Contemporary Issues in
Early Childhood

ISSN 1463-9491

Volume 8 Number 3 2007

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

SPECIAL ISSUE
Childcare Politics and Policy: analysis and advocacy Part 2*
Guest Editors: FRANCES PRESS & JENNIFER SUMSION
*Part 1 of this special issue is contained
within Volume 8 Number 2 2007

Editorial, pages 178‑179
Frances Press & Jen Skattebol. Early Childhood Activism, Minor Politics and Resuscitating Vision: a tentative foray into the use of ‘intersections’ to influence early childhood policy, pages 180‑191
Helen Penn. Childcare Market Management: how the United Kingdom Government has reshaped its role in developing early childhood education and care, pages 192‑207
Zsuzsa Millei & Libby Lee. ‘Smarten up the Parents’: whose agendas are we serving? Governing Parents and Children through the Smart Population Foundation Initiative in Australia, pages 208‑221
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw. Child Care and Multiculturalism: a site of governance marked by flexibility and openness, pages 222‑232
Christine Woodrow. W(H)Ither the Early Childhood Teacher: tensions for early childhood professional identity between the policy landscape and the politics of teacher regulation, pages 233‑243
Sandra Cheeseman. Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy, pages 244‑254
Peggy Apple & Mary Benson McMullen. Envisioning the Impact of Decisions Made about Early Childhood Professional Development Systems by Different Constituent Groups, pages 255‑264
Lyn Fasoli & Bonita Moss. What Can We Learn from ‘Innovative’ Child Care Services? Children’s Services Purposes and Practices in Australia’s Northern Territory, pages 265‑274

COLLOQUIUM
Judit Szente, James Hoot & Selamawit Tadesse. Early Childhood in Ethiopia: initiatives in education, pages 275‑281

BOOK REVIEWS VIEW FULL TEXT
The Class Size Debate: is small better? (Peter Blatchford), reviewed by Claire Spicer, pages 282‑283
Birth to Three Matters: supporting the framework of effective practice (Lesley Abbott & Ann Langston, Eds), reviewed by Mary Benson McMullen, pages 283‑286
doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.282

Editorial

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.178

VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST

This second part of a special double issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood focusing on ‘Childcare Policies and Politics’, continues to examine, critically analyse and debate key issues in policy and political landscapes across a range of national contexts. The eight articles in this issue originate from primarily anglophone countries dominated by market-oriented approaches to early childhood education and care (Cleveland & Krashinsky, 2002). Although political, historical, economic, social and cultural contexts differ between and within the four countries represented in this issue (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the USA), several common themes emerge in the concerns identified and addressed by many of the authors. These themes include, but are not limited to, the need for careful interrogation of intended and unintended consequences of policy decisions and initiatives; the marginalisation of sectors, populations and groups that do not conform to neo-liberal agendas and ideals; and the governance of communities, parents, and educators supposedly in the interests of enhancing children’s well-being and outcomes.

In the first article, Frances Press & Jen Skattebol propose that we explore spaces that emerge at the intersections of different disciplinary knowledge bases and theoretical perspectives. They contend that if we look for, and learn to utilise, points of convergence between modernist and postmodernist theories and discourses, then we may be able overcome the limiting effects of the ultimately unhelpful bifurcation that has in recent years increasingly come to characterise academic critiques of and contributions to policy analysis and development. As a primarily conceptual contribution, their article sets the scene for the analyses of specific policy and educational contexts that follow.

Helen Penn, in the second article, reviews changes in early childhood education and care policies in the United Kingdom in the decade 1997‑2007. She highlights the often uncritical acceptance of the magnitude and rapidity of these changes and their far-reaching implications. In juxtaposing the contradictory discourses taken up by two key reports, Starting Strong 11 (2006) and Babies and Bosses (2004), Penn portrays the disruptions, disarray, difficulties and dilemmas that can eventuate when market mechanisms gain ascendancy in policy decision making. She argues the need for new conceptual frameworks that support critical analysis and discussion of current structures and viable future alternatives.

Zsuzsa Millei & Libby Lee critique the Smart Population Foundation Initiative (2006), an Australian policy that positions parents as lifelong learners. Drawing on constructs of governmentality, Millei & Lee argue that this initiative subjects parents’ conduct to surveillance and normalisation, silencing multiple perspectives of parenting, and in doing so, ‘closes down’ opportunities for parents to explore diverse ways of being ‘good parents’.

