Abstract
Early years education in Europe and elsewhere around the world is currently in the spotlight due to political and economical changes and subsequent promises of effective investment into its provision. In this article we analyse everyday preschool practices in Slovakia in terms of tensions between policies, the teachers workforce and the concept of professionalism. Through bureaucratic scientisation, teachers become subjects with bureaucratic subjectivities, and they are expected to devote increasing amounts of time to planning, reporting and administrative tasks. Teachers are decreasingly focused on the actual work on the ground with the children, and are concerned instead with notions of accountability and reporting, which supposedly raises their professional status. Slovakia’s experience of the bureaucratic subjectivities of early years teachers has complex ramifications for European and overseas countries as it problematises and unmasks the global issues of complex tensions between the teachers and policy documents.
Introduction
Early years education in Europe and elsewhere is currently in the spotlight because of political and economical changes and subsequent promises of effective investment into its provision (Moss, 2014; Smith, Tesar & Myers, 2016). This investment is accompanied by an increased attempt by the state to control, tame and maintain early years education, a drive that often manifests itself in high levels of standardisation of education, its environment, quality and professionalism. In this complex environment, the professional identity of the early years teacher in the non-compulsory environment is increasingly perceived in pedagogical terms. This paper analyses and problematises the professional identity and the contemporary tensions between preschools’ traditional aims to provide early years care and the new educational challenges and criteria that early years education is increasingly expected to fulfil. In this article these tensions between ‘care’ and ‘education’ are explored through the example of Slovakia and its recent experience of early years educational changes. This article also responds to the OECD (2012: 7) report on Slovakia, which argues that well-educated/trained staff is better able to create more effective work environments and increase the efficiency of other ECEC staff members; while ongoing professional training maintains the benefits from initial education and allows staff to stay updated on professional developments and best practices, contributing to improved pedagogical and professional quality, and stimulating early child development.
Early years discourses in Slovakia
Early years settings and teacher education programmes in Slovakia need to be positioned against the historical experience of the communist and post-communist ideological settings. However, there are some similarities with other Western European countries and internationally, particularly since the 1990s (Kaščák and Pupala, 2012). The point of difference is that the political, economic and educational changes in Slovakia have occurred in rushed waves, rather than gradually and from the ground up, and this is reflected in the intensity of the transformation of the professional identity of early years teachers. In 2008, Slovakia adopted a new National Preschool Curriculum that for the first time incorporated preschools into the general education system for compulsory schools (Statny Pedagogicky Ustav, 2008). While early years education remains non-compulsory, it is based on detailed educational standards, which subsequently led to the revisions of the tertiary teacher education programmes. In the past five years, the push from the political discourse to standardise the teaching profession has intensified, and has culminated in attempts to regulate the occupation through professional standards. This points to a change in the early years discourse through the implementation of a scientifically based transformation of praxis. These developments provide fertile ground for producing the bureaucratic subjectivities of teachers. Awareness of teachers’ bureaucratic subjectivities arose immediately after the unveiling of the new National Preschool Curriculum, manifesting itself through a keen emphasis on utilising technologies of planning and reporting in everyday teachers’ praxis in early years settings.
The complexity of the professional identity of the teachers in Slovakia is epitomised by the range of diverse pedagogical qualifications that the teachers are equipped with. For example, teachers with secondary school qualifications work alongside those with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The range of qualifications and experience in the workforce causes upheaval within the profession since there are times when teachers compete amongst themselves over whose qualifications better suit and serve the mission of early years education. Meanwhile, the ‘scientisation of knowledge’ (Apesoa-Varano, 2007; Park, 2013) constitutes the basis of tertiary education for the profession.
Furthermore, there has been a shift in the nature of professional development (PD) materials, handbooks and guides produced for teachers. Before 2008, they were aimed at the curriculum content and children’s learning, however, those published after 2008 focused on planning and reporting technologies and the administration of teaching. In other words, the discourse has changed to focus on how to extend Ministry of Education bureaucratic norms into early years settings and teachers’ planning and reporting. Therefore, the introduction of the National Preschool Curriculum was immediately followed by a number of publications, 1 which were accompanied by mass professional development programmes for teachers as part of their in-service teacher training and experiences.
