Glocalization, Neoliberal Policies, and Early Childhood in Kenya and Indigenous Communities in the United States
Peer-reviewed paper: Vol 3, Num 2 - March 2013
This article explores complexities, (un)intended consequences, and possibilities within globalized, neoliberal, and neocolonial early care and education discourses and practices. Roland Robertson’s notion of glocalisation acts as a unifying construct to connect abstract discourses with early childhood education policy mechanisms in the seemingly disparate locales of Kenya and the U.S. state of Arizona, in particular that state’s relationship with the 22 sovereign Indigenous communities that it surrounds. Applying Antonio Gramsci’s notion of common and good sense as a lens for uncovering and bringing to light tensions and contradictions contained in these respective policies in practice, we analyze persistent issues and common sense discourse, with “bad sense” impacts, of pervasive neoliberal policies. We close by considering spaces of possibility in the hope that we can join with others who are committed to social justice and building stronger alliances to raise questions, shed light on opportunities for action, and engage in sustained work with teachers and young children.
Introduction
This article draws from many sources, studies and conversations that we have had over the past decade. It raises issues reflecting the complexities, possibilities and unintended consequences of global (read neoliberal) policies and traveling discourses/“best practices” championed by donors, loan-makers and international bodies that have material consequences for families, communities and – importantly – children. More specifically, we draw from studies conducted in two national contexts in order to illustrate the (un)intended consequences of international and U.S. policy on broad ECE systems and practices, the replacement of local practices with “universal,” neoliberal policy prescriptions through an analysis aided by adapting Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) idea of “common” and “good sense.” This is a first step in highlighting spaces of possibility and hope within what is often seen as a totalizing and colonizing discourse (Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist & Popkewitz, 2003; Swadener, Wachira, Kabiru & Njenga, 2007; Mutua & Swadener, 2004).
While the issue of globalized educational reform discourse received growing attention at the turn of the 21st Century (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist & Popkewitz, 2003; Suarez-Orozco, 2001), somewhat less attention has been paid to how these forces interact with early care and education (Bloch et al., 2003; Cannella & Kinchloe, 2002; Penn, 2000; Rana, 2012; Swadener & Polakow, 2011) and less still, to how these globalized discourses permeate, and are resisted, in local practice (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Tobin, 2000). Even though it might not be the vogue topic it once was, it serves as an important organizing construct for this empirically-informed, theoretical exploration of global policy trends expressed in two seemingly disparate locales: Kenya and the United States of America, specifically the State of Arizona. Before describing how this discourse expresses itself locally, how contradictory economic development strategies built upon universal notions of child development and ECE are informing ECE policies in Kenya and indigenous communities within the U.S. State of Arizona, we need to describe both what we mean by globalization, local and neoliberalism.
On Globalization and Locality
Globalization is an oft-used but fuzzy term, although there is some consensus that globalization has something to do with a change in the international flow of goods, people, information and other forms of capital, some problematise the view that this is a new phenomenon (Frank & Gills, 2000; Trouillot, 2003; Wallerstein, 2003). In brief, Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton (1999) identify three main perspectives of globalization: (1) the hyperglobalizers, (2) the sceptics, and (3) the transformationalists. Hyperglobalizers argue that the contemporary period is a new era, where nation-states are becoming outmoded forms of political-economic organization. Sceptics argue that this view of globalization is a myth that elides the concentration of power into three major regional economic blocks: Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, what Trouillot (2003) calls the Triad. This regional organization reflects heightened interactions among national economies but not radically so, or in unprecedented ways. Finally the transformationalist perspective holds that globalization is a driving force behind rapid social, political and economic changes that are reshaping social organization. States and societies are having to adapt to greater interconnectivity and uncertainty, a view illustrated by Harvey’s (1989) ideas of post-Fordist production and time/space compression. Primarily this is seen in how contemporary technologies facilitate nearly non-stop communication, the flow of goods and capital transnationally, and most important for our discussion, the transmission of discourse. While each perspective is compelling, with perhaps radical transformation occurring in the future, our presentist and local focus blends the sceptics’ perspective with acknowledgment of the transformative role that contemporary technologies play.