Working at the intersection of discourses of globalisation and multiculturalism, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw continues the theme of governance by examining Canadian discourses of multiculturalism and their enactment in childcare settings in British Columbia. She argues that despite their well-meaning intention of fostering sensitivity, tolerance and acceptance, these discourses, in effect, seek to homogenise rather than celebrate difference. By essentialising children from immigrant families and constructing their differences as deficits, they give rise to childcare policies and practices that endeavour to fashion children as ideal ‘citizen-subjects’. Pacini-Ketchabaw advocates an ethics of resistance to these normalising discourses.

In the following two articles, Christine Woodrow and Sandra Cheeseman draw our attention to the diminishing space for the early childhood pedagogical voice in contemporary policy developments in Australia. Woodrow traces the marginalisation of early childhood teacher educators in proposed policy initiatives designed to improve teacher professional standards, but which in fact place teacher education courses and teachers themselves under greater regulation. Her article considers the potential gains and losses to early childhood teachers and pedagogies arising from these developments and concludes with a call for strategic engagement with current debates. Similarly, but within a different political terrain, Cheeseman examines the rhetoric and funding directions of many Australian early childhood policies to uncover a silenced voice – that of the early childhood pedagogue. Further, Cheeseman argues that increased funding has not resulted in universal services for children, but the ‘welfarisation’ of early childhood. Both articles highlight that the early childhood educator’s voice is being excluded and diminished, at a time when early years policies have been gaining a great deal of attention.

Peggy Apple & Mary Benson McMullen explore competing influences on the professional development choices of early childhood educators and professional development support systems in the USA. They draw our attention to the interrelated consequences of the decisions of different constituent groups and invite us to consider who may be advantaged and disadvantaged by these decisions. The inherent moral complexities of decision making, they contend, highlight the need for frank and constructive dialogue between decision makers and those affected by their decisions.

In the final article, Lyn Fasoli & Bonita Moss describe ways in which innovative and culturally responsive remote Indigenous childcare services in Australia’s Northern Territory have responded to their communities. As Fasoli & Moss argue, these services act as powerful provocation to rethink our assumptions about what childcare ‘should be’ and to turn our attention to envisaging instead what it might become. In juxtaposing practices in these Indigenous services with mainstream practices and mainstream constructions of quality, these authors open up space for debate as a consciously political act.

Indeed, by challenging policy status quo in their respective contexts, all the authors who have contributed to this issue engage in political action asking discomforting questions. Many of their questions focus attention on the shrinking spaces available to early childhood educators, advocates and other constituents, in many of the contexts described here, in their attempts to effect policy change. Our reading of these articles, however, is not imbued with pessimism but rather with hope, because in highlighting shrinking spaces these authors also invite us to think about how spaces might be constituted differently in ways that open up rather than foreclose opportunities and possibilities. Accordingly, we anticipate that this issue will foster much critical and generative reflection and discussion.

The colloquium provides an insight into the realities and challenges of children’s education in Ethiopia. Although families are highly supportive of their children attending school, a lack of resources and infrastructure (e.g. school buildings, seats, books and teacher training facilities), and the reliance of many rural families on their children’s labour, severely curtail children’s participation in education, particularly over the longer term. Authors Szente, Hoot & Tadesse propose that educational technology, coupled with the systematic collaboration of families, communities, the Ministry of Education and aid agencies, may be a key to overcoming some of the barriers currently restricting the opportunities available to Ethiopian children.

Finally, the three book reviews canvass a range of issues relevant to early childhood teaching. Anne Petriwskyj reviews Dockett & Perry’s (2007) Transitions to School: perceptions, expectations and experiences; Claire Spicer provides an overview of Blatchford’s (2003) examination of the impact of class sizes in the early years of primary school, The Class Size Debate: is small better?; and Mary Benson McMullen discusses Abbott & Langston’s (2005) Birth to Three Matters: supporting the framework of effective practice. Together, these books straddle early childhood educational contexts from birth through to the early years of school.

