ABSTRACT
SANDRA CHEESEMANa,b, FRANCES PRESSb & JENNIFER SUMSIONb aInstitute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University; bResearch Institute for Professional
Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University
Abstract
Increased global attention to early childhood education and care in the past two decades
has intensified attention on the education of infants and assessment of their learning in
education policy. This interest is particularly evident in the focus upon infants in the early
childhood curriculum frameworks developed in recent years in many countries. To date,
there has been little examination of implications of this policy/curriculum emphasis in
relation to its possible implications for how infants are understood. In this article, using
Levinas’ notion of ethical encounter, we present a critical reading of curriculum for infants.
Drawing on his ideas of the ‘Other’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘unknowability’ we argue that the
rapidly growing corpus of knowledge about infants and their inclusion in education policy
and curricula texts, has the potential to narrowly define educators’ responsibilities and
prescribe pedagogies in ways that may have unintended consequences. Using the Australian
National Quality Framework (NQF) and its associated Early Years Learning Framework
as examples, this article highlights the tensions inherent in a system that aims to provide
equity, consistency and certainty, premised on a particular ‘knowing’ of the infant. We
draw on Levinas’ ideas about ‘said’ and ‘saying’ to propose ways of working with policy
and curricula texts that recognise that they can offer only partial understandings of the
possibilities for infants’ learning.
