Contesting the hegemony of developmentalism in pre-service early childhood education and care: Critical discourses and new directions

Abstract

Pre-service early childhood education and care (ECEC) is undoubtedly still entrenched in developmentalist onto-epistemologies that limit the imaginations of both pre-service students and the faculty and instructors who teach such knowledges (Davies, 2022a(Davies, , 2022bDavies et al., 2022), in turn impacting children participating in ECEC. We write this introduction as three researchers, educators, practitioners and facilitators who are highly concerned about the current status quo of pre-service ECEC educationand its emphasis on developmentalismin Canada and internationally (Davies, 2021;Gibson et al., 2018;Krieg, 2010;Zaman and Anderson-Nathe, 2021). By so doing, we add our voices to the chorus of scholars who have shown why this entrenchment is highly problematic, and who offer alternatives to this dominant paradigm (e.g. see Cannella, 2005;Edwards et al., 2009;Kessler and Swadener, 1992;Taylor et al., 2016, to name but a few).What specifically inspired this special issue is our own experiences and conversations regarding the predominance of developmentalism as the taken-for-granted hegemonic knowledge formation in pre-service ECEC training and education. Where we are currently located in Ontario, Canadanot unlike other places in the worlddevelopmental psychology is forwarded as the 'base' or 'foundational' knowledge for pre-service ECEC. Such limited social imaginaries taught to preservice ECEC students present developmentalism as the 'rational' form of knowledge that preservice students must 'apply' in order to 'work with' children and families. Questions such as 'What do we do with this?' might emerge from developmentalist ECEC scholars and students who seek to maintain the status quo (Davies, 2022a;Snyder et al., 2019). However, through these questions come new opportunities for pausing and reconsidering the relationship between thinking and doing and theory and praxis (see Britzman, 2012;Freire, 1970).Throughout our experiences, which vary and include teaching ECEC at the undergraduate and/ or graduate level and/or working in pre-service ECEC, we have felt at an embodied level that who we are and the knowledges that we teach are unwelcome in pre-service ECEC. Despite 'belonging' commonly being the cornerstone of ECEC documentation and curricula (i.e. Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014), we question how normalcy has been entrenched within the fabrics of pre-service ECEC (Davies et al., 2022). In particular, this special issue seeks to contest the ways discourses and practices of normalcy are tethered to ideas of developmentalism in a manner that continues to reinforce and sustain a status quo engaged in the unjust practices of in/exclusion. The practices of in/exclusion referred to here offer a critical examination of the normative/developmentalist content that remains standard fare across degree programs in ECEC colleges and post-secondary institutions. Such ECEC programs subsequently sustain unjust practices that, as noted above, impact the everyday experiences of young children and early childhood edu...

Maddening pre-service early childhood education and care through poetics: Dismantling epistemic injustice through mad autobiographical poetics

“…As described by Davies (2022) and Davies, Brewer et al (2022), pre-service ECEC constrains the types of experiences and knowledges that are deemed allowable to be brought into the preservice ECEC classroom, which usually means that knowledge formations and theories that are not developmentalist are excluded from pre-service classrooms (Davies, Karmiris et al, 2022). Despite pre-service ECEC students receiving a strong foundational knowledge in child developmenttypically through a pragmatist approachthere is a need to ensure that students are exposed to a multiplicity of knowledges, which they can imagine within their professional practices (Gibson et al, 2018).…”

“…As someone who teaches pre-service ECEC students at the university level, I often wonder what I can offer my students due to both my youth (I am considered 'inexperienced' in terms of professional practice by my colleagues at times, perhaps due to my young age) and the fact that my educational background and training in my PhD was in cultural studies and critical theory, not developmental psychology or ECEC specifically. Despite the dominant critiques of developmentalism in ECECand my even guest-editing a special issue of a prominent ECEC journal regarding disrupting developmentalism in pre-service ECEC (Davies, Karmiris et al, 2022) developmental psychology and ages-and-stages approaches that promote fixed ideas of children's psychological and cognitive growth are still considered the most 'applied' and 'relevant' forms of knowledge for pre-service ECEC students to engage with (Gibson, 2013;Krieg, 2010;Land and Frankowski, 2022). Such forms of often technocratic knowledge can limit the imagination of pre-service students and how they conceptualize both educators and the children in their care (Davies, Brewer et al, 2022).…”

“…However, my hope is that, by reading and engaging with this article, new ways of imagining pre-service ECEC can take place that acknowledge the perspectives, thoughts, feelings and experiences of mad early childhood educators and ECEC educators in higher education, who are often forced to teach or absorb knowledges that can only construct their madness as medicalized pathology and their subjectivities as excludable. With developmentalism still constituting the terms of belonging in ECEC (Davies, Karmiris, et al, 2022) particularly in pre-service programsand employing knowledge of children's 'development' being considered a necessity for all future educators, madness and mad studies are outside the boundaries of inclusion in ECEC, if even considered at all.…”

“…I finish with a discussion of some of the themes that are prominent in my mad autobiographical poetic writing. While I provide this outline for the sake of clarity for the reader, I strive not to confine my writing to positivist conventions, meaning that the reader is welcome to engage with only my poetic writing or any part of this piece that seems relevant or intriguing (see also Davies, Karmiris et al, 2022). The subsequent subheadings and more traditional layout of the article are to ensure that my piece is accessible to the greatest level of readership.…”

“…Even my own institution, University of Guelph, which is known for being a comprehensive institution in Canada with an emphasis on the hard sciences and scientific research, holds the motto, 'Improve Life,', which is taken for granted as a natural good without interrogation (Davies, 2023;Kelly and Rice, forthcoming). By 'improving life,' education and pre-service ECEC training are intertwined with scientized and positivist ideas of child development, which position normalcy or white, middle-class, cis-heteronormative, able-bodied rationalityas ideal (Davies, Karmiris et al, 2022). The theories that I am asked to teach and disseminate within pre-service ECEC training are often violent towards my own subjectivity as a queer, mad, neurodivergent, non-binary scholar, activist and researcher.…”