Frances Press & Jennifer Sumsion
Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

Reference
Cleveland, G. & Krashinsky, M. (2002) Financing ECEC Services in OECD Countries. OECD Occasional Papers. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/55/59/28123665.pdf (retrieved 3 March 2005).

Early Childhood Activism, Minor Politics and Resuscitating Vision: a tentative foray into the use of ‘intersections’ to influence early childhood policy

FRANCES PRESS Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia
JEN SKATTEBOL University of Western Sydney, Australia

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.180

Many postmodern and post-structural analyses of government policies affecting early childhood education stress the hegemonic nature of neo-liberalism and subsequently primarily focus upon identifying the manifestation of neo-liberal values in such interventions. An unintended and stultifying consequence of such analyses is, at times, to close off the possibilities of envisioning a positive engagement with, and role for, government policy. In addition, the primacy offered to localised knowledges can engender the development of policy responses which are not cognisant of more broadly based social impacts. In response, the authors proffer the use of intersections as key points for the development of analyses and action. This necessitates an active awareness of the ways in which local knowledges and experiences cross, or overlay, information generated from other sites, including disciplinary knowledges and analyses that may be classified as modernist. By utilising points of convergence, as well as understanding points of divergence, intersections can be used to open up spaces for political action that recognise and generate localised responses, whilst at the same time engendering policy that enables more broadly based social justice.

Childcare Market Management: how the United Kingdom Government has reshaped its role in developing early childhood education and care

HELEN PENN University of East London, United Kingdom

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.192

This article reviews early education and care policies in the United Kingdom since 1997, when a Labour Government came to power, and sets them in the wider context of international changes. It argues that the Labour Government has, by intention and by default, supported the development of private sector, and especially corporate sector childcare. Corporate childcare has increased sevenfold in the period. The rapid scale of these changes has been ignored, or uncritically accepted, by most commentators. However, the Government’s childcare policies have not had the anticipated result of increasing the numbers of mothers in the workforce, with the result that there is considerable oversupply of childcare provision. As a result, the private sector has experienced turmoil, as occupancy rates have fallen to an average of 77%, and the sector has become unprofitable. Within 2005‑06 many nurseries closed, and there has been a consolidation of the remainder of the market. The private sector is now actively lobbying for more subsidies and a relaxation of regulations. The article concludes that, despite recent difficulties, trends towards private sector growth will continue and that research is urgently needed to investigate and document the changes.

‘Smarten up the Parents’: whose agendas are we serving? Governing Parents and Children through the Smart Population Foundation Initiative in Australia

ZSUZSA MILLEI University of Notre Dame, Australia
LIBBY LEE Murdoch University, Australia

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.208

This article critiques the Smart Population Foundation Initiative (SPFI), which was established to ‘bring parenting information and the science of child development to Australian parents and carers’ (Smart Population Foundation, 2006) and to satisfy the need for a credible and easily accessible source of information for parents. The article draws on the notion of modern governance developed by Rose and analyses the Initiative as a deeply political project. It looks at the Initiative from a critical distance created by the context of governmentality. The authors argue that the discourses produced by the Initiative constitute a particular notion of parent as ‘smart’ (lifelong learner, responsible and informed). These discourses govern parents through ‘ethopolitics’ to take up a certain art of parenting as their supposed free choice. Through standardising and sanctioning a particular way of acting as a parent, the SPFI translates governmental objectives into parents’ own values and practices. As a result, the discourse the SPFI constitutes about parenting effectively ‘shuts down’ multiple understandings of being a ‘good’ parent. Hence, parents’ conscious formation of their parenting practices are inhibited and with that, the ethical debates around this contentious issue are silenced.

Child Care and Multiculturalism: a site of governance marked by flexibility and openness

VERONICA PACINI-KETCHABAW University of Victoria, Canada

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.222

This article explores how child care acts as a zone of governance for immigrant young children, enacted through discourses of multiculturalism implied to be flexible and open. It draws on an analysis of early childhood educators’ interpretations and understandings of their own practices when working with racialized young immigrant children and families. It disentangles discourses of sensitivity, tolerance, and acceptance of difference that characterize Canadian multiculturalism, as well as discourses of flexibility presented as a condition for performing acts of sensitivity, acceptance, and tolerance when working with young immigrant children.