Birth of bureaucratic subjectivities
In relation to the complex Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) discourses in Slovakia we find the work of Michel Foucault (1980, 1982) particularly useful. His notion of governmentality allows us to examine large-scale political structures as technologies of government and to interpret and analyse micro-political practices that produce subjects – teachers – in the contemporary society. Through governmentality, the general aspects of the external governance of a community are interlinked with aspects of self-governance. For early years teachers, self-governance can be understood as a political means of production of self-regulating teacher-subjects and the production of new teacher professional subjectivities, through the use of the new, expert Ministry language and the acceptance of the expert Ministry discourse. Foucault’s governmentality is linked with the genealogical method, and as Foucault (2003) argues, genealogies are in fact ‘anti-sciences’. In this sense, the genealogies – anti-sciences – of the production of the ‘scientisation’ of the teacher identities in Slovakia is the resurrection of the subjugated discourses that respond to the scientific OECD, Ministry and policy discourses that permeate early childhood teacher education and praxis. This article highlights the genealogy of the production of teacher subjectivities as a new professional identity, in a space in which the control of approved and subjugated knowledges is interwoven, and all the subjects are part of the workforce and technologies of government entanglements, as Stokes and Clegg (2002: 229) point out: ‘[t]he personal projects and ambitions of individual actors become meshed with, and form alliances with, those of organization authorities and dominant organization actors’.
Thinking with Foucault leads us to examine the genealogies of scientisation in early years education. The macro-political aspects of teacher education lead, for example, to detailed supervised teacher training programmes and the subsequent standardisation of assessment practices and child experiences, following an evidence-based approach. Furthermore, the teacher training of early years teachers has shifted to the academic tertiary environment, where scientific knowledges give professional education a scientific background. The macro-political and academic environments intersect and both of these discourses influence each other, as they are neither autonomous nor independent. The macro-political discourse shapes the academic discourse and vice versa, for example, in the way that the academic discourse responds to the early years policy documents, disseminates them through initial teacher education and in the course content that is performed as a scientisation or scientific legitimisation of these policy documents. The technologies of government in these discourses monitor the impact of the education and care in early years settings and become instruments of power in their governance. On the one hand they constitute a legitimate discourse and on the other they dictate the nature of pedagogical documentation and reporting about it as technologies of control of early years education. This type of ‘scientisation’ should not be perceived in terms of reinforcing the scientific knowledges that shape the discipline, but rather as a means of bureaucratising, and therefore as ‘bureaucratic scientisation’ in the early childhood system, shaping the essence of the early years teaching profession, and notions of professionalism.
As a result of the tension between the discourses of academia and the political apparatus, bureaucratic scientisation produces new detailed norms such as early years educational standards, which are rationalised and formalised as objective criteria based on an evidence-based approach, to perform the discourse of accountability. In order to rationalise, new objective ‘scientific’ notions are introduced, and fitting norms are produced, in the form of theoretical taxonomies, which are universally recommended to teachers as scientific tools for implementing these norms into practice. One such example is teachers’ formulation of the ‘aims of pedagogical practice’. The level of teachers’ ability to implement these norms into pedagogical practice has now become the measurement and performance of teacher professional identity, and, from a political perspective, the measurement of quality. These complex conditions in Slovakia have produced new ‘bureaucratic subjectivities’ for teachers who are torn between political and academic discourses, and everyday reality, as an unintended outcome of the bureaucratic scientisation of early years education.
Performance of bureaucratic scientisation through ‘aims’, ‘targets’ and ‘objectives’
In Slovakia, early years settings and teachers are autonomous entities that are bound to prepare detailed standards based on the national curriculum, and to create specific curricula relevant to early years settings, with monthly and weekly teaching plans, which are then used to produce daily plans. Under these new conditions, autonomy is thus understood only as autonomy in planning and reporting. The emphasis on the planning and reporting process is also the main focus of reviews carried out by the State School Inspectorate. The autonomy allegedly based on the professional identity of the workforce is instead ‘elicited’, and is therefore fictitious (Fach, 2000). Teachers are concerned with the technologies of planning and reporting, with the central theme of developing expertise in managing preschool pedagogical aims and targets, and with converting and adjusting preschool pedagogical targets set by the state into localised pedagogical aims for a particular preschool. Furthermore, teachers need to incorporate these ‘aims’ into monthly and weekly teaching plans as well as into their daily planning.
