Being Accountable for One's Own Governing: A Case Study of Early Educators Responding to Standards-Based Early Childhood Education Reform

TL;DR: Fenech et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the challenges faced by early childhood stakeholders as they attempt to address these governing discourses of reform, and raised questions as to whether proactive responses can destabilize the normalizing power that exists within these policies.

Abstract: As early childhood education continues to gain prominence on the agendas of policy makers across the globe, members of the field of early childhood education are concerned that these reforms will create new governing discourses that restrict how early educators are defined and limit their work with young children. While these neo-liberal policies tend to alter traditional conceptions of early education and learning, opportunities do arise for early educators to formulate responses to these policies in a way that might expand these neo-liberal conceptions of early education. Through an instrumental case study of standards-based education reform in a large urban early childhood program in the USA, the author examines one such opportunity, in which a collection of pre-kindergarten stakeholders responded to a set of particular policies that emphasize a uniform conception of learning and student performance. This article provides insight into the struggles of early childhood stakeholders as they attempt to address these governing discourses of reform, and it raises questions as to whether proactive responses can destabilize the normalizing power that exists within these policies. As policy makers at all levels of government across the globe continue to take an interest in the provision of care and education for young children, early childhood education researchers and theorists are concerned about how this influx of policies and reform initiatives will alter the curricular, quality, and performance expectations for early educators and the young children with whom they work (Einarsdottir & Wagner, 2006; Clark & Waller, 2007a; Fenech & Sumsion, 2007a, b). One key issue that researchers continue to explore is whether the regulatory powers that are found in policies that standardize training expectations for teachers, as well as the practices that are to take place in their programs, will create particular 'scripts' that 'coerce' them 'into particular ways of being' (Jones & Osgood, 2007, p. 398). In the USA, this influx of reforms by policy makers typically frames the regulation of early education and care through the lens of student performance. For instance, policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels of government promote standards-based education reforms that require young children to attain specific sets of knowledge and skills, and they must also demonstrate that they have attained these scripts of learning on particular achievement measures (Kagan & Scott-Little, 2004; Stipeck, 2006). While many within the field are concerned about 'what is lost' through this drive towards standardizing the practices and conceptions of early education (Hatch & Grieshaber, 2002, p. 230), researchers such as Fenech & Sumsion (2007a, b) and Goldstein (2007) are looking at how 'early childhood teachers can and do exercise freedom by intentionally using and resisting regulation' to implement instructional strategies and programs of care that reflect the needs of their students (Fenech & Sumsion, 2007a, p. 119).