Abstract
An important factor that may be missing from recent attempts to counter, resist, and/or reconceptualize the neoliberal framing of the early education process is the actions of children, particularly those that reinforce the neoliberal assemblage of schooling they learn through their interactions with their teacher in school. This article begins to address this issue by employing Foucault’s conceptions of governmentality to examine how a teacher and students in a kindergarten classroom located in the USA give voice to and make choices that reflect the dominant neoliberal discourses of schooling. Such an analysis creates the opportunity to consider what needs to be done to assist both early educators and the children themselves so that they can live in the presence of each other within their neoliberal classrooms otherwise.
Introduction
Many within early childhood education contend that the current neoliberal focus on standardization to improve children’s academic achievement must not continue (e.g. Otterstad and Braathe, 2017). Such notions of entrepreneurial learning and the audit culture must be replaced with conceptions of citizenship (e.g. Biesta, 2010) and/or mini-democracies (e.g. Moss, 2010). Doing so can offer opportunities for the voices or actions by those children who are marginalized or institutionally discriminated against to emerge in the classroom.
While such arguments for change are appealing to those who seek to refute the neoliberal framing of schooling that emphasizes markets, credentials, and individualism, they tend to focus on educational change through directing either educators or education systems to create instructional opportunities or new spaces for learning (Brown et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2016). An important component that may be missing from these attempts to counter, resist, or reconceptualize the early education process is the actions of children, particularly peer interactions that reinforce the discourses of governing that mimic the neoliberal assemblage of an “apparatus of government and self-government” (Simons and Masschelein, 2008: 392).
This article begins to address this issue by employing Foucault’s (1978, 1991) conceptions of governmentality, neoliberalism, and biopolitics to examine how a kindergarten teacher and students in a classroom located in the USA reinforce the dominant neoliberal discourses of public schooling through acts of discipline and regulation. Using a qualitative case study methodology (Thomas, 2016), we examined multiple videotaped incidents of direct and self-governing acts of discipline and regulation, as well as interviews with the kindergarten teacher and the children themselves. Through this examination, we reflected on what members of the early education community might do to assist both early educators and the children themselves so that they can live in the presence of each other within their neoliberal classrooms otherwise (Fejes and Dahlstedt, 2015).
Governing children within the neoliberal early childhood classroom
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism “is a political rationality” that renders “the social domain economic and [links] a reduction in (welfare) state services and security systems to the increasing call for ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘self-care’” (Lemke, 2001: 203). 1 Foucault (2008: 148) noted that neoliberalism frames the market as the “truth” and “power of society”—meaning that the governance of society occurs “through the regulated choices of individual citizens,” who identify themselves as consumers. The goal for individuals within this system of governance is to make choices that attain “self-actualization and self-fulfillment” (Rose, 1996: 41).
Under neoliberalism, public education/education systems become an individual rather than societal good, which repurposes the role of the state in the education process as a “regulator and auditor of the ‘learning market’” (Biesta, 2006: 175). As such, public education/education systems are now a vehicle that provides citizens with the credentials needed to participate in the market (Ailwood, 2008). This is done through early educators providing children with the necessary “inputs” so that they can attain the required “outputs” (Ball, 2007: 28) on specific standardized achievement tests. Thus, by applying what Moss (2014: 3) termed “the correct human technologies,” early educators are to produce “high returns” that lead to the “improved education, employment and earnings and reduced social problems” of children attending these programs.
Democratic education
Many within early childhood education advocate for the implementation of democratic practices (e.g. Roberts-Holmes, 2015) and policies (e.g. Moss, 2017) to counter this neoliberal framing of early education. Across these arguments, there appears to be a foundational belief that for early educators and children to resist these neoliberal reforms, it is required that they have the space and opportunity to act freely (e.g. Wells, 2016). For instance, Adair (2014: 219) made the case for agentic learning opportunities within the early childhood classroom, where children are “able to influence and make decisions about what and how something is learned in order to expand capabilities.” Such learning opportunities are to assist children in taking on the identities of a democratic citizen. Still, as Clark and Richards (2017: 135) pointed out, such notions of agentic learning must move beyond “the normative individualized concept of agency where self-interest and individual choice are privileged” and, instead, such democratic visions must take on a “social or relational model [that] views agency as emerging through relationships with others,” which would assist them in recognizing the connection between agency and individual and social responsibility.
