The dialectic of anticipation: Presence of the ‘school’ in kindergarten universes of educational values

Abstract

The article presents a study of early childhood educators’ attitudes towards children's transition from kindergarten to their coming life as pupils in the school system. The initial construction of the research object points to consequential problems for the research process if one does not break away from the instrumental and normative terminations inherent in the term ‘transition’. The overall theoretical approach is based on the framework developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Mary Douglas. The process of transition is reconstructed theoretically as rites of passage and as ascesis. Data are analysed along the value horizon of autonomy and conformity, all based on answers to a questionnaire from some 700 staff members in 80 kindergartens. The findings reveal an evident turn towards a conforming value profile of early childhood educators. The school is met with a moral minimalism that does not reflect the more legitimate notions of the school system. The early childhood educators’ rather narrow school-related horizon is limited to some more modest behavioural expressions such as the discipline of the child's body, relying on a quasi-naturalistic notion of children. Finally, the relation of early childhood educators to the profession of schoolteacher points to a relation of symbolic violence.

Keywords

educational values kindergarten Mary Douglas Pierre Bourdieu ritual school transition

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