Creating places of encounter and collaborative workshops: education as a community project and public responsibility

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Creating places of encounter and collaborative
workshopseducation as a community project and
public responsibility

• Peter Moss
• Thomas Coram Research Unit
• Institute of Education University of London

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My argument

• Early childhood education is potentially
  important why? what education? what conditions?
• Early childhood education is potentially
  dangerous why?
• Early childhood education - investment and right
  and democratic institution?

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ECE is potentially important why?

• Our image of the child today
• A citizen with rights
• A learner, co-constructing knowledge
• With a hundred languages for expression
• Rich in potentialthe rich child
• From birth

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The image of therich child from birth

• A child born with great potential that can be
  expressed in a hundred languages an active
  learner, seeking the meaning of the world from
  birth, a co-creator of knowledge, identity,
  culture and values a child that can live, learn,
  listen and communicate, but always in relation
  with othersa citizen with a place in society, a
  subject of rights (Children in Europe)

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The rich child witha hundred languages

• The child has a hundred languages a hundred
  hands a hundred thoughts a hundred ways of
  thinking of playing, of speaking. A hundred,
  always a hundred ways of listening, of
  marvelling, of loving a hundred joys for singing
  and understanding a hundred worlds to discover
  a hundred worlds to invent a hundred worlds to
  dream (Loris Malaguzzi)

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The image of therich child from birth

• Co-constructed from many sources
• Childrens rights The Committee interprets the
  right to education during early childhood as
  beginning at birth (UN Committee on the Rights
  of the Child, 2005)
• Sociology of childhood
• Pedagogical innovators, e.g. Reggio Emilia and
  Loris Malaguzzi
• Neuroscience

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From why?? what?

• Why is early childhood education potentially
  important? Our image of the rich child learning
  from birth
• But Why does not tell us What education?
• We need to ask and answer critical questions

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ECE is potentially important what?

• Critical what questions
• What understanding of knowledge and learning?
• What concept of education?
• What is education for?
• What fundamental values for education?
• What understanding/image of the ECE centre?

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Critical questions

• These is no right answer but many alternatives
• Experts cannot answer for uswe must take
  responsibility
• The choices we make are political and ethical
  not technical
• The process of decision-making is as important as
  the outcome How? Who? Why?
• Offer some of my (provisional) answers what are
  yours?

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What is our concept of education?

• Education in its broadest sense
• fostering and supporting the general well-being
  and development of children and young people, and
  their ability to interact effectively with their
  environment and to live a good life (Moss and
  Haydon).
• a pedagogical approach where care, nurturing
  and learning form a coherent whole (Swedish
  pre-school curriculum)

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What is education for?

• The state we are in!
• Unsustainable economic model cannot continue as
  we are, need model for prosperity without
  growth
• Damocletian phase of deadly global threats
  global warming, resource depletion, nuclear
  proliferation. Doomsday clock moved forward to
  23.55
• Diversity threatened biological, individual,
  intellectual
• Democracy and solidarity weakened
  neo-liberalisms hyper-individualism suspicion
  of democracy and anything public

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Unsustainableeconomic model

• A world in which things simply go on as usual is
  already inconceivable. But what about a world in
  which nine billion people all aspire to the level
  of affluence achieved in the OECD nations? Such
  an economy would need to be 15 times the size of
  this one by 2050 and 40 times bigger by the end
  of the century. What does such an economy look
  like? Does it really offer a credible vision for
  a shared and lasting prosperity? (Tim Jackson).

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Education for

• Survival a shift from an exploitation attitude
  to a gardener attitude (Thierry Gaudin for EC)
• Human and societal flourishing
• Diversity valuing, promoting
• Democracy Democracy has to be born anew every
  generation, and education is its midwife (John
  Dewey)

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What are the fundamental values?

• Solidarity/collaboration
• Diversity
• Uncertainty
• Subjectivity
• Democracy
• Experimentation

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Democracy as a value

• Democracy forms the foundation of the
  pre-school. For this reason, all pre-school
  activity should be carried out in accordance with
  fundamental democratic values (Swedish
  pre-school curriculum)
• Democracy as decision making All those who are
  affected by social institutions must have a share
  in producing and managing them (John Dewey)
• Democracy as relationship and way of
  lifeprimarily a mode of associated living
  embedded in the culture and social relationships
  of everyday life.

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Experimentation

• Experimentation is about bringing something new
  to life - a thought, knowledge, a service or a
  tangible product.
• Expresses a desire to invent, to think
  differently, to imagine and try out different
  ways of doing things, to go beyond what already
  exists, not to be bound by the given, the
  familiar, the predetermined, the norm.
• A way of living and relating, that is open-ended
  (avoiding closure), open-minded (welcoming the
  unexpected) and open-hearted (valuing difference)

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Democratic experimentalism

• The provision of public services must be an
  innovative collective practice It can only
  happen through the organisation of a collective
  experimental practice from below. Democracy is
  not just one more terrain for the institutional
  innovation that I advocate. It is the most
  important terrain (Roberto Unger)

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What understandingof the ECE centre?

• public space expressing public responsibility for
  children
• place of encounter for all citizens - younger and
  older
• collaborative workshop
• potential for many community projects and
  outcomes some predefined, but others not
• place of creativity participation, amazement
  wonder

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Some potential community projects

• Learning, e.g. collective production of
  knowledges, values and identities
• Researching, e.g. childrens learning processes,
  gender roles, local injustices
• Supporting, e.g. solidarity between citizens,
  support for individuals, families, communities
• Including, e.g. children, marginalised and
  excluded groups into the community

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Some potential community projects

• Sustaining diversity, e.g. languages, cultures
• Developing economies, e.g. childcare for
  employment
• Promoting equalities rights, e.g. gender
  equality, childrens rights
• Practicing democracy
• ???

