BECERA 2024 THEME

Early Years Education as Political Activity: Access, Choice, Agency and Voice

Early Years Education (EYE) is full of decisions and actions which might be considered highly political, demonstrably civic and deeply democratic. If politics is about a collective struggle to find agreement, then clearly: who has access to the debate; how voice and power is distributed; where choices lie; and what agency one has (to act out one’s own decisions), can all be considered ‘political activity’ and therefore key components of democracies.  

Let’s consider three scenarios: children, parents and practitioners.

1. Children

As Matthew Lipman [1] suggests, giving children opportunities and affordances to express themselves more confidently might be a basis for developing a life-long disposition towards democracy. Helping children communally at circle time to become more thoughtful individuals who can articulate a judgment, defend it, justify it, and question it, whilst also understanding others’ viewpoints, is pure Aristotelian philosophy in action and a basis of civic life. So, is ‘What do you think?’ the question that maybe we should hear more at circle time?

2. Parents

For many parents, an EYE setting may be the first time they come together and interact with others from outside their immediate family group or community, in this wider communal forum in which they are placing their young child. It’s a shared purpose they all have in this civic place, the education and development of their child. It may also be the first time they have come into contact with a setting or school with rules and regulations, policies and procedures which they must adhere to. This new interface, between parent and setting, provides an opportunity to learn with and from others about different child rearing practice, beliefs and behaviours, and to understand the challenges of placing your child outside the home. Access, choice, agency and voice are central to that process being effective.

3. Practitioners

At a time when recruitment and retention are low, and ratios are being altered, the role and status of early years educators becomes increasingly contested. Some see professional values being reduced and replaced by the introduction of management systems where educators become technicians delivering curriculum packages, while others see the implementation of multiple evidence informed programmes as enhancing quality and reducing workload. For some settings, the early years is seen as the holistic foundation for all that follows, but in others merely a waiting room, where developing ‘readiness’ is the mantra. The need for an articulate, informed voice, professional judgement and the ability to make one’s own decisions, is arguably central to job satisfaction and well-being, but do all leaders agree and do they encourage this?

So, just three short vignettes - you could undoubtedly offer many more illustrations of where ‘access, voice, agency and choice’, are the basis of ‘political activity’ in EYE. ‘What do you think?’

[1] Lipman, M., Sharp, A. & F. Oscanyan (1979). Philosophy in the classroom. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.