Eating and scraping away at practice with two year olds

Barron, Ian and Taylor, L (2017) Eating and scraping away at practice with two year olds. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 25. pp. 567-581. ISSN 1468-1366

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Abstract

This paper examines how early childhood policy initiatives in the United Kingdom and internationally currently reflect neoliberal concerns with school readiness in the development of human capital and what diverse theoretical perspectives might offer. The focus is a project involving a group of early childhood academics from one university and a small group of practitioners from a range of early years’ settings in the North of England. In thinking about practice, the paper explores a number of ‘lines of flight’, drawing on literature, philosophy and sociology to eat and scrape away at how provision for young children is commonly understood. What emerges from the scraping is not the clarity of fixities but the need for the weaving of resemblances that constantly transform meanings. We offer an engagement with heterogeneous theoretical ideas to help us think differently about the negotiation of ethical and equitable practices with children.