Utopian Thinking

“Confronted by what we argue is a highly instrumental and impoverished discourse about preschools, which privileges technical practice in the interest of achieving predetermined outcomes, we have tried to imagine a different possibility: the preschool first and foremost as a public space for ethical and democratic political practice, where education takes the form of of a pedagogy of listening related to the ethics of an encounter , and a lively minor politics dominant discourses and injustice.” (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 179)

In the quote above Dahlberg and Moss (2005) are engaging in Utopian thinking. In Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education they have continuously challenged me to imagine new alternatives. This helps us resist conforming to the prescribed norms, but I believe that it is not sufficient. Dahlberg and Moss (2005) state that “Utopian thinking is not enough by itself to bring about radical change. That needs also a willingness to act” (p. 179). They describe “spaces where there is an openness to experimentation, research, and continuous reflection, critique and argumentation” (p. 179). Utopia is a very big dream. We might feel paralyzed by the impossibility of ever reaching it. (And as I am writing this, I believe Utopia, like Democracy, is something always in the making and always just our of reach. I wrote about this in a previous blog entry.)That’s why I believe it is a good idea to start small, to act locally where you are right now. Having a structure in place that supports Utopian thinking at my work has become more and more important to me. The previously mentioned Book Club offers us the space to dream big. A space to listen to each other, have conversations and and engage in Utopian thinking. We don’t have to change the world, but we are open to reflecting about our own practices.

A classmate has introduced me to the following video Learning from Europe with Gunilla Dahlberg. After reading Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education, it is very interesting to listen to Gunilla Dahlberg herself. In this video she speaks about listening to children to understand more about their learning process. Often our guidelines and goals distract us from the process of learning. By insuring that we are following quality guidelines, we might miss the learning that is already happening.

http://www.teachers.tv/videos/learning-from-europe-gunilla-dahlberg

In the video Dahlberg also talks about the 100 languages of children (t. 2:00). This connects to the Book Club where we talked about Greene’s (1995) reminder that we “have a number of languages to hand and not verbal or mathematical languages alone. Some children may find articulation though imagery; others, through body movement; still others, through musical sound.” (p. 57) I question how the 100 languages of children will help me to further think about reaching beyond quality. Once we start tapping into them, we will find ourselves on new territory. We will have to listen to each other, trying to grasp the intangible. And maybe there will be no tests designed to help us measure learning outcomes. That is my Utopia.

References

Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The Book Club

“The increasing technologising of preschool policy and practice brings with it an increasing weight of paper... - policy documents, research reports, curricula, standards, guidance on best practice, and so on. This growing mountain of official or expert paper becomes a prime means of governing preschool practitioners, laying down norms to which they must conform and contributing to a dominant discourse that smothers contestability and advances conformity. At the same time it crowds out other types of reading which might provide other perspectives. Reading thus becomes a means of closure and regulation rather than opening up to new possibilities and emancipation.” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005, p. 169)

In one of my earlier blogs I introduced you to the Book Club that I have started at my work. We read Maxine Greene’s Releasing the Imagination. The quote above helps me think about the importance of reading together in the Club. Dahlberg and Moss talk about the reading of official documents that regulate our practice as ECEs. Releasing the Imagination is a different kind of text. It is a narrative and Maxine Greene created many openings for us to think about who were are as teachers and what we believe the goal of education to be. The Book Club offered the space for us where we were able to consider other perspectives, and with Maxine Greene we started to disrupt our thinking around our policies and curriculum for example. Our readings of Releasing the Imagination affect how we read other texts. 

One example I wish to share with you is our discussions in the Book Club around a policy we used to implement. The policy allowed us to turn families away if they repeatedly arrived after 10:00 am at the daycare (without informing us). It is policies such as this one that I have struggled with over the years. In our conversation my coworkers and I had many questions and considered various perspectives. Why was the family late? Who defines ‘late’? Does it actually matter if they arrive after 10:00am? Will the parent lose their job, because they now have to miss work? And it is through these discussions that we engaged in democratic conversations. Rather than being governed by our policy (we haven’t implemented it in years), we opened it for debate.

Monthly staff meetings aside, prior to the Book Club these kinds of discussions were rare as there was no structure in place to support us to co-construct meaning. Glenda Mac Naughton (2005) emphasizes how “the everyday conditions of professional learning in much of the early childhood field starve early childhood educators of the nutrients that support them to proactively, enthusiastically and knowingly draw on leading edge theories to push the possibilities for democracy” (p. 190). It is through the Book Club (or the space it opens) that we were able to read texts in a way that open up new possibilities for us. 

References

Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mac Naughton, G. (2005). Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies: Applying poststructural ideas. New York: Routledge.