This complexity of the current system in the preschool pedagogical environment contains a mixture of specialised terminology, a particular ‘system’ of conceptual hierarchies and new language that requires new expertise. The early years education field has developed this administrative burden and language that hinders everyday practice, and that has become part of the modus operandi of the bureaucratic scientisation of early years education in Slovakia. This bureaucracy has become the tool to enhance early years teachers’ professional identity and to ‘catch-up’ with the bureaucracy and administrative requirements of primary and secondary school teachers, where professional identity is not contested. Bureaucratic scientisation thrives on a messy and complex language set of categories of ‘targets’ and ‘aims’. The Ministry of Education and the National Preschool Curriculum set out certain targets for early years education. However, preschools and teachers do not use these targets, but aims and objectives, which are set out as performance standards and as expected outcomes for children in different educational and pedagogical areas, and as something that teachers are expected to incorporate into their planning and reporting.
The professional development (PD) materials and documents that are intended to support teachers, complicate the ‘aims’ and ‘targets’ even further. For example, the targets for early years education are expected to be converted by teachers through the creation of a Strategic Education Plan (SEP), which should in turn shape a detailed daily syllabus. The SEP consists of short-term (weekly) and long-term (monthly) curricular projects. There is a formal, normalised method for creating the curricular projects, which stipulates in detail the various technological steps the teacher is expected to follow in order to conduct the project. The method introduces the following technological procedures: the project content should be designed using concepts recorded in noun format. The output should be recorded in the form of a general statement. This is followed by a specific technological process dealing with the aims and objectives. First the general aims of the project should be established; however, these should not be identical to the general targets laid out in the National Preschool Curriculum. These general aims should be written in verb format. Then the teachers need to create the main aims (of the project), which should align with the objectives specified as performance standards in the National Preschool Curriculum. These should be given in noun format. In addition, the teachers have to produce the objectives of the project, which should also be written in noun format like the main aims, however they should be more specific.
Furthermore, the teachers should use these curricular projects as the basis for planning class teaching, while distinguishing the aims required for each age group of children. Therefore, further objectives for daily sessions are recorded in the short-term planning session, and teachers are expected to implement these objectives. Another PD document names the innumerable requirements for formulating ‘quality’ objectives and proposes that the objectives should be established through selected taxonomies such as those of Bloom, Kratwohl, Turek and Niemierko (Hajdúková and Pašková, 2008). It also sets the exact language in which the specific objectives are to be formulated, for example ‘the child’s performance must be described in the active voice’ (p. 171). Thus bureaucratic scientisation is performed in the early years settings, and bureaucratic subjectivities are produced.
The ground-up teacher workforce response
Bureaucratic scientisation, as analysed above, and its political and academic discourses, has led to an interesting response by the early years teachers’ workforce, through what can be seen as a ground-up approach (Dalli, 2010; Dalli and Urban, 2012). This response is evident in a closed discussion group on Facebook, set up in 2011 by teachers under the pretence of exchanging knowledge and experience, which currently boasts over 9000 members (more than half of the preschool teachers in Slovakia). Teachers make active contributions to the discussions with a high number of daily posts and commentaries. The group operates under rules that all members agree to by joining the group. They state that all the posts are public statements.
The size of the group and its established status allows an analysis of a large number of themes and discourses, of work conditions, and of the attitudes of early years teachers, and the genealogy of bureaucratic scientisation can be traced to the very first posts in the group. The community of teachers in this social network is not homogenous. They vary in experiences, knowledge and approaches. This in itself produces hierarchies of expertise. Some teachers ask questions, others lurk and seek solutions, there are teachers who interpret and implement rules to meet ‘aims, targets and objectives’. The community functions as an interesting, unintended outcome of bureaucratic scientisation. It also serves as a subjugated discourse, a certain form of resistance to the dominant political and academic discourse. It performs the Foucauldian anti-sciences, through the elevation of subjugated discourses and the fluid nature of power.