Foucault’s governmentality
For Foucault (1991), governmentality is the modern form of governance in which social institutions, both public and private, generate particular discourses that establish specific norms which relate to various aspects of a citizen’s life. Disciplinary powers emerge through these discourses which normalize particular behaviors that the citizens are to internalize and govern their own selves in relation to the social institutions, such as public schooling, in which they interact. (Rose, 1990). Furthermore, within this system of governance, power is productive; power “produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth,” such as the rituals associated with being a good student (Foucault, 1995: 194).
While Foucault (2008: 22) noted that “neoliberalism is the general framework of biopolitics,” recent scholars (e.g. Lemm and Vatter, 2014; Wells, 2016) have begun to argue that biopolitics “should be understood as an independent and complementary governmental rationality that plays a key role in governing neoliberalism” (Mavelli, 2017: 508). For this article, we employ this reinterpreted conception of biopolitics when analyzing the data from the case study—meaning that we see biopolitics as “a specific endeavour to promote the life and well-being of the population under power’s control” (Mavelli, 2017: 509). Fassin (2009: 49) added that biopolitics “is about not only normalizing people’s lives, but also deciding the sort of life people may or may not live.” Biopolitics symbolizes the shift in the ability of monarchical power to “take life or let live” to a system that governs the population through the power to “give life or let die” (Foucault, 1978: 142)—meaning that the process of governing becomes one in which issues of power center on managing the “conduct of conduct” among citizens by dictating through public institutions such ideas as what it means to be healthy, a family and educated, as well as politically active, so that all lead productive lives (Foucault, 2008).
This focus on the production of self-governing and productive citizens led to the establishment of such fields as psychology and the establishment of such institutions as public elementary and secondary schools (Rose, 1990)—the goal of these institutions being to produce an image of a normal citizen that the population internalizes, reproduces, and governs itself by so that the “state remains strong despite appearing to dissolve” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005: 133). In terms of the process of early education, this biopolitical focus on subjectivity leads to a vision of childhood as a “phase in life in need of a physical and moral environment to secure an optimal and healthy development” of the population (Simons, 2006: 526).
Combined, Foucault’s conceptions of governmentality, neoliberalism, and biopolitics challenge those who advocate for a democratic vision of early education that provides early educators and the children with whom they work with “voice” and “choice” in their learning (Brown, 2005) to consider whether or not they are advocating for practices that reinscribe the dominant neoliberal narrative that currently frames early education as a vehicle to produce successful learners who become earners and consumers. This piece begins to examine this issue by considering the governing and biopolitical reproductive acts of a teacher and children in a kindergarten classroom in the USA. As Ailwood (2003: 287) noted, examining issues of “governmentality are not necessarily critiques that expose a fake or a mistake; rather, they are investigations that ask questions of how,” and the “how” in this case study involves the teacher and the children: How did the teacher and the children in this case study give voice to and enact the neoliberal framing of schooling across their school day?
Methodology
The data examined for this case study (Thomas, 2016) comes from a larger video-cued multivocal ethnographic (VCME) research study (Tobin et al., 1989) that investigated education stakeholders’ conceptions (at the local, state, and federal levels of policy formulation and implementation) of the changed kindergarten (Bassok et al., 2016). As Thomas (2016: 23) stated, a case study is “especially good for … getting a rich picture and gaining analytical insights.” The case study reported on in this article focuses on the daily practices that occurred in the kindergarten classroom (the case) that was filmed for the VCME study (all names are pseudonyms); specifically, we investigated how the kindergarten teacher gives voice to and acts out the neoliberal discourses of schooling, as well as how the children themselves do the same in their everyday actions.
Participants
This case study took place in one Title 1 2 kindergarten classroom located in the Midwest. 3 The classroom was selected for its typicality (Patton, 2002), as determined through conversations with school and district personnel. The kindergarten teacher was state-certified to teach in early childhood through Grade 6 classrooms, 4 and had taught kindergarten within the same school district for 18 years. She taught her 21 kindergarteners without an assistant. The population of the eight kindergarten classrooms at the school was 77% low socio-economic status, 22% English language learners, 18% African American, 60% Hispanic, and 22% White. 5
School context
In this Midwestern state, state policymakers had implemented a range of high-stakes neoliberal reforms to which school personnel must adhere. For example, state-mandated assessments of students’ academic achievement begin in Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K), 6 requiring assessment of Pre-K through Grade 1 students’ emergent literacy skills three times a year using a state-approved standardized assessment measure. In the school district this study was located in, school personnel use students’ scores on these tests to evaluate teacher and school administrator effectiveness. Furthermore, students who perform poorly across the school year are typically provided with a range of literacy interventions to improve their scores.
