ABSTRACT
In this chapter my intention is to build upon the preceding chapter by teasing out further hegemonic constructions of childhood, ECEC practice and professionalism and to identify the implications of such discourses for practitioners working in nurseries. By attending to a deconstruction and problematisation of the notion of childhood (as a discursive construction), my aim is to demonstrate the power of various discourses and the ways in which ECEC practitioners draw on, negotiate and reject different discourses at different times and to what effect. In the previous chapter, authoritative government discourses in recent history were explored to reveal how the construction, promotion and persistence of particular discourses of childhood are highly politicised and located within a specific economic, social and moral moment. Within recent government policy and related publications, ‘the child’ is constructed as vulnerable, unformed and always relational to, and dependent upon, adults for their ‘needs’ to be met and hence appropriate developmental progress assured. Such constructions are incredibly powerful in terms of the expectations placed upon the childcare workforce, but also in terms of what children are permitted/encouraged to do and to their identities as citizens. The common thread uniting perspectives on the child within policy discourse is the interrelationship between power and control. Following Aries (1962), Cannella (1997) convincingly argues that in Western discourse children are constructed as a distinct group that must be controlled, protected, guided and encouraged. Furthermore, Robinson and Jones-Diaz (2006) highlight the tendency for dominant discourses of childhood to perpetuate white, Western and middle-class values that are historically linked to strong religious and moral discourses. Critical poststructural theorists and other commentators variously argue that childhood is a romanticised discursive construct (James and Prout, 1990; Rancière, 1991; Jenks, 1996; James et al., 1998; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Rinaldi, 2006). Constructing childhood as a time of ‘innocence’ has been critical in justifying the way that adults separate children from the public domains of active citizenship. In essence, these authors argue that children are constructed as dependent, innocent and ultimately relational to adults. Building upon such theorisations it is possible to view ECEC as a site where ‘objective’ knowledge is dichotomous. The adult/child binary constructs
the adult as knowing, mature and capable and the child as relatively ignorant, unformed and incapable (Rancière, 1991). These discursive constructions inflect and are embedded in hegemonic discourses which become further reinforced through the micro politics and practices of authoritative institutions that work directly with children (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005), such as nurseries. From within the professional ECEC community a range of discourses about childhood abound, and like government discourses are more or less fashionable at any given moment. However, models founded upon developmental psychology (e.g. Piagetian theories) continue to hold a prominent position (in training programmes, professional development activities, curriculum development and planning, etc.). Theories of childhood and child development that promote a humanist understanding of the universal child – that there is an innate phase in human development that constitutes ‘childhood’ and is universally experienced by all children – are accepted as authoritative knowledge, or the prevailing scientific ‘truth’. For example, the work of Bowlby (1978a, 1978b) and Winnicott (1965) remains entrenched in contemporary theorisations of child development. The following quote illustrates the essentialism inherent within humanist understandings of the child:
The essential needs of the under-fives belong to the individuals concerned and the basic principles do not change. This truth is applicable to human beings of the past, present and future, anywhere in the world and in any culture.
