Interrogating Governing Discourses in Early Childhood and Childhood Studies and Policies Through a Foucauldian Lens

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session includes five case studies of research examines diverse governing discourses that guide cultural reasoning systems in childhood studies and early childhood education, as well as education. The studies draw on historical, cultural, economic, and political discourses that constrain ways of thinking about children, families, communities, teaching and education, citizenship and nation. They focus on the construction of the child as valued citizen, as risk, or as human capital, and the child and teacher as they are assessed, categorized and labeled. We illustrate ways in which poststructural and Foucaultian theoretical frameworks , help to illuminate new questions, current as well as potential ways of reasoning and acting, and new ways of doing, and interrogating research, curriculum, pedagogy, and policy.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Chair

• Marianne N. Bloch, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• "Sharing the Burden of Education": The Emergence of Public-Private Partnerships for Early Education - Sabiha Bilgi, Abant Izzet Baysal University

• Monetarization, Risk, and Education in the Contemporary United States - Theodora A. Lightfoot, IISSE

• Technologies of Educational Governance - Koeun Kim, New Mexico State University

• The Politics of Wisconsin's Educational Budget "Crises": Political Discourses of Scarcity, Normalization, and the Dangerous Outsider - Ruth Peach

• In the Belly of the Beast: Rethinking Power/Knowledge and Resistance as Multiple and Complex - Devorah I. Kennedy, Alice Lloyd College

Discussant

• Marianne N. Bloch, University of Wisconsin - Madison