The kindergarten teacher and her Pre-K through Grade 12 (Pre-K–12) colleagues were expected to follow the district’s learning progression documents and pacing guides. These documents organize district curricula and textbooks into a yearly sequence, which teachers are expected to follow so that students are taught the necessary content needed for district and state accountability measures. These documents provide teachers with daily, weekly, and monthly guidelines for instruction that link instructional materials, including the district’s grade-level curriculum, with particular state-mandated Pre-K–12 content standards in each of the core subject areas. Other disciplinary actions instigated by district administrators included Pre-K–12 teachers employing a standardized report card that documents students’ academic performance and personal development four times throughout the year. District administrators put these measures in place to ensure that every teacher across the district is teaching all of the students the same content and skills through a similar set of practices for an appropriate amount of time, in order to ready them for the state’s high-stakes tests that begin in Grade 3.
Data collection
Data collection for the larger study began in January 2015 and continued through August 2017. The data collected for the larger study includes interviews with focal groups and individuals after viewing the film about their understandings of the purpose and processes of kindergarten specifically and public education in general.
The primary sources of data for the case study examined in this article are threefold: (1) scenes from the film made for the VCME study; (2) interviews with the kindergarten teacher in the film; and (3) focus-group interviews with the kindergarteners in the film. The film for the VCME study was made to provide a coherent narrative that captures each of the activities children participate in across a day in kindergarten. It was created in concert with the kindergarten teacher in the spring of 2015. The lead author was in the kindergarten classroom 3 days a week for 16 weeks.
In making the film, which was shot over three consecutive days, we noticed that there were many instances where either the teacher promoted or the children demonstrated technologies of the self that fell in line with the “conduct of conduct” found within neoliberal reform (Foucault, 2008). Moreover, there were instances where the children themselves employed discourses that reflect the biopolitics of the human species to regulate each other’s collective actions in order to emulate the expectations and discourses of learning within their neoliberal school system (Foucault, 1978; Simons, 2006). Due to the length of text restrictions associated with the publication process (Merriam, 2009), we selected four scenes that occurred across the three days of filming for analysis. Two of the scenes demonstrate the verbal and physical practices that the kindergarten teacher employed to reveal to the students the bodily norms of practice in the classroom. The other two scenes focus on how the students gave voice to and enacted practices that reflected the neoliberal conception of schooling.
In terms of the interviews, we conducted two semi-structured interviews (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002) with the kindergarten teacher: an initial interview right after the week of filming and a final interview after having her view the completed film. We also interviewed 19 of the 21 kindergarteners in the film by having them randomly participate in one of four focal group interviews, in which they watched and commented on the film.
Data analysis
Traditional qualitative analytic methods were used to analyze the data (Erickson, 1986). First, all of the data—the film and interviews—was transcribed and analyzed deductively using a set of external codes (Miles and Huberman, 1994) that were based on the constructs of governmentality, neoliberalism, biopolitics, and discipline. Some examples include: attaining credentials, competitiveness, individualism, surveillance, student behavior, and discipline. The coded data was then analyzed using the constant-comparative method to develop themes that emerged in relation to the two research questions (Erlandson et al., 1993). These themes reveal how the kindergarten teacher enforced and the kindergarteners themselves gave voice to and chose to engage in the neoliberal practices of schooling. The researchers read these original themes against the coded data in search of contradictory evidence and refined them through further analysis (Wolcott, 1994). In the end, we generated two themes that reflected how the kindergarten teacher gave voice to and acted out the neoliberal discourses of schooling, as well as how the children themselves did the same in their everyday actions.
Limitations and the issue of trustworthiness
The investigation discussed in this article addressed a limited set of issues with a small set of data—one kindergarten teacher and 21 kindergarteners (Yin, 2014). In order to address these issues and strengthen the trustworthiness of this case study, several strategies that qualitative researchers typically engage in to enhance the trustworthiness of their work were employed (Erlandson et al., 1993; Yin, 2014): member-checking, triangulation, and peer-debriefing (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Thomas, 2016).
