Welcome to the online space for Understanding the Young Child. This is a course in the MPEd program in the ECE specialization at Western University. This page links to Rethinking Childhoods podcast episodes (accompanied by transcripts) and individual and collective artifacts submitted to the course virtual EXHIBITION.
podcast
Rethinking childhoods podcast was recorded by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, professor of early childhood education at Western University in Ontario, Canada. This podcast was recorded with intention of thinking collectively about the construction of concepts such as young child, childhood, children, and even education.
Veronica: The question that I hope you keep in mind as you listen to the episodes is: How might we think childhood as a space of resistance and regeneration?
virtual exhibition
Guided by the intention to collectively ideate something from the unforeseeable, this virtual course exhibition is an ongoing space for thinking together.
The exhibition is not a show piece, but rather an ongoing space for thinking together. In composing the course exhibition, we are experimenting with a kind of multi-modal virtual topography. It is our hope that what will emerge is the kind of “productiveness of spatiality” (Massey, 2005, 94) that is generative for new trajectories as you encounter (bump against and move within) the artifacts offered by others.
Complexity of Colour
By Alexandra MacLellan
As an educator, I feel it is my duty to carry an awareness of my privilege. In creating this artifact, I reflected on the many privileges in my life. One that I feel particularly conflicted about is that I am not a visible minority. My mother is a mix of German and Irish, and my father is Mexican. I could have been born with my father’s complexion, but fate gave me my mother’s fair skin. In response to Burman’s (2017) call to ‘place’ oneself, I spent a long time contemplating the complexity of my identity.
Shedding of our educational skin
By Amanda Henderson-Spooner, Denyse Wozencroft and Jaiden McKinnon
As we have engaged in this graduate-level course in the Master of Professional Education program, these writers have found themselves to be participating in a process of unlearning, deconstructing, and questioning that has been at times disorienting and painful. What were once known and categorized as aspects of childhood and development have been challenged. We have struggled with feelings of sadness and guilt for the ways that developmental psychology and early childhood education are implicit in and contribute to oppressions related to race, class, age, gender, culture and other forms of identity. It has been challenging to sit with this uncomfortable process, as we realize that early childhood educators both learn and teach within educational environments that have been socially constructed as orderly, rational, and politically neutral. Our own learning as educators and the learning of children in early learning environments are often framed as predictable, logical processes that are divorced from emotions and from their broader social, political, and economic contexts and power relationships. Burman (2017) describes how “turning the complex disorder of individual development into orderly steps to maturity reflects explicit social interests in maintaining social control within and between social groups” (p. 28). It is in the interest of the privileged and powerful to reinforce an understanding of learning, development, and education as processes that do not include chaos, uncertainty, questions, emotions, ethics, values, or social, economic or political motives. In our artifact, we have sought to document our struggles with the concepts of chaos, emotion, and relationships of power in our own and children’s learning processes. The artifact portrays the struggle between chaos and order, rationality and emotion, and the fallacy of neutrality versus acknowledging power relationships in learning settings. Thus, it is a symbol of the shedding of our educational skin and the art of unlearning.
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Tatiana: In shedding our educational skin, can we refuse our singular identities as nurturing or suffering ECEs, and instead find, in the scars and layers, ways of seeing otherwise words and otherwise possibilities of being?
References:
Burman, E. (2017). Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (3rd ed.). Routledge. Online
Lassen Design. (2019). Creativity [Photograph]. Adobe Stock.
Frames & Masks
In Developments: Child, image, nation (Routledge, 2020) Burman writes:
.…irrespective of whatever children are ‘really’ like they can be only known through particular cultural and historical frames, or discourses, that structure that ‘reality’. Moreover, what really makes this matter is that these cultural and historical frames have varied and do vary quite considerably, with significantly positions elaborated – not only for children and those subject to the injunction to develop. All those others – girls and women, working children, black and working-class people, people with physical or learning disabilities, gay men and lesbians, and transgender people-are rendered invisible by their non-normalised developmental status, or worse still (perhaps) only appear visible as a deficit or problem, as pathologised.