Certainly when one looks locally, global influences are readily seen. Robertson (1994) uses the term glocalisation to suggest how global and local interact and co-constitute each other. However, we have yet to see convincing evidence that these interactions have substantively changed nation-states or core and periphery relations (Wallerstein, 1974). But what do we mean by local? A locality can mean many things – a classroom, school, community, ministry of education or nation (Anderson-Levitt, 2003). The notion of glocalisation provides a powerful linking construct that ties macro contexts and local actions, in this instance examining different layers of local in each national context. Therefore this is not a one-to-one structural comparison of policies in Kenya and Arizona, another important line of inquiry, but is instead a pursuit of traveling ideas influenced by Marcus’ (1998) advice to “follow the thing” (p. 91). But what is this “thing”?
The Neoliberal Turn in (Early Care and) Education
Many have argued that education is no longer a public good and has been converted into a public/private commodity, reduced to measurable outcomes (Apple, 2006). Bloch and her colleagues (2003), among others, describe this moment’s prevailing discourse as neoliberalism, a sometimes confusing and seemingly contradictory hybrid of classical liberalism, modern liberalism, libertarianism, and social conservatism. This is evidenced by calls for deregulation, operating governments like businesses, accountability, privatization, decentralization of government functions and an over-riding adherence to free market logics, while also forwarding social agendas through public policy (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Morgen, 2001; Swadener & Wachira, 2003, 234). This discourse circulates through the generalized global politics of educational borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004) but critically through international agreements, funding-related requirements, and Euro-American ECE models promoted by the World Bank, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and nongovernmental organizations (Penn, 2000; Rana, 2012).
These influential organizations’ interest in the care and education of young children raises questions about the logic of tying ECE to national economic development strategies. As an example, the World Bank’s stated position on education and economic development is reflected in the following:
The [UN] Millennium Development Goals commit the international community to an expanded vision of development, one that vigorously promotes human development as the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries, and recognizes the importance of creating a global partnership for development. (The World Bank Group, 2005)
Among these goals is universal access to primary education, with the World Bank Group (2005) stating that, Education is “development.” Early childhood education has been brought under the aegis of primary education based upon the idea that promoting positive early developmental outcomes plays an important role in school readiness.
This confluence of child development and economic development concepts is both interesting and concerning, particularly when viewed through the framework of political economy and competing theories of globalization. At face value, the World Bank Group’s statement that “Education is development,” would seem to indicate an enlightened, humanistic view of its mission: “Our work is challenging, but our mission is simple: Help reduce poverty” (The World Bank, 2005). This self-description is not one of a traditional lending bank but rather an organization that has both a lending and technical assistance role. Education, then, becomes just one of a range of strategies by which the organization fulfills this mission.
In parallel, UNESCO has forwarded arguments for early childhood education based on research findings, largely conducted in the U.S., that have shown that:
- Poor children who attend a high-quality early childhood education programme are better prepared for school intellectually and socially.
- …Far fewer poor children who have attended good preschool programmes need special remedial education, have to repeat a grade, or experience major behavioural problems.
- …Their rates of delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and welfare usage are lower, and their rates of high school completion and subsequent employment are higher. Thus both their economic performance and their social performance greatly improve. (Weikart, 2000, pp. 22-23)
These arguments echo those made by the Economic Policy Institute to promote early childhood education in the U.S. (2004), those forwarded by the World Bank (Eming Young, 1995; 1996; Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2002; Van der Gaag & Jee-Peng, 1998; World Bank Education Advisory Service, 2004) and more recently by Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman (2011).
Glocalization in ECE: Kenya
Like many nations of the Global South, Kenya accrued large-scale debts to several multinational development banks, most notably the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Debt restructuring conditions and pressures from external donors, have led to a number of cost-cutting austerity measures that have undermined what remains of a welfare state in Kenya and directly affected the majority of families raising children (Gukuru & Koech, 1995; Swadener, Kabiru, & Njenga, 2000; Swadener & Wachira, 2003; Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride, 1997). Additionally, pressures of corporate globalization and free market-based trade liberalization, combined with urbanization and associated family dislocation, rising unemployment, government corruption and economic mismanagement, and a worsening national infrastructure, have adversely affected Kenyan families (Swadener, Wachira, Kabiru & Njenga, 2007). A number of recent national policy changes have affected education and early childhood provision; in particular a new constitution enacted in 2003, which has decentralized government and provided for more local control and free primary education policies, referred to as “Education for All.”