Findings
Directing bodily conduct within the kindergarten classroom
The kindergarten teacher
For Foucault (2007), biopower centers on issues of power in relation to human conduct and, when examining this issue in relation to the kindergarten teacher, she engaged in several practices across the school day that informed the students as to what it meant to display their bodies in a manner which reflected that they were either ready to learn or were learners (e.g. having to put their hands behind their back and an air bubble in their mouths as they walked down the school hallways). Furthermore, the students in this case study spent a significant amount of time on the carpet in the front of the classroom for whole-group instruction on specific academic content, such as sight-word and phonological awareness instruction, reading, mathematics, and so on (for the daily schedule, see Figure 1). During such instruction, the kindergarteners were expected to display specific physical characteristics to inform the teacher that they were ready to learn. In this following excerpt, the teacher compliments Tommy to inform the class what those expectations are: “Tommy, I love how you are sitting criss-cross applesauce with your hands in your lap ready to learn. Joel, are you ready? Get your body ready.” As Foucault (1995: 143) noted, within governing systems, “each individual has a place and each place has its individual” and, in this example, the children were to position themselves at the foot of the teacher and organize their bodies in a particular fashion to show the teacher they were ready.
Kindergarten schedule for the week the film was made.
When discussing her goals for the kindergarten students, the teacher noted that she wanted to make them “independent”: “They’re not coming in independent at all. They’re not coming in any more responsible than years ago.” When asked why independence was important to her, she added:
I want to make them independent because, as I explain that to the kids: “There’s 21 of you in here. I can’t do everything for you all. When you get to first grade, the teacher’s not going to be able to sit next to you and help you with this. You’re going to have to do it on your own.” Along with independence, I also want them to be responsible, because you need to be responsible as an adult. (Initial interview)
At least two instances related to the biopolitics of governance are present in this teacher’s statement. The first centers on bodily management, which was also displayed through her thanking Tommy for positioning his body in a particular fashion. As Cannella pointed out, a teacher’s management
methods construct the order of children’s bodies in space and in relation to all other objects in space … [these] methods construct an environment in which control virtually eliminates the need for observation because controlled behaviors are expected by everyone. (Cannella, 1999: 41)
Since this kindergarten teacher has 21 children in her classroom, she seemed to want to construct a learning environment where students gradually learn to manage their own behavior and learning without constant teacher intervention. Secondly, the teacher links this ability to be independent with the need to be responsible, so that the children can take on the role of a self-governing student and eventually a self-governing adult as they mature. Such a belief fits within the neoliberal logic of schooling and governance, which “favors … individual autonomy over citizen interdependence” (Clark and Richards, 2017: 134). For this teacher, being a good student/citizen meant being independent and responsible.
The kindergarteners
While Cannella (1999) and others (e.g. Dahlberg and Moss, 2005) have employed Foucault’s notions of governmentality to describe how teachers and schools shape children’s bodies “through training, with the aim of creating docile bodies (both children’s bodies and their future adult bodies), that is, bodies that work cooperatively within this institutional context and become good citizens and pliant members of the social order” (Bartholdsson et al., 2014: 210), we found several instances across the day where children imposed these same disciplinary and governing actions on each other (e.g. telling each other to get to work, sit quietly, or listen to the teacher).
One example involves Ruby and Tommy. Both kindergarteners were sitting in the first of four rows on the carpet in front of the classroom, where the children position their docile bodies for such activities as morning meeting, shared reading, and whole-group instruction. During a shared reading activity, the kindergarten teacher had just asked the students to turn to their neighbor and tell them what they learned from the story they just read. Ruby and Tommy were partners, and Tommy told Ruby he did not know what he learned because he had not listened to the story. Below is Ruby’s response:
You wanna go to first grade, right?
[nods].
When you’re not learning anything for first grade, you’re not learning from the stories or anything. You need to learn.
[covering mouth, rubbing eye, and mumbling] I’m trying …
Just listen. Don’t play with Luis [his other neighbor]. Listen to the story, OK?
[nods].
Now, what did you think?