Gisselle Shaw picks these ides in her artifact and the meticulous process of its creation:
Onward and Upward: Interconnected Hierarchies of Power within the Myth of “Progress”
By Amanda Spooner
As an early childhood educator, I assess children’s progress toward developmental milestones and discuss this progress with families. I teach early childhood education students theories of child development and describe how children progress through various stages of development. The notion that children are developmental beings that progress through stages in a somewhat chronological order is deeply embedded in the theory and practice of my field and within my own imagination. Before reading “Deconstructing Developmental Psychology” (Burman, 2017) I saw this as a neutral, objective and biologically based position. From the readings, I began to better understand how the notion of “progress” is historically situated and culturally constructed. As Burman writes, “ ‘Progress’ is a key term that ties individual, social and national development together” (Burman, 2017, “Scientific Progress;” paragraph one). The myth of progress allowed colonial and later national powers to justify violent oppression of the “other” and to maintain order and control of their own citizens. The myth of progress represented human and social development as “unilinear, directed steps up an ordered hierarchy” (Burman, 2017; “of humans and animals,” paragraph 3), with white, male, adults and the modern capitalist, scientific and technocratic state as the natural and inevitable endpoint. Based on this description, I was inspired to represent the myth of progress using the image of a staircase. I depicted the staircase and “arrow of progress” as moving left-to-right, bottom-to-top, in accordance with European biases. As I chose images and words to represent the bottom and top of the staircase of progress, the deeply intersecting hierarchies of power and prejudice related to age, class, gender, race and ability became clearer to me. My hope is that the artefact illustrates the interconnected ways in which notions of the “child” have both shaped and been shaped by the myth of “progress”.
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References:
Botswana mothers and children photo. (n.d.)
Burman, E. (2008). Deconstructing developmental psychology. (3rd Edition). [Kindle Edition]. London: Routledge.
Businessman checking watch photo. (n.d.)
Chimpanzee photo. (n.d.)
City skyscrapers. (n.d.)
Computer chip photo. (n.d.)
Markogianis, N. (2013)
Newman, P. (n.d.) Evolution of Man.
Newborn babies in a hospital ward photo. (n.d.)
New Republic. (2018)
Scientist in lab photo. (2012)
Starving children photo. (n.d.)
Warrior photo. (n.d.)
Claymates
by Courtney Amber & Alexandra MacLellan
Our artifact explores the idea that “definitions and demarcations of children are replete with social and political meanings” (Burman, 2017, p. 67). Developmental psychology has unabashedly produced, and boldly utilized, a restrictive perception of what a child is. This perception is laden with implicit biases of culture, class, power and gender. Childhood is richly convoluted and should not be stripped down to its simplest form. To shy away from childhood’s true complexity is to deny a dynamic understanding of each child we encounter. Much like clay, with its imperceptible array of minerals, the child is not a singular, pure entity.
Clawing out of the primordial goo, the child is made; formed and figured to be placed on display as model of unadulterated virtue. They are created separate from the rest and condemned to be delicately redeposited into the world. There is nothing natural about the child figure. Produced as “objects and subjects of study” (Burman, 2017, p. 15) the child is squeezed, pulled and parceled into metaphor. The theme of child is one to care for and protect; its surface to be made smooth, universally recognizable and ossified. Their rich compositions of life and decay are rendered to mere extraction.
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References:
Burman, E. (2017). Deconstructing developmental psychology (3rd ed.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Motherly Love
by Jaiden McKinnon, the artist’s daughter
Despite modern-day thinking concerning gender roles, present discourses continue to sustain the idea of gender divisions within the scientific gaze of developmental psychology. Burman (2017) has stated that families, specifically mothers, are still held as liable for the social conflicts in the world, and thus the inadequacy related to child development. This leads me to wonder, although societal thinking has begun to change regarding gender divisions, the discourses and teachings in the discipline of early childhood education and other related fields have not changed much, why?..
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References:
Burman, E. (2017). Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (3rd ed.). Routledge
Motherly Love, Amy Christine Anderson,
1992 (Caledon, Ontario)
In juxtaposition
By Sera (Hye Sun) Oh and Marcia Belgrave
Journey to the Ocean by Sera (Hye Sun) Oh: I’ve been finding practical work to be the most challenging process, which requires a great deal of patience and determination. <…> What can I do with my reflection? What do I want to accomplish? What vision do I have in my journey as an educator? What purpose do I serve as an educator?
Fragile Ideas by Marcia Belgrave: <…> readings … chipping away at the pre-existing knowledge <…>
Framing
By Jennifer Moore
“Eyes watching, Ears listening, Voices quiet, Bodies calm”
A chant to encourage active listening fills the classroom and I reflect on the complexities of this message. What am I silencing when I utter these words? How does this chant discipline students, line them up, prepare them for ‘education’ understood in a singular way of practical skills for future success?
