About Reaching Quality

"Dewey found that democracy is an ideal in the sense that it is always reaching towards some end that can never finally be achieved. Like community itself it has to be always in the making" (Greene, 1995, p. 66).

Please take a moment to read the quote above again, substituting the word democracy for the word quality. 

As I was thinking about the idea of quality today, I started wondering if the assurance of being able to reach quality could be stopping us from venturing beyond quality. In other words, if, for example, on the ECERS (see first post) we checked off every item, we would feel confident that we in fact have a quality program. But do we really? Maxine Greene once said, “If ever I’e arrived, I’m dead” (Ayers, 1998, p. 9). Thinking with Maxine Greene and Dewey, the reaching of a goal, for instance quality, can be dangerous. We’re resting on our assumption that we have a quality program. If we hold on to the term quality (which I don’t necessarily recommend, see the second post) then I believe it should be seen as something that is always just out of reach, thus making it generative and alive.  

I would like to share my recent work with my coworkers in my attempt to reach for something bigger than quality.  As part of a school assignment I decided to start a book club with my coworkers where we discuss our readings of Releasing the Imagination by Maxine Greene (1995). At this point we are about 7 weeks into our meetings and already I can see how powerful our conversations are. The idea of discussing bigger issues relating to education are more important than ever being able to reach quality. Quality is in the making with every conversation we have. 

Thinking back to my time in the 1st and 2nd year or the Basic Program in ECCE, I recall our classes and text books.  Most of them would help me implement a program (hopefully adhering to quality guidelines) and answered the question how? How to guide children, how to set up the room, and how to make resources? How to talk to families? This is what I would like to refer to as application. Simply follow these steps and you have a quality program. Reading texts such as Releasing the Imagination in our book club is moving beyond these conventional Early Childhood texts. With Maxine Greene we have started thinking about what all these things mean? Why does that matter? It is a shift toward implication. I believe that both application and implication are important and that there is a place for both of them. I am using this idea of application and implication as a reminder for myself to        pause       for a moment and to ask why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Let us assume that quality really is something just out of reach, never to be grasped. Based on this assumption I believe that following a sequence of steps (application) allows us to reach quality, while  continuously thinking, "What could this mean?" (implication)  never quite allows us to reach quality.

In this video William Ayers speaks about imagining how our lives could be otherwise. It reminds me to continue to question (e.g. quality) rather than reaching and end goal.

References

Ayers, W. (1998). Doing Philosophy: Maxine Greene and the Pedagogy of Possibility. In Ayers, W., & Miller, J. L. (Eds.), A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the unfinished conversation (pp. 3-10). New York: Teachers College Press.

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

‘The Discourse of Meaning Making’

“Discourse of meaning making does not require or seek consensus and unanimity, for it is the graveyard of universal consensus that responsibility and freedom and the individual exhale their last sigh.” 

(Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999, p. 107)

I am curious. 

Dahlberg, Moss & Pence suggest that we cannot reclaim quality to include diversity, subjectivity, agency, and complexity. They suggest instead to move toward the “discourse of meaning making” (p. 106). This discourse sits within “the ethics of an encounter, foregrounding the importance of making meaning in dialogue with others” (p.106). Consensus might be reached, but is not necessary. I believe the quote above illustrates that beautifully and even warns us about the dangers of consensus! The discourse of quality pushes for consensus through normalization, quantification, and standardization. In the name of quality then we give up agency, subjectivity, and freedom. The 'discourse of meaning making' opens spaces for many interpretations moving away from either/or to both/and. You can either be good or bad. Or you can be both AND all the other things in between.  

The authors Dahlberg, Moss and Pence describe essential conditions for meaning making in the Early Childhood classroom (p. 108). 