[pause, rubs eye] I …
All right. Let’s get back together—5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
In this example, Ruby appeared to employ the anatomo-politics of the human body to discipline a fellow student into conforming to the self-regulatory norms of neoliberal schooling (Foucault, 1978)—meaning that she attempted to discipline Tommy so that he optimizes his own “capabilities” and integrates himself into the system of schooling, which will assist him in being both productive and successful (Foucault, 1978: 139). Furthermore, Ruby seemed to link the ability of Tommy to take on and perform such actions to whether or not he will succeed in schooling. By doing so, she appeared to link Tommy’s success in school to his capability to adapt to the biopolitical “governmental rationality” of neoliberalism that is “based on the construction of” self-governing and “resilient subjects” (Mavelli, 2017: 495).
During her focus-group interview, we asked Ruby about this scene. She stated: “I wanted Tommy to be smarter.” We then asked her what she meant by “smarter.” She replied: “Being smart means learning all the stuff that you need for first grade, like all the stuff we did in the movie.” Through her statements, it appears Ruby is trying to assist Tommy in learning how to control his bodily actions in the classroom (e.g. not playing with Luis) and be productive so that he can succeed in the “process” of schooling (Foucault, 1978: 141).
Combined, both the kindergarten teacher and Ruby appear to be internalizing and interacting with kindergarteners like Tommy through actions and verbal directions that reinforce what the teacher termed “the pressure to perform” within their neoliberal education system. The teacher added:
The kids are expected to do more and produce more. They see the pressure. They feel the pressure: “Oh, I got that wrong. Everybody else knows it but me.” I’m sure they feel it and see it. The kids know, “Well, that person knows it … This one doesn’t.” No matter how much you try to hide it, they’re going to pick up on it. (Initial interview)
Through this statement, the kindergarten teacher brings to light how the children in her classroom are learning to embody the “conduct of conduct” of the successful student (Foucault, 2008), which, according to this teacher, entailed feeling the pressure to perform so that the children will be motivated to succeed as academic learners. Moreover, in her statement, she appears to make the case that she tries “to hide” such expectations. However, when reviewing her and Ruby’s verbal exchanges with Tommy, which reflect both positive (the teacher) and negative (Ruby) disciplinary actions, such body and performance expectations seem to be made quite visible to the students by both her and their classmates.
Choosing success within the kindergarten classroom
The kindergarten teacher
Across the day, the kindergarten teacher engaged in a range of instructional activities that mimic Olssen and Peters’ (2005: 324) critique of the neoliberal education process, where teaching and learning are framed as an “input–output system” reflecting “an economic production function” which encompasses the teacher engaging the students in a range of instructional practices that are to produce kindergarteners who are successful learners so that they can become earners and consumers. One such activity is the recital of about 30 sight words every morning; the words themselves change over the course of the year, progressing from simple (e.g. “be”) to more complex (e.g. “behind”). During this activity, the teacher holds up a white laminated card that has the sight word on the bottom half and a picture related to that sight word on the top half. Once the teacher holds up the card, the children say the word, spell it, and then engage in a bodily movement that includes a short phrase that the teacher created to help remind the children what the word is. For example:
Teacher shows the sight-word flashcard for “go.”
Go [teacher points to the printed word]. G–O [teacher points to each letter as students chant]. We go in the car [teacher and students use both hands to motion steering a car].
Good.
G–O spells go.
Teacher puts “go” flashcard to the side and shows the next flashcard.
This whole-group instructional routine is one of many this teacher engaged in across the day to improve children’s academic performance (e.g. sounding out such nonsense words as “pem” or identifying the missing number in the sequence 7 __ 9). Sight-word recognition, as outlined above, is not only a skill that the state kindergarten content standards mandate that teachers teach and students learn (the standard states that students will identify and read at least 25 high-frequency words from a commonly used list by the end of kindergarten), but it is also a skill that is measured under the school-based assessment system that is used to determine whether the kindergarteners are on a trajectory to succeed in the high-stakes examination in third grade.
When discussing this and other instructional practices she employs in the classroom, the kindergarten teacher stated:
Everything I am expected to do as a teacher focuses back on the data, and my administrators want to see progression. Are we meeting the goals? Do we have 85% mastery of the expectations? … The kids are expected to do more and produce more. (Initial interview)
For Foucault (1982), “the exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome” (789) and, through such institutions as schools, routines and activities, such as this sight-word-recognition activity, are put in place “by means of a whole ensemble of regulated communications” to ensure “apprenticeship and the acquisition of aptitudes or types of behavior is developed there” (787). In this instance, the teacher is teaching the children to develop a specific skill that readers possess (reading sight words) in order to ensure that they produce the data which is required to demonstrate that both the teacher and students are successfully engaging in their roles within their neoliberal school system.
