ABSTRACT
Pressures on early childhood education provision are immense. In Indonesia, as internationally, there is both a sense of crisis and of hope! Teachers and providers struggle, under pressure to perform, to achieve global ‘quality’ benchmarks, and meet universal standards of practice. Neoliberal policy and mindsets complicate already challenging prospects of professionalization, regulation, international aid, and conflicting theorisations of ‘best’ practice. This talk finds hope in challenging dominant theorisations. It challenges inequities arising for children in ECE, by reconceptualizing not the theories, but our thought. Grounded in the Kristevan notion that thought itself, perhaps, is a form of dissidence, the shifts I propose use philosophical thought to rethink the ways in which ECE theories, contexts and policy inform local ECE provision. I propose a model of thought that uses philosophy to (re)value local knowledges, (re)conceptualise dominant discourses, and (re)vitalise hope in ECE theory and practice.