• Stepping back to look at the questions that matter to us in this world. For instance: What matters in education? I envision here a community of inquiry where we continuously look at our values and beliefs. 
• Critical thinking. My Philosophy teacher, Susan Gardner, would support this. She used to say that all students should take a critical thinking course. Her book is entitled Thinking your way to Freedom. I believe this goes hand in hand with the discourse of meaning making, because we are in fact an agent of our freedom.
• “Pedagogical Documentation” in collaboration with others to make visible/public what is happening in your centre.
• “The importance of encounters and dialogue” with others. I am reminded of Levinas' encounter with the other.
• “The participation of facilitators” to help make judgements. Facilitators don’t provide an answer. A course I took recently entitled “The Role of the Pedagogista”, provides a clear image of the role of facilitators. The facilitator/ pedagogista disrupts and questions our practices and assumptions, but does not give an answer. 

I recently read Madeleine Grumet’s essay Retrospective: Autobiography and the analysis of educational experience. She writes about her personal history with journaling and combines autobiography and its theory. She uses autobiography to move away from “anonymous and quantitative studies of education”(p. 324) to bring back “the complexity, specificity, rhythm and logic of the biographical voice to studies in education” (p.324) thus valuing the individual’s lived experiences. There is a connection between autobiography and the ‘discourse of meaning making’. Both require us to think and reflect. Both value the individual’s lived experiences. And both evolve around the complexity in life that cannot be quantified.

I’ve just come across this webpage:

Early childhood education and care: Private Commodity or Public Good

This is a project of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU). Here you’ll find many resources on this public policy issue. Many of them relate to the quality issue.

http://privatization.crru.ca/

References

Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. (1999). Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives. London & New York: Falmer Press.

Gardner, S. T. (2009). Thinking your way to freedom: A guide to owning your own practical reasoning. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Grumet, Madeleine R. (1990). Retrospective: Autobiography and the analysis of educational experience. Cambridge Journal of Education 20(3), 321-326.

What is so dangerous about quality?

“A society with clearly defined ideas of how to measure art will be regarded as authoritarian and narrow-minded: true quality, like true art, cannot be reduced to simple statements.” 

(as cited in Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999, p. 95)

In Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) quality governs our daily practice. According to About Canada: Childcare (2009) how we understand quality depends on our perspectives. That means, for children quality may include “a familiar, warm environment; loving, supportive adults; activities that are enjoyable; friendships; and recognition as an individual” (p. 56). Parents need an accessible and reliable service with a “learning environment” (p. 56) where their children can be happy and safe. And Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) define quality according to “recognition and respect; good professional relationships with coworkers; salary, benefits and working conditions” (p. 56). There is variation within these groups. For instance, not all parents in all communities share the same values that will shape their definition of quality.

Why can quality be dangerous? While reading chapter five in Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education: Postmodern Perspectives (1999) everything started to make sense. What happens when we start “reducing the world in its complexity and diversity to standardized, comparable, objective, measurable categories” (p. 88)? In this way of thinking there is a certain truth to be discovered that defines quality. In other words, the quality discourse shapes one universal truth rather than multiple and contextual truths. The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) is one example in our field that allows us to quantify quality. I believe that this rating scale has good intentions (on paper) by considering important details such as health and safety, but I am not sure that it leaves room for varying perspectives and complexities.   


Go here to see the Environment Rating Scale
http://tnstarquality.org/refs/ecers_dap.pdf

Think about this for a moment: “The pre-industrial world privileged personal judgement over objectivity. By contrast, the modern world privileges objectivity, the withdrawal of human agency and its replacement by impartial uniformity” (p.88). With this in mind I wonder how we can reclaim responsibility and take risks rather than blindly following someone’s imposed standard that has been normalized. When something -like quality- has been normalized we create a binary. The normal/abnormal binary is very limiting since there is little room for anything in between. We often don't realize the truths we subscribe to (since they appear normal to us). Most of us want to fit in with that (imaginary) norm and might ask, “Why bother? Why swim against the stream?”  I can speak only for myself, but I believe as teachers we desire to re-imagine education in ways that are just for ALL rather than some. And so education becomes an ethical question for me.

“Assessment of...quality end[s] up producing abstract maps which simplify and normalize saying how children or institutions should be while distracting our attention from finding out how they really are” (p.100). What does this mean in your own context? How can we move away from what should be (says who?) and look at what is. 

References

Friendly, M., & Prentice, S. (2009). About Canada: Childcare. Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.

Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. (1999). Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives. London & New York: Falmer Press.