Furthermore, according to this teacher, these overt disciplinary powers, such as district-mandated literacy assessments, are put in place to ensure that the children “do more, and produce more.” The kindergarten teacher added that this has led to an early learning environment focused on “academic expectations. There’s not so much play-based learning. We don’t have free learning. There’s no exploration learning. It’s ‘sit, focus, learn, get it done, maybe you can have time to play later’ type of learning” (Initial interview). Such a statement reveals how this teacher as well as her school administrators are focused on creating an early learning environment that instils the neoliberal conception of self-governing “docile but productive bodies” (Wells, 2016: 241), which are to live lives centered on the relationships students are establishing with the content knowledge needed to succeed on the test, rather than on the relationships needed to get along with each other, which is foundational to democratic learning.
The kindergarteners
As Foucault (1982: 790) noted, governing requires the structuring of “the possible field of action of others,” which in this case study was the kindergarten classroom. This field, as the kindergarten teacher noted above, offered very few opportunities for the children to do anything but “sit … learn, get it done.” Still, at the end of each day, if each kindergartener completed all of her/his work for that day, s/he was given 15 minutes to play in unstructured activities (see Figure 1) that have been traditionally associated with kindergarten in the USA (e.g. Paley, 1992), such as Lego, a housekeeping center, reading, and any other games the teacher made available to the class.
However, in this moment where the children appeared to have opportunities to choose their own activities from the materials made available by the teacher, many of the children selected on a daily basis to participate in a game they created that mimicked the sight-word activity described earlier. The game entailed the children sitting around a table, with one child being the teacher holding the cards. Rather than face the cards towards the other students sitting around the table, the child holding the cards would face the cards towards her/himself, and then s/he would slowly lift the white translucent cards from the stack, and the children could begin to see the image through the card associated with the word. As they begin to make out the picture, they guess the word. If no one guesses the word correctly, the child holding the cards turns the card around so that it faces the children, and they can then guess the word. The child holding the cards then decides who responded first and gives the card to that child. The child who has the most cards at the end gets to hold the cards next as the others then guess the words.
While it may seem that the children adjusted the activity to fit their conceptions of playing, the activity itself fundamentally remains the same—meaning that success is only achieved if the children can read the picture or the word itself. As Foucault (1982: 793) noted, within the process of governing others, which in this case is through providing children with a space where they feel they get to make choices in their learning, the “winning solution” appears to be made by the children on their “own.” Yet, as Ryan (2005) and others in early childhood education (e.g. Cannella, 1997) have found, the expectation of the teacher and the “state remains strong despite appearing to dissolve” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005: 133).
Furthermore, during the first day of filming the classroom, six children were playing this game (Camila, Claudia, Davis, Lucinda, Malia, and Ruby), and as they were transitioning from Davis being the leader to Claudia, their voices were raised and they were laughing as Claudia tried to collect all 30 cards. The kindergarten teacher responded to this situation as follows:
Are you playing or are you learning?
[in a low voice] Learning.
Or are you learning by playing?
Learning by playing.
Are you sure?
Yes.
OK.
The children lower their voices and continue to play the game.
This moment reflects Bartholdsson et al.’s (2014: 210) argument that the “preparation for the future citizenry comes down to the production of docile bodies, where children are taught socially acceptable codes for behaving instead of having the opportunity to experience expressing themselves politically,” or, as in this example, socially. While the children are to be making their own choices during this time of day in their classroom, their choices entail them taking on the bodily codes for behaving appropriately within the classroom. Moreover, in this interaction with their teacher, they are being told that their actions must demonstrate they are also learning while playing.
When discussing issues of play with the teacher as she watched the film we made, Cannella’s (1997) notion of play as a form of covert control emerged in her statements. For example, the teacher commented:
If they’re playing a game to help them learn something, they need to follow the rules. It’s not just, “Hey, we’re playing a dice game. Let’s throw the dice in the air and throw the dice at each other, and make up our own rules.” There are boundaries. There’s a purpose behind the activity. Sometimes they’ll get out of hand, and I’ll say, “Well, you know, I can take away the games and give you papers like they do in first grade.” They’ll say, “No, no, no. We like the fun stuff,” and I’ll respond, “OK then. You need to make sure that you’re following the rules and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do to learn.”
