Abstract
In the field of early childhood education, universal standards, regulations and rules still establish the framework for practices. Educational institutions for young children are governed by powerful economies and neo-liberal politics. What if locals came together to create an educational project which responds to their children and fosters values that promote a harmonious relationship between human and more than human worlds? In Alternative Narratives in Early Childhood: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners, Peter Moss, Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood Provision at the University College London Institute of Education, responds to this question, addressing an audience of policymakers, academics, parents and educators in early childhood education. He warns them against the risk of instrumentalization and standardization of early childhood programs. His work reframes major ideas in the field by questioning dominant discourses and narrating stories of encounter, entanglement, and complexities. For Moss, dominant discourses are ‘the way that certain perspectives or stories claim to be the only way to think, talk, and behave about a particular topic, subject or field’ (80). Moving away from the story of calculation, competition and managerialism, he advocates for the story of democracy and experimentation, which is about diversity and complexity, movements and lines of flight.
Moss’s narrative style makes his work immensely readable, notwithstanding the book’s complex deployments of advanced theoretical vocabulary. Divided into eight chapters, the book is a caucus of critical theorists – including Foucault, Deleuze, Levinas, Tronto, Bauman, Barad and Sevenhuijsen – and a few early childhood scholars – such as Taylor, Malaguzzi, Olsson and Lenz Taguchi. The intention of the book is to move the reader to reflect critically and to be open to new perspectives. The book does not have a formal introduction but begins simply by describing dominant discourses in early childhood education. It continues by exploring alternative narratives and ends with future possibilities. Moss weaves concepts from the book together by using the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. In Moss’s analogy, the emperor represents dominant discourse, illustrating the dos and don’ts of powerful ideologies in early education. From his perspective, the two dominant discourses are the story of the market and the story of quality and high returns, both of which are governed by neo-liberal forces.
To think with Moss, readers need to depart from a neo-liberal paradigm in which early childhood practitioners serve as technical managers and reduce children to developmental psychology’s scientific child. Privileging the story of quality and high returns is not a global practice; Moss writes that studies from the USA seem to give more credibility to the dominant discourses. For example, as discussed in chapter 1, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in the USA evaluates children’s performances in participating countries based on their standardized testing model. In chapter 2, he requires the reader to adopt a social-constructionist approach to ontology since ‘the world consists of inter-connections and entanglements and cannot be divided into discrete, measurable and controllable variables’ (36). Thus, he urges readers to step away from the humanist paradigm and think, for example, from postmodern, post-structural, post-colonial and post-human, as well as material feminist perspectives.
Moss opposes a universal ethics and asserts that education is about cultural, political and ethical choices. In chapter 3, he proposes a contextual ethics that is framed in relationships and responsibilities instead of rules and universal codes. In support of this claim, he cites three examples of resistance against domination; these are (1) the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia, (2) First Nations in Canada and (3) Maori communities in New Zealand. Taking just the first example, in chapter 4, Moss does not see Reggio Emilia as an approach but rather as a local cultural project that grew out of the social, political, historical and cultural conditions of Italy. Complementing theoretical discussions on Reggio Emilia schools, Moss brings in a case study of a Swedish Reggio Emilia-inspired school to demonstrate how Reggio Emilia schools and other local cultural schools have resisted a universal paradigm.
Moving forward, Moss argues that members who resist dominant discourses should draw on Deleuze’s and Foucault’s concepts for inspiration. Engaging us in thinking with Foucault, in chapter 5, he writes that the story of neo-liberalism and the story of quality both exercise a regime of truth. Foucault’s concept of governmentality can be seen in developmental psychology and associated concepts, such as developmentally appropriate practice. He brings in two case studies regarding Foucault from MacNaughton’s (2004) Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies and Dahlberg, Moss and Pence’s (2013) Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care. Deleuze’s thoughts introduce complexity and heterogeneity to view the world as always becoming and changing. As part of a case study on Deleuze, in chapter 6, Moss interviews Liselott Mariett Olsson and describes a fragment of her work. Together, Foucault and Deleuze offer philosophies which see education as a complex social phenomenon that is always changing.
Moss’s book serves as a valuable introduction to the following paradigms in terms of early childhood education: post-foundationalism, Deleuzian and Foucauldian concepts, and Reggio Emilia. He thoughtfully unpacks current issues in the field by bringing many contemporary voices into dialogue. Tobin, Pacini-Ketchbaw, MacNaughton, Cannella, Pence and Dahlberg have all made a similar argument about dominant discourses. In addition, a recent book by Bloch, Swadener and Cannella (2018), Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education and Care, makes the same argument by inviting readers to engage critically in current issues in early childhood. Nevertheless, Moss’s book is unique because he is ‘not just theorizing but doing’ (2). By bringing together theory, research and practice in each of his chapters, he demonstrates how alternative practices may work. Moss invites us to examine the paradigms from which we think about the world. By drawing from the work of Karen Barad, Lenz Taguchi, Karin Murris and Africa Taylor, in chapter 7, he advocates for the posthumanism perspective. He put great emphasis on humans and more than humans sharing a ‘common world’ where they live in an entangled relationship in which all matters exercise agency in an ongoing process of intra-actions and intra-relations. As such, pedagogy should nurture collectivity, inter-connectedness, and inter-dependencies of people, things and ideas. In chapter 8, he asks educators to think beyond a prescriptive curriculum and a prophetic pedagogy. Moss desires for ‘living pedagogy’ with democracy, experimentation, and potentiality informing curriculum processes.
Although relevant to the North American and European contexts, readers may wonder how Moss’s ideas will be accepted in other parts of the world. Despite being a local cultural project, Reggio Emilia is embraced by many countries. Moss’s enthusiasm about Reggio Emilia might be premature if readers take it as a potentially universal solution to the problem of dominant discourses, since it can potentially pose the same dangers as developmentally appropriate practices.
Moss’s response to this critique might be that Reggio Emilia and other successful projects are not meant to become universal, but to serve as local examples. Moss states that his book is not the only alternative discourse, but rather an introduction to one alternative. He hopes that the future of early childhood education will be democratic, with diverse alternative stories leading the field.
