Reconceptualizing dominant discourses in early childhood education: Exploring ‘readiness’ as an active-ethical-relation

Abstract

This paper considers that the landscape of early childhood education in England is dominated by discourses of 'readiness-for-school' and 'readiness-for-learning’ that act to heavily stratify the educational spaces inhabited by young children.  The 'ready-child' is constructed as a normative identity towards which the ‘unready’ child is expected to progress.  The confinement of children within such predetermined subject positions is considered problematic, as inevitably not all children will achieve these normative ideals, resulting in their exclusion from positions of 'success', as defined by dominant educational narratives.  In response to these concerns, this article seeks to disrupt dominant conceptualizations of 'readiness' in the context of early childhood education, attempting to produce a rupture in the educational landscape, expanding space for alternative ideas, theories and practices.  In a deliberate move away from concepts that relate 'readiness' to predefined goals, outcomes and identities, this article explores the possibility of thinking with a complex logic in order to generate new ideas, understandings and practices.  Approaching complexity from the ‘outside-in’, this paper draws in particular on the concept of 'becoming' (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), exploring 'readiness' as a complex process of emergence, always open to the unpredictable and the new.  It is argued that ‘readiness’ is part of an open-ended ‘becoming’, rather than a pre-defined ‘state’.  Drawing on the work of Deleuze (1983), Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and Dewey (1899/2010; 1916), this reconceptualized idea of 'readiness' does not hark back to romantic notions that might consider all forms of development equally valid or desirable.  This paper argues, instead, that it matters greatly what and how children ‘become’ and as such, ‘readiness’ for these emergent ‘becomings’ must be considered an ethical and political endeavor.