In this statement, the teacher appears to state that she will give the children the “freedom” to play as long as “it is a kind of freedom or self-government that is able to assure both individual and collective welfare” of the classroom (Simons, 2006: 53). If not, she will restore her sovereign role within the classroom and discipline her students by making them perform acts that are associated with older children, which in this case is filling out worksheets.
When talking with the students about how they would describe to their families or friends what it means to be a kindergartener, many made statements similar to Luciana. She noted: “In kindergarten, you have to listen to your teacher, and if your teacher says something, like get your book or go write, you have to do it or she’ll tell your dad you didn’t.” In this statement, it appears that Luciana views her role in the classroom is to follow the teacher’s directions or suffer the consequences. When asked why they needed to listen to their teacher, Ruby, who was in the same focus group as Luciana, added: “Because we learn more. We learn the stuff we need to learn because if we don’t learn stuff, then that means we don’t know anything.” Combined, these statements reflect Mavelli’s (2017: 496) argument that “biopolitics thus concerns the production of entrepreneurial and strategizing subjects that, confronted with a world that cannot be changed, are normalized into the acceptance of resilience as the only possible rational course of life.” For these children, it appears that being successful students within the world of kindergarten required them to follow the directions of their teacher, and, by doing so, they were to develop the resilience needed to succeed in kindergarten, as well as first grade and beyond.
Discussion
The purpose of this article was to problematize recent calls for democratic education, including our own (e.g. Brown et al., 2015), which seek to counter the neoliberalization of early childhood by providing early educators and the children they work with with opportunities to voice their interests and to choose learning activities to engage in across the day. Through examining interviews and incidents with these members of one kindergarten classroom using Foucault’s (1978, 1991) notions of governmentality, neoliberalism, and biopolitics, we highlighted the relationships that emerge between the teacher’s and children’s employment of specific discourses and particular forms of power. For example, the first theme revealed how the teacher and the children gave voice to notions of proper bodily conduct within the kindergarten classroom. Both the teacher and Ruby appeared to embody what it meant to be a neoliberal subject within the early education process and, through their communication with Tommy, as well as other classmates, they sought to normalize how to communicate and position themselves as learners within the classroom (Foucault, 2007).
The second theme demonstrated how the teacher and students chose to participate in certain acts so that they were learning what was needed to achieve specific academic outcomes. By structuring “the possible field of action” (Foucault, 1982: 790) within the kindergarten classroom, policymakers’ neoliberal education reforms have reduced “agency” to “a tool of the state for self-regulation and self-governance of its citizens, rather than an exclusive part of the emancipatory project it professes to be” (Clark and Richards, 2017: 135). Moreover, the teacher herself appeared to verbalize her ability to give life to opportunities for children to play or to let it die if the children did not choose to conduct themselves in the proper manner within the classroom (Foucault, 1978). Thus, the “freedom” to choose for the children, as well as the teacher, appeared to center on whether or not such actions assured “both [the] individual and collective welfare” of the classroom (Simons, 2006: 53).
A rival hypothesis (Yin, 2014) to the findings presented in this study might suggest that the structure of schooling simply does not allow kindergarteners to engage in democratic or civic-oriented actions within their classroom environment (e.g. Adair et al., 2016). However, we contend that such a hypothesis misses the point. As Rose (1999) and others (e.g. Ferguson, 1991) have noted, Foucault’s work provided us with a vehicle to question what is natural within these discourses/regimes of truth within the kindergarten classroom, in relation to neoliberalism and democratic/civic governance. Doing so allows us to consider what needs to be done so that both early educators and children can live in the present otherwise (Foucault, 1995)—both in terms of the neoliberal assemblage that creates the structures of schooling and in relation to how the process of learning is defined. Thus, we contend that the findings of this study illuminate at least two opportunities for members of the early childhood community, such as early childhood teacher educators, researchers, advocates, and teachers, to promote and sustain engaged democratic citizens who can challenge the neoliberal, businesslike state.
Implications
When thinking about the teacher and children in this classroom, both gave voice to and made choices that reflect the neoliberal assemblage of schooling, and as we propose ways that members of the early education community might counter these verbalizations and actions, we recognize that whatever we suggest has its “own dangers and disciplinary effects” (McLeod, 2001: 280)—meaning that these implications can become a new form of disciplinary discourse or action that can be imposed on teachers and/or children in early education settings.
