Critical Case Studies (of the Corporatization) of Migrant/Seasonal Head Start: “Using” Children’s Assistance Programs to Redeploy Public Funds

• In Event: Critical Qualitative Research as Instrument for the Reconceptualization of Contemporary Early Education Issues

Abstract

Critical perspectives have demonstrated that a range of peoples have been, and are, continually placed in positions in which they are oppressed, spoken for, and even silenced and made invisible. There have been public policies, special programs, and research agendas designed with the purpose of eliminating these oppressions and power inequities; however, most often the policies and contemporary forms of neoliberal implementation have actually increased inequity, labeled individuals/groups further, and created new power positions for those who would “save” those “unfortunate” “others.” Critical qualitative inquiry makes possible a research perspective that would no longer attempt to represent “others” but would rather partner in the struggle for educational justice and equity. Aligned with the ethics of the traditionally marginalized that could ultimately reconceptualize the questions and practices of research, a critical social science would no longer accept the notion that one group of people can “know” and define (or even represent, or create policy for) “others.” Rather, research questions could address the intersections of power across systems, institutions, and societal practices (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009). Public policy in the United States that “represents” and impacts migrant and seasonal farm worker young children is created within this context. A critical bricolage was constructed to examine the policy discourse(s) and forms of implementation that now dominate migrant/seasonal Head Start funding programs. Societal structures, policy discourses, and institutions became the “subjects” of the research with critical qualitative bricolage allowing for emergence, diversicality (Kincheloe, 2008), flexibility in design and methods, and reflexivity. Research questions included: Who receives public funds for migrant/seasonal Head Start (e.g. children, their families, teachers, or unanticipated recipients)? How are funds deployed, and who controls the decisions? What are, and how are, new forms of corporatization and power legitimated? And, what are policy data sources made possible (but virtual and potentially fleeting) through new and possibly more public technologies. Data were collected from U.S. federal and state government websites and public documents created by private agencies receiving Head Start funding. The (re)deployment of public Head Start funds to private corporations was one of many findings of concern.

Author

• Gaile S. Cannella, University of North Texas