Kenya has long been a leader in early childhood education and care. In 1984, the National Centre for Early Childhood Education (NACECE) was established, in part for training preschool teachers, developing and disseminating appropriate curriculum, and coordination with external partners and other government agencies (Swadener et al., 2000). Preschool teachers are still employed through the Kenyan National Teacher Service Corps (as well as primary and secondary teachers in public schools), although their training has for many years been facilitated by NACECE and the District Centres for Early Childhood Education (DICECE). In recent years early childhood policies in Kenya have reflected neoliberal trends, with far more private academies, diploma courses, and non-governmental options to train preschool teachers. Most rural preschools have functioned on a “harambee” basis, with a local community hiring the teacher, putting up the building, and providing other resources (e.g., feeding programs or health clinics).
This situation reflects a frequent division, across national contexts, between preschool and primary education, in which preschool programs and teachers’ employment are private and locally governed. The impact of free primary education has also been felt in the preschool sector, having diminished in capacity and funding in the past decade with the rise in government investment in primary education. This is an example of Robertson’s (1994) account of glocalisation, wherein the globalized discourse of early education-as-economic development, intersects with local support for ECE and resource limitations, exacerbated by austerity measures imposed by facets of the very same organizations that are promoting ECE.
This also reflects a theme of “common sense” versus “good sense” that is part of our analysis (Gramsci, 1971). Common sense refers to unquestioned, sometimes contradictory, expert-driven knowledge that supports political- economic hegemony. However within common sense lie grains of folk wisdom, good sense, upon which to build. In other words, the Education for All policy's “common/good sense” intentions of making primary education more affordable, if not fully free, has benefited many children, and even some illiterate adults. Overall, most agree that it has been well implemented and addressed an array of barriers to education for Kenya's children. While infrastructure and capacity issues (e.g., large class sizes and not enough teachers, desks or books) were issues in the early years of the free primary policy, these have largely been addressed and primary education has high enrollments in all but the most rural sections of the nation and among children with disabilities (of whom only about 10% attend school). An array of private academies and primary schools also flourish in the postcolonial meritocratic system.
The free primary education, was predicted to benefit more than 3 million eligible children who had been out of school due to numerous levies, charged as part of mandated cost sharing. Early childhood education (ECE) enrollment stands at 35% of all eligible children, and has increased gradually in recent years. However one initial impact of free primary education was to cause funding cuts to other programs, including preschool education. While free primary education was a welcome change, it happened rapidly and without perceived need for an infrastructure to absorb the large number of students who then entered or re- entered school. For example, there were insufficient classrooms, school furniture, or teachers for the influx of over one million new learners. Among the costs absorbed by families or guardians of students were textbooks, instructional materials, uniforms, food, textbook fees and testing fees, presenting barriers to many families – particularly to those in the slums and those hard hit by HIV/AIDS, including the guardians of the over one million AIDS orphans in Kenya.
Thus, among the unintended consequences of the free primary policy has been an erosion of support for preschool education, while the demands on children attempting to enter more highly ranked primary schools (through the Standard One interview, or screening assessment for school entry) have increased. These factors, among others, have led to increased demand for quality preschools, just when fewer resources are in this sector. Further complicating matters, was a major World Bank loan to Kenya in the mid-90s, which had “common sense”, actually “bad sense”, elements including investments in larger scale resource centres (e.g., computer centres in areas still lacking electricity or transportation to reach them), initial support of, but later undermining of NACECE and the DICECEs, with encouragement of privatization in the sector, etc. Many have lamented that the good intentions of investment in ECD has done lasting damage to what was initially a strong national early childhood system and now a fragmented and often underfunded one.
Another policy tension in Kenya has been the regulation and monitoring of preschools in Kenya (through national guidelines, district/local school inspectors, and DICECE trainers). This reflects an interesting mix of indigenous and universal, mainly Western, common sense assumptions about child development, program quality and best practices, with an emphasis on both building national identity in a culturally diverse society and joining the international community. Although it must be noted that while assumptions about universal best practices in early childhood education permeate Kenyan early childhood guidelines and training, they have not completely replaced traditional childrearing information (e.g., the values of using traditional weaning foods and mother tongue stories, the benefits of intergenerational care, etc. [Swadener, et al., 2009]), a testament to cultural resiliency.
