Abstract
Contemporary childhoods have become strictly governed and narrowly defined by dominant discourses, policies, and laws to prescribe particular “normative” way(s) of being and becoming. Children across different geopolitical spaces are under multiple “gazes” that monitor their cognitive and emotional development and measure their academic achievement and performance through similar systems of assessment with universal standards. For example, how children are expected to become literate, to regulate their bodies, and to follow/obey the class or school rules are taken for granted as common understandings about “normal” development toward “normal” childhood. Thus, for children who do not seem to “fit” into such socio-cultural and political construction(s) of normality, they become the “abnormal others” who are at risk and in need of educational and social interventions. Working to problematize popular and global dominant constructions of “normality” in childhoods, the collection of articles in this edition comes from critical and poststructural theoretical positionings to discuss discourses of control in early childhood care and education systems across several geopolitical spaces.
Burke and Duncan’s article draws on a comparative ethnographic study to help us understand how children’s bodies are regulated and surveilled differently/similarly between New Zealand and Japan. Focusing on children’s bodies as a culturally contested space in the field of early childhood education, their findings interrupt stereotypical (mis)perceptions of how Japanese children’s bodies would be heavily regulated and disciplined in early childhood settings. Rather, Burke and Duncan’s discussions suggest that New Zealand kindergartens have more limitations of physical touch between adults and children as children’s bodies are sites of struggle, whereas Japanese children’s bodies are conceptualized through a lens of nostalgia and innocence. Sharing similar concerns about constructions of normality in classroom settings, Dalkilic and Vadeboncoeur’s article looks into issues of inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on Derridian analytical tool of deconstruction, the analyses of early childhood educators’ talks reveal assumptions of exclusion and expectations for inclusion. Furthermore, the authors coined a notion of relational inclusion as an alternative for reconceptualizing and expanding conventional notions of inclusion that were paradoxical for perpetuating Othering practices in classrooms.
On the theme of regulating childhoods, Leafgren and Bornhorst’s article considers how school structures and techniques of coercive control and regulation work to produce docile students while silencing schoolchildren’s different needs. Challenging the “need” to uphold the school/class rules by marking some children as “criminal” for their lack of obeying the rules by deviating from prescriptive norms, this article draws on the philosophical theories of Deleuze and Foucault to enable us to “see” and “observe” children differently in the school contexts beyond rules, orders, and control. In Saavedra and Marx’s article, they examine how linguistic and ethnic minority children are constructed as discursive subjects under the discourses of control in the school settings. In this reflective essay, the authors draw on poststructural theories to reflect on memories of schooling to critique how schools as social institutions have control and regulate the children. Saavedra and Marx assert the importance for us to become critically aware of how rules (i.e. policies and school rules) construct and control children’s everyday lives in schools.
Weaving multiple disciplines and different genres of writing together, Reinertsen’s article seeks to offer an integrative conceptual framework to overcome dualisms in theory and practice to elaborate our understandings of 21st-century pedagogy with children. Working in and with multiple paradigms and theoretical lenses, her article grapples with the notion of “the embodiment of the mind and the embrainment of the body” (this volume) to address theories of embodiment and matter becomings in education contexts. In Pérez, Medellin and Rideaux’s work, they offer storied narratives through Black feminist perspectives to (re)examine how younger children are often violated, controlled and disciplined in school settings without critical reflection. However, if these similar situations were to happen to adults outside of school contexts, these narratives of control and regulation become problematic. As Pérez et al. note, “the child/adult storied narratives provide a way to unearth the outlandish treatment of younger human beings, prompting us to rethink our roles as scholars, educators and activists” (this volume).
Problematizing how neoliberal learning discourses travel around the global and into the geopolitical space of Norway, Otterstad and Baathe focus on investigating professionalism in Norway’s early childhood education and care and explore the (re)appropriation of the Norwegian tradition of child-centered pedagogy. They assert the need for teachers to recognize and argue against the popular “schoolification” of children in which children are “losing” agency in their own learning process while teachers dangerously shift their professional position(s) under the effects of neoliberal discourses in education. Along the same train of thought, Kim’s article analyzes how governing patterns emerged and grew in the Head Start programs in the United States as teachers and schools were required to become assessors and observers to collect “evidence” of children’s achievement in learning. Highlighting Teaching Strategies Gold, an online assessment tool, as an example, Kim’s analysis and discussion point out how predetermined universal norms and standards for all are dangerously crafted to regulate both children and teachers for the construction of (ab)normality in the United States.
Another example of how education discourses of control, policies, and programs travel between different cultural and geopolitical spaces is Ritchie’s critique on the introduction of the “Incredible Years” program from the United States to Aotearoa, New Zealand. She problematizes the transfer of this US program in the socio-historical context of Aotearoa without critical recognition of Māori children and families. The lack of critical understanding and unpacking of the colonization process is dangerous, as the “Incredible Years” focuses on modifying and regulating children’s conduct and emotional rules without respectful, compassionate, and empathic relationality. Recognizing the problematic of transnational and traveling global education discourses that lack cultural sensitivity, Smith, Tesar, and Myers’ article examines the effects of edu-capitalism and neoliberal education policies across three different geopolitical spaces in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. In their transnational analyses, by highlighting different policies, they mobilize the logic of edu-capitalism to unpack how narrow notions of who the child is and how childhood should be or could be are constructed and perpetuated as universal “truths” for all. In Haggerty and Alcock’s article, they examine how government policies and official discourses are constructing children as commodities and early childhood care and education institutions are deemed preparation for formal schooling. As the authors argue, under the new development of several recent policies in Aotearoa, New Zealand, new and dangerous norms are formed in the name of accountability through which the meaning and existence of early childhood care and education services have been (re)configured to change children’s lives and childhoods.
In the colloquium section, Kelly-Ware’s on-going research focuses on how gender and sexualities are constantly policed in young children’s worlds. Through the examples of stories about a child, she asserts the importance of rethinking possible negative consequences of adults’ policing and regulation within children’s environments for their gender identities. In their article, Hester and Moore offer critical reflections on their teaching of an undergraduate course which aimed to engage university students in wider social and cultural issues relating to children’s worlds and childhoods. The authors emphasize that critical reflection on our memories of our own childhoods can open up possibilities for us to rethink how and why we might “regulate” and “discipline” the children differently.
Together, the articles in this edition offer critical analyses, discussions, and critiques on how children are being governed and regulated in early childhood care and education settings in the face of neoliberal discourses through which we (both children and adults) are simultaneously governed and becoming self-governed or self-regulated as “normal” and “responsible” people. As much as children’s rights are being popularly advocated in today’s mainstream media, it is important for us to rethink and question how children as young(er) human beings are constantly under gaze and measurement for how and what they should be(come). In the name of achieving excellence in early childhood care and education, all kinds of standards and assessment tools are becoming rules of thumb in classrooms and schools for teachers, educators, and parents to follow. The different articles in this edition have shared similar concerns and asserted that we need to disrupt the discourses of control and question the dangers of narrow definition(s) of childhoods. The need to expand and open up possibilities and alternative views about children’s lives and their childhoods should never be ignored.