The power of the dominant discourse of early years education, governed by ‘targets’, ‘aims’, and ‘objectives’ permeates the Facebook discussion. The plea on the social network, for example, of ‘Can someone please check my aims??? Urgent … Thanks!’ suggests that teachers understand how this complex bureaucratic machine operates, but see it as a distraction from their ‘real’ work (teaching and learning) with children. There is an urgency within this statement, and a desire to ensure that the aims, targets and objectives are formulated correctly and ‘professionally’. This is one of many posts that relate to the need to formulate aims, and to find out the correct way to demonstrate scientific knowledge of aims and objectives, and it illustrates how teachers become subjects with bureaucratic subjectivities. Posts such as ‘Dear colleagues. I don’t suppose one of you has a simple trick for operationalising objectives in the plans? I’m having a bit of a problem with it …’ (Petra, 2014)
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open up a communal space where teachers can offer each other recommendations and support. The aim is to produce ‘correct’, ‘scientific’ answers to the problems of the dominant discourse. The urge is to ‘correctly’ formulate aims and objectives that become part of the teaching practice. These are some of the other comments that teachers make: Dear colleagues, have any of you bright sparks got objectives for the various topics, content standards and performance standards??? (Michaela, 2014) Girls, even with my 30 years’ experience, I’m having a problem correctly formulating the objectives for two-year olds. All the dynamic verbs seem to me to be too complicated so I’m having to use the word ‘gradually’ as well. For example: gradually become familiar with … Please could someone assess this objectively. (Anna, 2014) I add words to the objectives – with the teacher’s assistance/or independently … – and operationalise them at the lowest possible level.’ (Patricia, 2012) … and if I have a clever little three year old, I use ‘and with the help of a friend’. (Zuzana, 2012)
Amongst the social network discussions there is rarely open resistance to the bureaucratic system per se; the resistance of the teachers on Facebook occurs through the notion of how to work with the system, and how to collectively respond to it, support each other in the workforce, and return to the teaching and learning of/with the children. Indeed, in the discussions, the teachers refer to formulating aims and objectives as an important professional activity, which they would like to, and feel they have to, navigate in order to consolidate their professional abilities and status. Their discussions therefore take the form of attempts to deal with the administrative work associated with formulating aims and objectives in accordance with the strict requirements set by the state, and also strive to understand the complex administrative definitions of the terminology. This constitutes the bureaucratic subjectivity of the teachers that this system produces: the teachers place great trust in the schematic assistance offered to them by Ministry professionals and experts.
Learning how to do up buttons
The bureaucratic scientisation and the production of bureaucratic subjectivities as an outcome of the Ministry’s ‘aims, targets, objectives’, shape the professionalisation of the early years workforce. Early years teachers often verbally stress that they are professionals, and speak out about their professionalism. This is similar to Katz’s argument, that ‘few professionals talk as much about being professionals as those whose professional stature is in doubt’ (cited in Stronach et al., 2002: 109). For the early years teachers, it is a struggle and an attempt to distinguish between caring for children and educating children, by emphasising that they are not ‘just babysitters’. Their concern, as discussed on the social network, is that society perceives them as such. The layer of bureaucratic scientisation enables the early years teachers to feel like professional subjects, because of the added layer of bureaucratic exercises. Furthermore, the educationalisation and scientisation of ‘care’ in preschool is fundamental to the production of teachers’ subjectivities – distancing themselves from babysitters – as it emphasises their own professional capacities and educational expertise. This is where the bureaucratic subjectivities form a layer of professionalism that is beneficial for the Ministry (plan is fulfilled), centre managers (the Inspectorate sees the ‘correct’ paperwork), and for teachers (they perceive themselves as professionals and elevate their status in society). As one of the teachers in the social network discussion argued: Everyone here thinks that anyone can just have a go … and especially in education … they think you just have to think something up and that’s it … so everyone thinks that teaching in a preschool is nothing and so anyone can do it … so I don’t know why people bother to spend four years studying it at secondary school and university … so you need to ask the parents if they also tell the doctor what to do or if they just sit there quietly, saying nothing … so suggestions from parents as to what the teacher should do – must be dealt with immediately by explaining who is the expert and professional. (Tana, 2014)