Glocalization in ECE Policies: Arizona, USA
Unlike Kenya’s historically centralized education planning, the United States’ federal system is a hodgepodge of jurisdictions, with states having primary responsibilities for education policy-making, although the federal government’s role has increased substantially since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Martin, 2012). The State of Arizona presents an unusual glocal case because of its example of the living presence of colonialism within “the core” and how this intersects with neoliberal discourse in ECE. Arizona’s particular brand of neoliberalism is influenced by the discourse’s libertarian and socially conservative features. This has expressed itself in nativist policies like the abolition of bilingual education (Moses, 2007), empowering local law enforcement agencies to police federal immigration laws (Arizona Senate Bill 1070, 2010) and a legal battle between the state Department of Education and the state’s largest school district, the Tucson Unified School District, over its Mexican American Studies middle and high school program, which was found to be in violation of a state law making it illegal for schools to:
- Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
- Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
- Design curricula primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
- Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals (ARS § 15-112; Administrative Law Judge Ruling No. 11F-002-ADE, 2011)
A linkage to ECE can be seen in ongoing debates about the state’s incursion into the private sphere of child rearing, starkly seen during legislative debates over providing additional funding for full day kindergarten, where State Representative Russell Pearce (sponsor of the state’s immigration enforcement law) pronounced:
I spell early childhood development ‘M-o-m Mom.’ This is simply day care. All the research shows that all the benefits are lost by third or fourth grade, if there are benefits. The real benefits come from vouchers and grants, which provide long-lasting benefits and parental choice. Pretty soon you’re going to have a baby and just turn it over to the government. (Scutari, 2004, p. A1)
In addition to being on the U.S. border with Mexico, Arizona encompasses twenty-two federally recognized indigenous communities (Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs, 2013). Native American tribes have historically had a “special relationship” with the federal government through the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Benjamin, 1996) which has involved a long fight for self- determination and muddier relationships with state and local governments (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2002). Education policy is refracted through this distorted lens, with native peoples variously struggling through – and surviving – forced relocation, federally run boarding schools (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002; Manuelito, 2005; McCarty, 2002; Noley, 1992) and contemporary education reforms focused on standardization and measurement, with little meaningful attention being paid to historical, cultural and linguistic considerations for indigenous students (Beaulieau, 2000).
These issues play out in ECE in similar, but somewhat unique ways. In brief, since the creation of Project Head Start in 1965, the federal government for many years had a more prominent role in ECE than did state governments, although now thirty-nine states have developed fifty-one programs of their own (Barnett, Carolan, Fitzgerald & Squires, 2011, p.6). The special relationships between the federal and tribal governments in ECE have involved two major ECE programs: federal child care subsidies and Head Start. By statute between 1% and 2% of federal funding for child care subsidies must be dedicated for American Indian/Alaska Native programs (AI/AN), the official terms used, which amounts to approximately $4.8 billion (Child Care Bureau, 2005). The complexities of the federal, tribal, state and local relationships are hinted at with the option of using federally developed, tribal, state or local child care regulations, which led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to issue specific guidance to help state and local practitioners negotiate these relationships (Child Care Bureau, 2005).
The Head Start program differs from the federal child care subsidy program in that it bypasses state governments and goes directly to local programs (Kagan, 2002). However, like the child care subsidy, Head Start has separate funding mechanisms for the general program and for funds dedicated to tribal governments. In keeping with the special relationship, the “Head Start Act” requires consultation with recipients of the AI/AN Head Start program funding which includes advising the Office of Head Start on cultural and linguistic issues involved in operating the program (Sanchez Fuentes, 2012). In Arizona there are thirteen AI/AN Head Start programs.
Up until 2006, these two federal programs were the primary institutional ECE models in tribal jurisdictions. This changed when Arizona voters passed a ballot initiative, a direct-democratic policy mechanism, creating a new state agency focused on developing a state early childhood system focused on ECE, family support and health promotion (Proposition 203, 2006). Arizona, along with twenty-three other states, has a provision in its constitution allowing citizens to create and enact laws by popular vote, bypassing the state legislature and governor (Nagasawa, in review; National Conference of State Legislatures [NCSL], 2012). This new agency has taken the public name First Things First (FTF) and uses the marketing tagline: Ready for School, Set for Life (FTF, 2011a).
At the core of the FTF system is a nine-member state board which coordinates the efforts of thirty-one regional partnership councils (RPCs) who conducted local needs assessments and oversees the distribution of funds to address these needs. Importantly, FTF has taken a strong stance on the importance of tribal sovereignty with regard to these RPCs, stating:
...tribes may elect to have their tribal lands treated as a separate region by the statewide FTF Board; or, Tribes may elect to participate in the designated geographical region in which their tribal lands are located. Tribes who choose to participate in the regional council whose area includes their tribal lands have a representative of the tribe on the regional council. (2011b, p. 21)
This is in contrast with many state agencies in Arizona, which make no special provisions for the unique government to government relationships involved with the tribes.