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What conditions are needed

• There are alternatives purposes, values, images
  but also paradigms, theories, perspectives,
  practices.
• (EC)E is first foremost political and ethical
  too important to leave to experts, managers,
  technicians.
• Faith in people Democracy is a way of personal
  life controlledby faith in the capacity of human
  beings for intelligent judgment and action (John
  Dewey)
• Desire to experiment, passion for research, need
  to question, openness to unpredictability

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What conditions are needed?

• Well educated, well paid and well supported
  workers
• Multi-purpose services
• Integrated 0-6 systems
• Adequate funding c.2 GDP
• AND
• Recognition that education can be dangerous

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ECE is potentially dangerous

• My point is not that everything is bad, but that
  everything is dangerous (Michel Foucault)

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Dangers of ECE 1.Governing the soul

• ECE?increased governing of children and adults
  using powerful human technologies
• normative outcomes (e.g. learning goals)
• normative programmes (e.g. DAP)
• normative assessments (e.g. quality ratings)
• Governing by norms and normalisation
• The capacity to identify, measure, instil and
  regulate through the idea of the norm (has
  become) a key technique of government (Nikolas
  Rose)

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Dangers of ECE2.Reducing diversity

• Human technologies?reduction of complexity and
  diversity
• The more we seem to know about the complexity
  of learning, childrens diverse strategies and
  multiple theories of knowledge, the more we seek
  to impose learning strategies and curriculum
  goals that reduce the complexities and
  diversities of learning and knowing (Lenz
  Taguchi).

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Dangers of ECE 3.Magic cure for complex problems

• Invest in ECE to solve problems of dysfunctional
  societies High returns guaranteed!
• There is a growing body of evidence that some of
  the greatest returns on taxpayers investments
  are those targeted to Canadas youngest citizens.
  Every dollar spent in ensuring a healthy start in
  the early years will reduce the long-term costs
  associated with health care, addictions, crime,
  unemployment and welfare. As well, it will ensure
  Canadian children become better educated, well
  adjusted and more productive adults (Ontario
  government report).

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Dangers of ECE magic cure

• Investment claims based on local knowledge
• These findings cannot be assumed to be
  generalisable elsewhere(and) should not be used
  as justification for investment in similar
  enterprises in different populations and
  locations and time periods (Helen Penn et al).
• Evidence tells us nothing it always needs
  contextualising and interpreting

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Dangers of ECE magic cure

• Investment claims based on naïve and simple view
  of causality
• Technical solutions early intervention can
  fix structural and political problemsbut decades
  of research and policy initiatives have failed to
  improve the poor social environment of the US
• Countries with good social environment have good
  ECE
• but much else besides strong democracy, strong
  equality, strong welfare state ? high taxes!

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The Spirit Level Why moreequal societies almost
always do better

• The evidence shows that reducing inequality is
  the best way of improving the quality of the
  social environment, and so the real quality of
  life, for all of us (including the better-off)as
  well as improving the wellbeing of the whole
  population, (greater equality) is also the key to
  national standards of achievement and how
  countries perform in lots of different fields
  (Richard Wilkinson Kate Pickett)

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• ECE is a good investmentbut potentially
  dangerous and no magic cure
• ECE is a good investmentbut also a right of
  citizenshipa community project for a democratic,
  inclusive and sustainable society
• ECE is an investment in public space for
  encounters with differencecreating infinite
  possibilities and outcomes
• ECE needs an investment of moneybut also
  imagination thoughtfaith responsibility

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Some reading

• Broadhead, P., Meleady, C. and Delgado, M. (2008)
  Children, Families and Communities Creating and
  sustaining integrated services. Maidenhead Open
  University Press
• Children in Europe (2008) Young Children and
  their Services Developing a European Approach.
  http//www.childrenineurope.org/docs/PolicyDocumen
  t_001.pdf
• Dahlberg, G. Moss, P. (2005) Ethics and
  Politics in Early Childhood Education. London
  Routledge
• Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. Pence, A.(2007) Beyond
  Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care
  (2nd ed). London Routledge
• Moss, P. (2009) There are alternatives! Markets
  and democratic experimentalism in early childhood
  education and care. http//www.bernardvanleer.org/
  publications_results?SearchableTextB-WOP-053
• Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio
  Emilia. London Routledge

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Other references

• Aldrich, R. (2008) Education for survival,
  History of Education
• Biesta, G. (2007) Why What works wont work,
  Educational Theory, 57(1)
• Gaudin, T. (2009) The world in 2025 a challenge
  to reason. Brussels European Commission.
  http//2100.org/World2025.pdf
• Jackson, T. (2009) Prosperity without growth.
  London Sustainable Development Corporation
• Lenz Taguchi, H. (2009) Going beyond the
  theory/practice divide in early childhood
  education. London Routledge
• Penn, H. et al. (2006) What is known about the
  long-term economic impact of centre-based early
  childhood interventions? London EPPI-Centre
  Institute of Education University of London
  http//eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticke
  trWneSIRuVac3Dtabid676mid1572
• Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge CUP
• Unger, R.M. (2005) What should the Left propose?
  London Verso
• Wilkinson, R. Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit
  Level. London Allen Lane