One of the PD guides for early years teachers is focused on children acquiring skills, and one section focuses on the modelling of a process of how children should learn to do up buttons (Hajdúková et al., 2011). This routine skill has become an educational target in preschools and features amongst the performance standards that belong under can manage self-help skills. Skills acquired through general socialisation are becoming visibly educationalised in the preschool setting. The educationalisation of doing up buttons is also scientised through directions that teachers should implement to guide children in acquiring this skill. The ‘buttoning’ process is set out using the perceptual stage of Simpson’s psychomotor domain, and the process of learning how to ‘button’ is formulated in seven stages, ending in what is known as the ‘creative act of doing up buttons’. It is expressed thus as ‘creating new movement patterns, using acquired patterns in new, unfamiliar, difficult situations (buttoning is automatic, the child can button up with one hand, button up a sleeve)’ (p. 97).
Pedagogically, mastery of this development skill is expressed in the guide under long-term objectives. In the simplified version of Bloom’s taxonomy, it is recommended that the process of buttoning should be broken down into steps so that the child is guided from the knowledge level (watching and imitating a button being done up), comprehension level, where the child does a button up on command, critical thinking level, which means that the button is repeatedly done up with greater precision and effectiveness, until the creative thinking level in doing buttons up is reached, which ultimately means that the child can do all buttons up alone and can also help a friend to do so. There seems to be only one way to do up buttons in the scientisation of early years education. This scientisation is both artificial and intentional, as the entire routine of care is educationalised and scientised and produces the bureaucratic subjectivities of early years teachers.
Concluding comments
This article has problematised the professionalisation of early years teachers and the subjectivities produced, and the meaning of ‘professionalism’ itself, in the contemporary conditions in Slovakia. Do the new bureaucratic subjectivities of early years teachers lead, in fact, to the de-professionalisation of the early years teacher workforce, despite teachers possibly feeling the opposite? These concerns are constantly evolving and the discussion on the social network forum continues to use ‘expert’ language, as early years teachers discuss and support each other. The intended purpose of scientisation is not to prescribe but to explain and understand, however, it is grounded, philosophically and politically, in prescriptionism. In the early years settings in Slovakia we found that the scientisation of education and care also leads to perceptions of the professionalism of the workforce. The prescribed aims, targets, objectives and norms, and the subsequent methodological recommendations that result in the teachers’ planning and reporting activities produce bureaucratic subjectivities. Bureaucratic subjectivities are the new form of professionalism amongst the preschool teachers and are rooted in planning, reporting, and using the correct language of the dominant Ministry discourse.
The production of the bureaucratic subjectivities of early years teachers means that the preschool environment is sufficiently educationalised, that it meets the expected policy aims, and ensures that early years education obtains a professional status and preschool teachers are a professionalised workforce. As Mak (2003: 170) argues, ‘bureaucratization supports professionalization by raising the status of teaching, but undermines professionalism by constraining teachers’ autonomy’. The bureaucratic scientisation drives PD and the methodological materials and handbooks that are disseminated to the early years teachers. Teachers are then produced as subjects with bureaucratic subjectivities, through which they are expected to devote increasing amounts of time to planning and reporting and administrative tasks. Fewer and fewer teachers are focused on the actual work on the ground with the children, and more are concerned with notions of accountability and reporting, which supposedly raises their professional status. Slovakia’s experience of bureaucratic subjectivities amongst early years teachers has complex ramifications for other European and overseas countries, as it problematises and unmasks the global issues of the complex tensions between the teacher workforce and policy documents.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: KEGA 005TTU-4/2015, VEGA 1/0057/15 and ECREA award.