Buttoning up the gold collar - The child in neoliberal visions of early education and care

• Authors: Ondrej Kaščák , Branislav Pupala
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This study refers to the discursive transformation in perceptions of preschool age children generated by central European Union policy on early childhood education and care. This policy is representative of the pervasion of contemporary entrepreneurial culture and curricula within preschool education. At the same time, the field is also starting to become subordinated to the neoliberal trend of economising the social. This study highlights the fact that, within discourses on the child, these trends are encouraging a particular conception of childhood and of developmental theories. This conception is also enabling entrepreneurial logic to be applied to the preschool education sector via the use of theoretical tools. Consequently, children are being shaped into so-called knowledge-workers, or gold-collar workers, as they are referred to in current employment discourse. Even authorised preschool education documents (e.g. NAEYS’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice etc.) are responding to this transformation by introducing a new type of normality into this sphere, as can be seen in the Slovak state education programme for preschool education.

Keywords

EN

universal child; normal child; autonomous child; superchildren; entrepreneurial children; DAP; gold-collar worker

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 319-337

Dates

published

2013-04-01

online

2013-03-28

Contributors

author

Ondrej Kaščák

author

Branislav Pupala

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-013-0130-8