School readiness, early years education and neoliberal subjectivities

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School readiness, early years education and neoliberal subjectivities

Guy Roberts-Holmes, Associate Professor at University College London Siew Fung Lee, Postdoc Researcher at Institute of Education Mandy Pierlejewski, Senior Lecturer Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University Elizabeth Wood, Professor of Education at University of Sheffield 19 Nov 2019

This symposium built upon ��ɫ��’s research commission, Competing Discourses of Early Childhood Education and Care, and critically explored why and how early childhood education and care (ECEC) school readiness policy intensification has made the early years an ever more tightly governed space. For example, the proposed Reception Baseline Assessment (2020) and the new Early Learning Goals (2021) suggest that ECEC is being reimagined, reconfigured and reduced to school readiness preparation (Kay, 2019; Roberts-Holmes, 2019; Wood, 2019). Strong managerial control and governance through the imposition of school readiness performance measures, curtails early years teachers’ and practitioners’ perceived inefficient and self-seeking professionalism.

Indeed, school readiness is now extended to two-year-olds through ‘disadvantage’ constructs which are productive of abilities-driven subjectivities in the increasing formalisation of early experiences (Lee, 2019). Lee uses a Foucauldian policy genealogy in tracing how funded nursery places construct a particular ‘disadvantage’ so that the early years are requisitioned by policy as sites for integrating technologies between the home, education and health. This raises the critical question: What does policy make of ‘disadvantaged’ two-year-olds? When framed in economic and political terms as human capital investment, the question becomes: What constitutes capital investment that forms an ‘abilities-machine’ within a neoliberal society? Paradoxically, it seems the wider the scope of educational investment, the narrower the possibilities for imagining early years for young children. It is suggested that concepts such as governmentality and policy technologies, all intensified through datafication, are useful tools to further understand what is happening in ECEC and why. These governing techniques ostensibly deploy ECEC in ameliorating ‘disadvantage’, even where the causes of disadvantage lie in austerity economics and poverty.

Pierlejewski (2019) uses the notion of the data-doppelganger (Williamson, 2014) or data-double as a theoretical lens through which to view the datafication of early years education. The data-doppelganger is the version of the self which exists in the significant quantities of data collected about the child. The drive for the collection of this data is the draw of the ‘good level of development’ (GLD) – the measure of school readiness. Data must be collected to prove that each child has attained this level, and progress towards the measure is tracked throughout the Reception year. Using a psychoanalytic understanding of the double, she explores the role of data in the formation of child subjectivities. She finds that data holds a mirror up to the child, revealing the version of the self as it compares to the norm of school readiness. The child is compared to normative expectations and begins to see itself as an object. Thus, the ego is altered. The innocence of the pre-data-self is lost, and a new form of normative subjectivity is created.

However, the intellectual thrust of policy research is to deconstruct, to speak truth to power, to expose the limitations of what policy is or is not doing. So, as public intellectuals we must proceed with caution and we need to take care we do not construct our own universal truths, deficit narratives, or dire warnings, or to construct new totalising discourses. Foucault (1988) optimistically states that, ‘As soon as one can no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very difficult, and quite possible’. For example, Archer (2019) has found that it is not only a matter of policy driving or changing practice: there is evidence of ECEC policy navigation, interpretation, contextualisation – indeed, multiple competing and disruptive discourses at work. The challenge now becomes, how can we put this dangerous (and powerful) knowledge to work in productive ways in ECEC?

References

Archer, N. (2019). Hope and Resilience in Testing Times. Children’s Centre. Retrieved from .

Foucault, M. (1988). Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. Hutton (Eds.), Technology of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amhurst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Kay, L. (2018). Bold beginnings and the rhetoric of school readiness. Forum, 60(3), 327–336.

Lee, S. F. (2019). Governing ‘disadvantage’ through readiness: A Foucauldian policy genealogy of funded nursery places for two-year-olds. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. Advance online publication. Retrieved from .

Pierlejewski, M. (2019) The data-doppelganger and the cyborg-self: Theorising the datafication of education. Pedagogy, Culture and Society. Advance online publication. Retrieved from .

Roberts-Holmes, G. (2019). ‘School readiness, governance and early years ability grouping’. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. Advance online publication. Retrieved from

Williamson, B. (2014). Reassembling children as data doppelgängers: How databases are making education machine-readable. In Powerful Knowledge Conference. Bristol, pp. 1–14.

Wood, E. (2019). Unbalanced and unbalancing acts in the early years foundation stage: A critical discourse analysis of policy-led evidence on teaching and play from the Office for Standards in Education in England (Ofsted).’ Education 3–13, 47(7), 784–795. Retrieved from .

Guy Roberts-Holmes, Dr

Associate Professor at University College London

Guy Roberts-Holmes was awarded the 2016 ��ɫ�� Public Engagement and Impact Award for his work in challenging the goals set out for Baseline Assessment for assessing and tracking the progress of 4-5 year olds within the primary system, which led to the subsequent withdrawal of the policy as announced by the DfE in April 2016. Baseline Assessment, was part of the policy “Reforming assessment and accountability for primary schools” (DfE, 2014) and was designed to produce a ‘baseline’ figure from which four and five year old children’s progress across the primary years can be measured. According to a DfE report from 2016, BA was to be ‘the only measure used to assess the progress of children from entry (at age four to-five-years) to the end of KS2 (age 10-11), alongside an attainment floor standard of 85 per cent’ (DfE, 2014: 4). Although other measures could still be used to demonstrate progress to KS2 for children starting reception in the school year 2015/16, all...

Siew Fung Lee, Dr

Postdoc Researcher at Institute of Education

Siew Fung Lee is Research Fellow at the UCL Social Research Institute working on the Healthier Wealthier Families (HWF) in East London project. The project supports families in Newham and Tower Hamlets by co-locating money advice services within health and community settings. Her work involves evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of this programme for service users, providers and host services. Her research interests and publications centre on the social and economic impact of policies affecting ‘disadvantaged’ children and families. She employs ethnographic methods and policy genealogy, informed by over 20 years of experience as an early years practitioner in England.

Mandy Pierlejewski, Dr

Senior Lecturer Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University

Mandy Pierlejewski is a senior lecturer in early childhood education and course leader of the BA Primary Education 3-7 QTS degree at Leeds Beckett University. Before entering higher education, Mandy was a primary school teacher and early years leader as well as an advanced skills teacher specialising in early years. Prior to joining Leeds Beckett University in 2016, Mandy’s particular research interest was the datafication of early years education. Her work examines the impact of datafication on teacher and child subjectivity, with a particular focus on Roma children. It also examines resistance to datafication through the use of child-led pedagogy such as ‘in the moment planning’.

Elizabeth Wood, Professor

Professor of Education at University of Sheffield

Elizabeth Wood is professor of education at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses mainly on early childhood and primary education, with specific interests in play and pedagogy; curriculum and assessment in early childhood education; teachers’ professionalism and professional knowledge; policy analysis and critique. Her work on play has international reach and influence, and Elizabeth is currently looking at the ways in which children are blending digital and traditional play, and understanding the relationships between children’s interests, play and pedagogy in early childhood settings.