However, because funding is allocated to RPCs using a formula based on the population of children from birth to age five, and while this formula does consider proportions of these children living in poverty, it is not in small tribes’ best interests to choose to be an independent RPC, for their allocations would be inconsequential. Furthermore, FTF is guided by neoliberal discourse, with its emphasis on instrumental approaches, competition, accountability measures, and capitalization of children and families based on cost-benefit analyses that frame ECE as a cost-saving investment (FTF, 2010a; Heckman, 2011; Weikart, 2000). These investments are carried out through competitively awarded state and RPC grants, contracts and subcontracts, which are framed by an FTF- developed strategy toolkit made up of over seventy programmatic options within seven strategic areas: 1) community awareness; 2) coordination; 3) evaluation;
4) family support; 5) health; 6) ECE professional development; 7) ECE quality and access. (FTF, 2011a; 2011b; 2012). While perhaps well intended, especially when considered in light of the state’s broader social climate, this developing system represents a continuation of the American colonial project promoting the same types of universal notions of child development and best practices being exported to Kenya, but in this instance to the twenty-two sovereign nations subsumed within Arizona’s borders.
One example of these universal ideas can be seen in a program that FTF calls Quality First, which focuses on raising early care and education program quality through a rating system that ranges from one-to-five stars and which provides coaching to improve programs. These star-ratings are based upon exceeding minimum standards in the areas of staff qualifications, administrative practices, curriculum and child assessment (FTF, 2011c), as well as classroom observational assessments. These standards also include the Classroom Assessment Scoring System ([CLASS] LaParo, Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004), an increasingly used standardized observation that focuses on teaching quality, in the broad domains of emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support (FTF, 2010b).
A unifying theme across FTF’s efforts, as well as education reform in the U.S. more generally, is the notion of standards which can be seen to fall into four categories: 1) program, 2) professional, 3) content, and 4) learning (Bowman, 2006). Quality First addresses all four types of standards through its quality rating efforts, which are also linked to the use of the Arizona Early Learning Standards (Arizona Department of Education, 2005). These address content and learning standards in eight areas: social emotional, language and literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, physical development, health and safety, and fine arts. While many might ask what is wrong with all of this? These efforts become problematic when viewed through the lenses of colonialism, language shift, and identity (Romero-Little, 2012; Wong Fillmore, 2000). The Arizona Department of Education’s (2005) position on these issues elides the role that ECE programs play in assimilation:
The richer the home language and background experiences, the easier it is for children to learn a second language ... Each child’s progress in learning English needs to be respected and viewed as acceptable, logical, and part of the ongoing process of learning any new skill. The skills needed for young English language learners to become proficient in English are fully embedded in the Arizona Early Learning Standards. Using the standards to plan enriching experiences will enhance children’s proficiency in English and enable them to become successful learners. (p. 3)
Learning English is just a skill like any other. No mention is made of native language retention, bilingualism or biculturalism. Nor is any mention made that there are other existing standards, such as those published by the Navajo Nation’s Department of Dine’ [the People] Education (2012) which address Dine’ culture, character building, government, history, and oral language, but what about the tribes with fewer resources to develop and publish standards? If FTF is a system based upon local people making decisions about local needs, why dictate the types of programmatic choices they can make? Should not cultural knowledge and practices, officially codified be a part of those decisions?
Conclusion: Spaces of Possibility and Hope
In our discussion of the discursive nexus of seemingly altruistic economic development and ECE, the answers to these questions rest in the realization that colonizing processes are still very much at work but through quite different mechanisms than in the past. Penn (2002) questions the altruism of institutions such as the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF, to which we add Arizona’s First Things First, arguing that these organizations are exporting and/or privileging Euro-American notions of childhood, family, community and (pre)schooling. She critiques dominant U.S. child development discourse, as being rife with raided research findings in the name of universal child development, illustrating this through a critical analysis of the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s statement of “developmentally appropriate practices” (Bredekamp, 1998). Development can be subdivided into domains: physical, cognitive, emotional and social. Culture is secondary, something to be respected but not a strong enough influence to alter the basic core of “natural” development. Furthermore, these practices privilege individualism/selfhood, an assumed Euro- American nuclear family structure, a single primary caregiver and a lone dependent child, choices of material goods, and a nature/nurture dichotomy (see also Cannella & Viruru, 2002; Rana, 2012).
