Buying a Learning Environment: Education Research and Commercialization of Quality Standards in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Twelve
  In Roundtable Session: Decolonizing and (Re)Imagining Our Field Through Critical Theories, Research, and Practices (Table 7)

Abstract

This study explores the reproduction of the standardized early childhood classroom design by asking how the agency of learners and materials is represented in documents that inform the physical learning environments in early childhood. We analyze research on learning environment quality, the manual of the most widely used environmental assessment instrument (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale), and classroom materials catalogs. Across data sources we found the theme of quality as a menu of salient classroom characteristics that predict child development outcomes and isolate classroom spaces and materials into predetermined silos. This approach glorifies the standardized space, inevitably discouraging the agency of children and materials. The for-profit classroom materials supply companies echo and capitalize on the consequential definitions of quality.

Authors

• Lydia Minahan, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author

• Karnissa Caldwell, Kansas City Public Schools
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Y. Crusoe, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Dwyer
  Presenting Author

• Kelly McDonald, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author

• Layney Viets
  Presenting Author

• Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri - Kansas City
  Presenting Author