W(H)Ither the Early Childhood Teacher: tensions for early childhood professional identity between the policy landscape and the politics of teacher regulation

CHRISTINE WOODROW University of Western Sydney, Australia

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.233

Over the last decade teachers, teachers’ work and teacher education across all domains of education have been subject to increasing surveillance and regulation. Recent developments in the Australian regulatory context are signalling the emergence of a strengthening bifurcation between prior-to-school and schooling contexts that is forcing a narrowing construction of ‘teaching’ as work that is only undertaken in schooling contexts. This trend seems likely to have serious implications for the professional identity, status and professional preparation of early childhood teachers and the potential to reposition early childhood contexts as marginalised and non-pedagogical spaces. This article traces some recent developments in teacher regulation and locates an analysis of possible implications for the field of early childhood against a backdrop of emerging trends in the early childhood policy landscape. The emerging tensions invite questions about the potential gains and losses should the current trends become entrenched. The article concludes with a consideration of naming and framing as elements of possible action.

Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy

SANDRA CHEESEMAN Macquarie University, Australia

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.244

Growing international interest in the early childhood years has been accompanied by an expansion of public programs in Australia targeting young children and their families. This article explores some of the influences and rhetoric that frame these initiatives. It encourages critical examination of the discourses that shape the nature of early childhood programs in Australia and identifies a range of barriers that inhibit the involvement of early childhood teachers in the design and delivery of social policy initiatives for young children. As the imperatives of programs seeking to overcome social disadvantage take prominence in Australian early childhood policy initiatives, pedagogical perspectives that promote universal rights to more comprehensive early childhood experiences can easily be silenced. The article calls for pedagogical leadership to overcome these barriers and promote the democratic rights of all children to high-quality and publicly supported early childhood education and care programs.

Envisioning the Impact of Decisions Made about Early Childhood Professional Development Systems by Different Constituent Groups

PEGGY APPLE Ivy Tech Community College and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
MARY BENSON MCMULLEN Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.255

In this article the authors explore the need for early childhood practitioners and scholars to engage in joint problem solving to create and support early childhood education and care (ECEC) professional development systems in which all constituents benefit. Primary constituent groups and principal decision-making bodies are defined and analyzed, and the interrelated influences within professional development systems are considered. At the heart of the discussion is how decisions made by all constituent groups are interrelated and affect all parts of the system. For instance, decisions made about professional qualifications have an impact upon pre- and in-service ECEC professionals, current ECEC professionals, children and their families, and individuals within ECEC businesses and communities. Although the discussion in this article is about these issues as they are played out within the USA, the authors believe that the implications raised may be usefully considered by ECEC professionals and those engaged in professional development in other cultures and contexts.

What Can We Learn from ‘Innovative’ Child Care Services? Children’s Services Purposes and Practices in Australia’s Northern Territory

LYN FASOLI Batchelor Institute of Tertiary Education, Northern Territory, Australia
BONITA MOSS Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.265

This article explores the diversity of services designed for young children currently operating in Australia in remote Northern Territory (NT) Indigenous communities as a provocation for the renewal and revitalisation of mainstream (typical Australian conventional, Western values oriented and urban-based) child care services. Australian society has accepted a standardised model of child care and conceptualised it as a service designed primarily for parents who work. It has become remarkably uniform in look, nature and purpose, regardless of where it is located. The article refers specifically to ‘Innovative’ Indigenous Children’s Services (the term ‘Innovative’ refers to a federally funded government initiative called the ‘Innovative Child Care Scheme’, an initiative stemming from the 1992‑96 National Child Care Strategy) as a new kind of children’s space in the child care landscape. The authors reflect on the findings of recent research which explored what could be learned from remotely located Indigenous children’s services staff, particularly in relation to the important questions the research raised for the social agendas and public policies that underpin development and theory currently shaping mainstream centre-based long day care programs.

Early Childhood in Ethiopia: initiatives in education

JUDIT SZENTE University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA
JAMES HOOT The University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA
SELAMAWIT TADESSE Towson University, Maryland, USA

doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.275

This article informs readers about early childhood in one of the poorest nations in the world – Ethiopia. Within the context of ecological systems theory, it emphasizes the characteristics of early education programs such as pre-school and basic (primary) education, and creates connections with families’ views about education. The article concludes with recommendations for further research.

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