With this in mind, the findings of this study demonstrate that simply advocating for early educators to facilitate agentic learning activities (e.g. Adair, 2014) and/or develop children’s capabilities as learners (e.g. Moss, 2017) is not enough. Rather, members of the early education community need to recognize that the process of disciplining students occurs at every moment across the day, and classroom teachers and the children are continually internalizing and applying these notions of governance on themselves and each other. As Foucault (2008: 145) noted, the neoliberal system of governance “play[s] a regulatory role at every moment and every point in society.” Still, Foucault (1982: 790) also stated that “power is exercised only over free subjects,” which means that “individual or collective subjects … are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized.” Thus, early educators need to teach themselves and the children and families they work with how to act more democratically to and with each other in the neoliberal early education classroom. This means collectively thinking through the practices (e.g. play) and bodily activities (e.g. sitting on the carpet) that occur across the day so that children engage with each other in a dialogic manner that fosters and supports a democratic learning community. This includes allowing for, unpacking, and building off moments of conflict (Johansson and Emilson, 2016), as well as questioning those instances where early educators expect submission and/or threaten to let particularly “messy” (e.g. finger-painting) or “loud” learning activities (e.g. games) die off. Moreover, as Fenech and Sumsion (2007) noted, within this process of thinking through practices and bodily activities in a democratic manner, educators should consider ways in which they can strategically counter, resist, and alter the neoliberal reforms that tend to define early childhood settings, such as the kindergarten classroom examined in this case study. This includes not only questioning those moments where they feel they are giving children voice and choice in their learning, such as during learning centers or free-choice time, but also identifying those moments where democratic practices have emerged within the classroom, such as community meetings or a dedicated sharing time where “learning,” be it cognitive, social/emotional, or physical, is “a process” where the teacher, child, and children as a peer group “are actively engaged in events that can be initiated by the child, by peers and by the teacher within an environment that has been set up collaboratively by children and teachers” (Langford, 2010: 122).
Secondly, while we agree with Smith et al.’s (2016: 133) argument that “thinking with theory” is an important step in “disrupting the mechanisms of control and regulation” found within neoliberal education reform, we worry that such thinking can lead to solutions focused on disrupting and/or freeing the practices of individual teachers, students, and/or early education classrooms rather than the collective whole (Clark and Richards, 2017). Thus, moving forward, schooling must be framed as a collective rather than individualistic process, where early educators need to focus on the relationships they establish within the classroom rather than solely the content being taught.
Still, it is the responsibility of members of the early education community, as Delpit (1996) pointed out, to ensure that they are still teaching children the game of schooling so that they can succeed in school and in their larger community. Otherwise, those who are marginalized or institutionally discriminated against will continue to be so under this system of education. As Foucault (1982: 781) noted, the neoliberal form of governance seeks to separate “the individual, breaks his links with others, splits up community life, forces the individual back on himself, and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way.” While teaching all children the game of schooling is important and necessary, it needs to be done in a way that positions it within the neoliberal structure of governance—meaning that early educators are not only analyzing their and their students’ moment-to-moment actions/interactions, but also recognizing their and their students’ positioning within a system that is designed to fracture and disempower all of their collective actions: for instance, by redesigning moments within their instruction that are fractured and individualistic (e.g. having students fill in worksheets) so that they offer children opportunities to work collectively to address issues or problems that affect the entire class community (e.g. a project-based investigation (Helm, 2015)), or by examining why children must walk down the halls with their hands behind their back while having an air bubble in their closed mouth (which was a rule for the school in this study). Another example, in the US context, would be having early childhood teachers or teachers-in-training think through, as a learning community, why policymakers’ neoliberal reforms continue to focus on academic outputs and individual performance at a time when funding for inputs is continually reduced (e.g. Leachman et al., 2016) and the collective actions of teachers and schools are being challenged and fractured (e.g. Dunn, 2017). Such conversations may lead to possible collective actions that support the needs of children, early educators, and the community at large (e.g. Cowhey, 2010). By taking on classroom and community-based actions, early educators can begin to foster early learning environments that promote and sustain engaged democratic citizens who can challenge the neoliberal, businesslike state.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr. Jennifer Keys Adair and Natalie Weber for their assistance in conducting this study.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors would like to thank the Spencer Foundation Small Grants Program and the Big XII Faculty Fellowship Program for their support of this study.
