Value Creation as a Language of Evaluation in Early Childhood Care and Education

• In Event: Centering Care and Love: Approaches and Pedagogies

Abstract

The purpose of this theoretical-conceptual study is to critically examine the implicit assumptions that inform the discourse of “quality” in education through the lens of posthumanism and introduce value creation as a possible approach to redefining what it means to evaluate the benefits of early childhood care and education. Posthuman feminist theories and posthuman childhood studies inform critiques regarding “school readiness” that present “quality” as an insufficient method or “language” of evaluation because of its inherent bias, penchant for exclusivity, and limited/limiting intentions towards teaching for an ideal human. This paper addresses these concerns and argues that value creation can serve as an alternative guiding principle for a language of evaluation that instead takes as its starting point the individual and social processes of interpretation, assumes and honors the unlimited potential for “agentive meaning-making,” and aims for holistic developmentally meaningful outcomes for being and becoming more fully human.

Author

• Stefanie Horton, DePaul University