018; Roberts-Holmes, 2019), were diminished in the light of this important federal directive for fiscal accountability. The clear neo-liberal emphasis aligns with the findings of Gibson et al. (2015) and adds credibility to Jay et al.’s (2014) concerns about young children in the early years of school in Western Australia, who remain vulnerable to practices which may prioritise academic achievement over their well-being.

PED: play, engagement and development

The PED discourse was found to be significant, primarily through examination of the third-ranking theme of ‘pedagogy’ (CF = 274) and the high use of persuasive language in relation to the nodes ‘pedagogical practices’ (25) and ‘development’ (18) (Table 2). These extracts explaining pedagogy were also found to frequently link the nodes ‘play’ (CF = 64), ‘engagement’ (CF = 63) and ‘opportunity and provision’ (CF = 118). For example, frequent appeals for teachers to use play as a platform to ensure that learning is ‘dynamic, complex and holistic’ alluded to the role of engagement in early development and learning (Department of Education, 2009: 10). ‘Development’, the third most frequently referenced of all nodes (CF = 89), included repeated references to the design and appropriateness of play-based pedagogies specifically as an approach for supporting early development and learning. The interconnectedness of these ideas and their consistent links to play-based learning combined to assert the requirement of play in early childhood as a principal truth in the PED discourse. This was reiterated through images coded to ‘play’, which shared the second highest frequency of images with ‘engagement’ (CFI = 17).

The ‘play’ facet of the PED discourse was characterised by children being positioned as ‘competent and capable’ – for example, ‘children are competent and capable and able to participate in the negotiation of their learning and social experiences’ (Early Childhood Australia, 2016: 2). Extracts of this nature leaned heavily on references to children’s rights as justification (United Nations, 1989), with extracts in the Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, 2009) articulating play as a right, connected with being a child. This humanising of children sat as a juxtaposition to Heckman’s (2010) notions of human capital and challenged the neo-liberal power noted in the ‘achievement’ discourse.

The use of persuasive rather than prescriptive language within the PED discourse suggested that there was latitude for educators to interpret and make pedagogical choices that aligned with their own knowledge, beliefs and values about children and how children engage, learn and develop. Educators were encouraged to ‘critically reflect’ on their practice (Department of Education, 2010: 5). By adopting this post-structuralist lens, Blaise and Ryan (2019) argue that early childhood educators are also empowered to critically question which discourses may be guiding their practice. This may explain the diversity of pedagogical approaches reported among early childhood educators in Western Australia (Barblett et al., 2016). In relation to play-based pedagogies alone, a diversity of interpretations and justifications was particularly noticeable across the documents, including competing perspectives and explanations of the role of teacher-orchestrated structured play and child-directed unstructured play (Department of Education, Early Childhood Branch, 2018; Government of Western Australia, 2011), as well as contrasting views of their value when used ‘among a variety of strategies, including explicit approaches’ (School Curriculum and Standards Authority, n.d.). However, in the only coded extract using prescriptive language in relation to ‘play’, play-based learning was not to be understood as ‘just play’; it must be used as ‘an effective tool for achieving expected outcomes for children in the early years’ (Government of Western Australia, 2011: 3). The intention of this directive could be interpreted as consistent with that of the achievement discourse, upholding the ‘schoolification’ of early childhood education (Bradbury, 2019), and created tension against a backdrop of the broader PED discourse, which stood to empower educators and children.

The diversity of interpretations of the PED discourse rendered it less stable in terms of unification, but created space for the postmodern resistance and pedagogical innovation reported by Moss (2017). The potential power of the PED discourse was further highlighted in Moss’s (2017) observation that educators’ decision-making is not static, but responsive to stimulus. It should be acknowledged that stimulus is not limited to the documents examined in this study – provided by governing bodies – but also includes stimulus generated from the responses and reactions of children to the daily enactment of educators’ decisions.

Conclusion

The discourses arising from this study hold the power to influence educators’ pedagogical decision-making as they attempt to make sense of competing social, ethical and political demands. Those discourses that were found to hold the most power to influence the decision-making of educators, determined by a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, were inclusivity, achievement and PED (play, engagement and development). These findings are valuable to educators but limited to the perspectives held in the documents analysed. Broader investigation of the influence of discourse beyond the documents is warranted.

The study found that the multiplicity of priorities, communicated through persuasive and prescriptive language, holds educators in a state of simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment through their professional responsibilities. Early childhood educators must be ethically responsible to be inclusive of all children; must be accountable to society through evidence of student achievement; and must uphold children’s right to play. While these responsibilities need not be mutually exclusive, their coexistence has been found to be challenging to make visible in practice and complex to justify to stakeholders with diverse views (Barblett et al., 2016; Jay et al., 2014). With each discourse inciting an ethical responsibility, every decision risks bringing the integrity and performance of early childhood educators into question. It is critical that each discourse be cross-examined in future research so the gains they produce can be measured against ethical premises that move beyond political imperatives, and the perspectives of all stakeholders – including early childhood educators and children – can be heard.

Research Data

sj-docx-1-cie-10.1177_1463949121990905 – Discourses in power: Policy and curriculum demands in the first year of compulsory school

sj-docx-1-cie-10.1177_1463949121990905 for Discourses in power: Policy and curriculum demands in the first year of compulsory school by Amelia Ruscoe, Lennie Barblett and Caroline Barratt-Pugh in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Amelia Ruscoe

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biographies

Amelia Ruscoe is an experienced educator and lecturer in early childhood education in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University. Her research explores education discourse, multiplicity of perspectives and affordances in early childhood education. Lennie Barblett is an Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University in the School of Education lecturing and researching in Early Childhood. She works on state and national committees to advocate for universal access to quality early childhood education and care. Caroline Barratt-Pugh if Professor of Early Childhood research in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University. She is a PI in the of the Australian Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and her research interests include digital technology, the social construction of language and literacy and the evaluation of family literacy programs.

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