Reconfiguring teacher agency within market-driven early childhood spaces

Abstract

Neoliberal reforms have transformed the early childhood education (ECE) landscape worldwide. The purpose of ECE, what counts as early education and care, and in ECE has been dangerously narrowed to the production of human capital and rationalised by the myth that investing in young children (human capital) will guarantee a better economic future. In this manner, individuals’ efforts and talents achieved through ‘high-quality ECE’ become critical determinators of their own and a country’s success. At the same time, individuals' characteristics and pre-determined circumstances (e.g. race, gender, socioeconomic background), including underlying causes of inequality in society, become a fault of those not exercising the right to ‘freely choose’ from opportunities available on the market. Consistent with a body of literature documenting the damaging impacts of neoliberalism on early childhood education (ECE), this article explores how teacher agency has been reconfigured under a neoliberal framing of ECE in New Zealand. Drawing on a qualitative study with teachers from private-for-profit ECE centres, the article argues that marketisation and privatisation have broken the spirit of collective agency and sense of belonging in the sector, and construed some teachers as business agents contributing, knowingly or unknowingly, to the individual interests of business owners and investors rather than ECE as a public good.

Uncovering the discursive ‘borders’ of professional identities in English early childhood workforce reform policy

“…A body of research exists which acknowledges the influence of institutional discourses on the professional identity construction of early childhood educators (Osgood 2009(Osgood , 2012Arndt et al, 2018). In addition, a growing corpus of international research critiques the ways in which early childhood educators have been positioned in relation to the dominance of a neoliberal paradigm (Dahlberg and Moss 2005;Moss 2014;Wood 2017;Roberts-Holmes 2019;Roberts-Holmes and Moss 2021;Kamenarac 2022) Neoliberal thinking has been described as focussing on marketisation, efficiency, increased accountability and globalisation (Baltodana 2012;Waugh 2014) privileging the power of the market over issues of citizenship, equity and social justice. In such a regime, early childhood education is framed by an investment narrative (Heckman, 2011) and as an economic imperative as the 'foundation for tomorrow's workforce' (World Bank 2017) with resulting implications for both professional identities and pedagogy (Roberts-Holmes and Moss 2021).…”

“…A body of research exists which acknowledges the influence of institutional discourses on the professional identity construction of early childhood educators (Osgood 2009, 2012; Arndt et al, 2018). In addition, a growing corpus of international research critiques the ways in which early childhood educators have been positioned in relation to the dominance of a neoliberal paradigm (Dahlberg and Moss 2005; Moss 2014; Wood 2017; Roberts-Holmes 2019; Roberts-Holmes and Moss 2021; Kamenarac 2022)…”