Similar to earlier arguments regarding the global politics of educational borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004), early childhood best practices based on primarily U.S. documents and prevailing paradigms and research have circulated widely and for an extended period of time. As such, they are manifest not only in Kenyan guidelines for early childhood but throughout much of the global south (and American Southwest). Such guidelines become common sense assumptions, even when they contradict local cultural practices in childrearing and early care (Navajo Nation, 2012; Swadener, et al, 2000).
Early care and education provides a small-scale, local intervention to ostensibly solve macro-structural issues. This developmental determinism locates the problems in the child and family, not in national or global political-economies. Hochshild (2003) has argued that in the so-called west, capitalist production has been effectively paired with an ideology of secular individualism leading people to take personal credit for economic “successes” and “failures”. This conflation, “provides an intra-punitive ideology to go with an extra-punitive economic system” (p. 39). The net effect of these policies by the World Bank, other transnational organizations, and Arizona’s First Things First is the promotion of preschooling as a form of neo-colonialism and imperialism through the diversionary discourse of human capital theory, which provides token and symbolic gestures that hide the effects of neoliberal economic policies (Penn 2002). In essence, the focus is placed on poor parenting in need of treatment, which parallels arguments that Scheper-Hughes and Sargent (1998) have made about UNICEF’s “child survival campaigns,” low cost, low-technology methods like growth monitoring, breast feeding, oral hydration therapy (prepackaged rehydration salts) and immunizations, which have been shown to be simplistic tactics that fail to take into account structural reasons that mothers were no longer breast feeding (e.g. the mass recruitment of poor and rural women into low-wage labour). While embracing these critiques, our argument is somewhat more nuanced by not assuming some sort of universal, conscious mal-intent but rather that sometimes well-meaning initiatives lead to (un)intended consequences by being refracted through neoliberal discourse and a world economic system structured to serve particular political-economic and regional interests.
We began this article, however, by stating that our intent in tracing the travels of neoliberal discourse in ECE is to highlight spaces of possibility and hope within what are often seen as a totalizing and colonizing forces. We close by considering these spaces of possibility in the hope that we can join with others who are committed to social justice, building stronger alliances to raise questions, shed light on opportunities for action, and engage in sustained work with teachers and young children. We conclude with some broad observations of how such projects might be realized. Uncovering and openly discussing the tensions and contradictions in early childhood advocacy and allied work, as they relate to unintended consequences of macro and micro policies is, in our opinion, a necessary step. Naming persistent issues and “common/bad sense” impacts of neoliberal policies is critical to this work.
This has been a first step towards mobilizing groups of educators, students and scholars to raise issues that require interrogation and alternative visions of childhood spaces, practices, and policies. We have also worked as “allied others” with Indigenous colleagues (Rogers & Swadener, 1999) and have attempted to decolonize ourselves and thereby our teaching, scholarship, and direct participation in local, state and national policy-making (Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012). This involves embracing our complicity in the circulation of common sense discourse, while seeking clarity about “good sense” alternatives by resisting deficit discourse, instrumental discourses of cost-benefit analysis and other economic framings of ECE. These efforts have been aided by lessons learned from foregrounding indigenous epistemologies and funds of knowledge to engage with people who are often marginalized or not considered in the dominant early childhood policy discourse (see Moll & González, 1997; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012). Such themes reflect the ongoing work of reconceptualizing the fields related to young children, their care, education and families/communities (Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education, 2013).
For us, seeking the existence of “good sense-within-common/bad sense”, with a glocal perspective, provides us avenues for being grounded and connected to people, organic, rather than engaging in critical projects only at the level of abstraction. This engagement involves opposing common sense, by creating coherent, good sense counternarratives through dialogue with others (Crehan, 2002; Jones, 2006), by raising these issues in our classrooms, faculty meetings, community settings, and in public policy venues. While acknowledging that the global political-economic system is structured to favour cultural-economic powers within Trouillot’s (2003) Triad or Wallerstein’s (1974) core, these dialogues cannot be limited to our immediate localities and can take advantage of post-Fordist time-space compression and technological innovation of postmodern production that Harvey (1989) describes. We see our small contribution to this special issue of He Kupu as a chance to connect with new colleagues doing similar work.
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