What Education Do Young Children Need? A Critical Historical Analysis of the Play-Learning Balancing Act in Norwegian Education Policy Frameworks and Curricula

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Abstract

Play and learning are central to children's lives and upbringing, but what place should children's play and learning have in early childhood education and in school? To define what education young children need has been a continuing struggle in Norwegian curriculum theory and practice, and is reflected in educational research, policy frameworks, curricula and public debates. Norwegian research shows both conflicting perspectives on the extent to which children in early childhood education can and should engage with subject matter, concepts, and skills, as well as role and place of play in the first years of schooling.

In this presentation we present a critical historical analysis of how the play-learning balancing act in Norwegian educational policy frameworks and curricula. Drawing on the works of Pamela Bolotin Joseph we understand curricula as complicated conversations consisting of competing discourses and complex questions. Understanding curriculum as discourse compels us to carefully read and make sense of patterns of language that characterize the curriculum and how the language used shapes the curriculum and particular truths of play and learning in young children’s education. Critical analysis of policy frameworks leading up to educational reforms in early childhood education and school also allows us to examine the norms and values that have directed and influenced young children’s education in Norway.
In the study we use content analysis to explore how play and learning discourses unfolds in policy frameworks directed at early childhood education and school, and in the explicit curriculum manifested in national curricula in the period 1996-2020. The starting point for our analysis is the policy frameworks leading up to the introduction of the national curriculum of 1997 in which the compulsory school age was lowered from seven to six in Norway. Since then, several important changes in the Norwegian educational landscape can be observed as a consequence of policy discourses that operate on national and supranational levels. Preliminary analysis shows how visions of bringing early childhood education child-centered pedagogy emphasizing play and downplaying formal literacy education into the first year of schooling was followed by a knowledge crisis discourse leading to a renewed emphasis on early intervention and learning in the first year of schooling as well as in early childhood education, and finally to the school reform of 2020 in which children’s play once again gained ground in the policy discourse. In the presentation we critical analyze how these changes frame children’s opportunity to engage in play and learning early childhood education and in the first years of schooling.

We conclude that critical analysis of policy frameworks and curricula is necessary to better understand what our vision is for young children’s education, and how curricular decisions affect young children’s opportunity to engage in play and learning.

Authors

• Terese Wilhelmsen, University of South-Eastern Norway
  Presenting Author

• Jostein Østmoen, University of South-Eastern Norway
  Non-Presenting Author