ABSTRACT
In early childhood institutions, we often say that we are taking the perspective of the child and that our pedagogical practice is child-centred. What do we mean by that? Child-centredness seems to be such a concrete and unproblematic concept. But in practice it is very abstract and rather problematic. The very term child-centred might be thought to embody a particular modernist understanding of the child, as a unified, reified and essentialized subject-at the centre of the world-that can be viewed and treated apart from relationships and context. The postmodern perspective, in contrast, would decentre the child, viewing the child as existing through its relations with others and always in a particular context.
