Ending the "Schoolification Epidemic": Child-Centeredness, Curriculum, and Reconceptualizing Education as a Process of Forming Fundamental Dispositions

• In Event: 16.044 - Deweyan Discourses on Democracy in a Neoliberal Era: Toward Liberating Education

Abstract

This paper emerged from a national evaluation of concepts of school readiness, which adopted a mixed-methods approach comprising sixty-two interviews with parents, pre-school and kindergarten teachers, fifty-seven child conferences and an online survey distributed to 1,000 pre-school and kindergartens, eliciting a response rate of 29.6% and 23.8% respectively. Consonant with global patterns, school readiness was predominantly identified as a maturationist-environmental concept associated with a child’s age and the acquisition of academic skills. This paper suggests that the ‘schoolification-epidemic’ compromises the concept of child-centeredness and presents a threat to educational opportunity, access and equity. It argues for a return to child-centeredness, an emergent curriculum and a re-conceptualisation of education as a process of forming fundamental dispositions.

Authors

• Emer Ring, Mary Immaculate College

• Lisha O'Sullivan, University of Limerick

• Michael Hayes, Mary Immaculate College