When children do not fit into our frames of expectations they are seen as unruly or incompetent therefore a threat to society’s structure and beliefs of what normal is. As educators we are trained to compare and evaluate children to ensure that they are groomed to fulfill these expectations.
“Stop, Look and Listen”
Why is it important for students to listen to authority figures? Why am I standing here watching my students act out roles and practice skills so that they can fit into a world that we have created? What would happened if we removed the “box of normal”, how different would our world look?
The tin can phone
By Danielle Aylward
In exploring discourses of development that have influenced/influence my thinking and working with children, I am pulled by Burman’s argument “to move from generalised, universalised accounts of development towards more situated, nuanced developmental narratives” (Burman, 2020, p. 32).
Looking at overall developmental discourses, constructed within societal, historical, political, economical, and otherwise-influenced contexts – I pull one line of a link from an adult/mother to a child to reveal nuances within an individual interaction contextualized in the larger discourses surrounding and embedding. Burman’s placing of self moved me to look to my own placement; to experiences and geographical relocations that brought differences in exposure to discourses treated most relevant by those times and places and their interaction with my previous experiences.
The tin can phone – once a step of evolution to higher communication technologies, once an “acoustic phone,” later “lover’s phone” – served adults until pushed by time to “simplicity;” currently infantilized to the realm of for-children and by-children. Can, string, can. Through this string an interaction is held between adult and child. Contextual threads embed, coat the line and influence its message.
The line develops through the adult’s braided early childhood, incorporating outside influence into a thicker spiral. Moving through formal learning of developmental theories in post-secondary, which braid back to memories of own childhood seen differently. An outsider working with British curriculum of rigid measurement and bound age-band goals. The pushed agenda of universality of progress. ‘This doesn’t work.’ Moving to Indigenous lands, new ways of knowing pushing former assumptions, noticing deeper colonialism. Additional felt inter-weavings before, between, after. A continued unlearning.
What resonates along the line flows through and flows from the multi-influences that have resonated from time, place, and exposure. Transformative as they intertwine. Some partially known or some assumed to be known, thinking with the thread continues.
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References:
Burman, E. (2020). Developments: Child, image, nation (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Molding Childhoods
By Danielle Aylward, Sarah MacMillan, Bianca Pellegrino
Make the mold, pass it onto the mothers. Children are malleable, roll out the foundation and work with what you have. A recipe for success. Copy and paste.
A hint of blue like Lake Ontario. Reading, writing, numbers, foundations for your next steps in life. Nature to nurture growth – a controlled messy. Toys that emulate education, a doll with a diploma, a key to success. Open ended play; loose parts and artificial nature. Child-led play and discovery; please sit and watch the iPad. Freedom to have every hour of the day scheduled, even recreation and sports. The perfect family, not considered when trying to understand the child. Southern Ontario – the place to grow, please tell the rest of Canada how it’s done. Copy and paste.
Stuck somewhere in the middle. Not quite the South, not far enough North. Western expectations encroaching on cultural traditions and values. Hunt for food and eat chicken nuggets. Learn the alphabet while forgetting your traditional name. Sing songs of childhood, the ones I teach you. Explore the forest and care for the land, protest “within reason.” Wear pink, play with dolls, stick to the gender role I give you. Contradictions of conformity, culture, and childhood. Be independent of thought; autonomous. Copy and paste.
Spread north. Language turned into English characters, “ones you need.” Words watering down. Appreciation for traditional learning through difficulty, the way lessons are intended. “Do it safely.” An igloo perfectly sewn, shown to amateur hands, handed safety needles though well-versed in the lessons a sharp needle brings to little fingers. The product messy with real tools pushed aside for supervised projects that fit Southern expectations of safe equivalence. Copy and paste safety, to children who already question why they need help surviving through policy instead of stories.
Copy and paste.
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References:
Cooper Cases [iPad Photo] [Photograph]. (2020). Online
Ekpakohak, J. (2017). Packing baby doll [Moosehide, cotton and wool]. Ulukhaktok, NT.
Goalcast [Silhouette of Family] [Photograph]. (2017). Online
Inuktalik, D. (2019). Large ulu [Muskox horn and steel]. Ulukhaktok, NT.
Inuktalik, L. (2018). Igloo ornament [Embroidery on felt]. Ulukhaktok, NT.
Okheena, R. (2019). Animal tapestry [Sewing on felt]. Ulukhaktok, NT.
Artifact
By Sarah MacMillan
While hiking through the forest, one cannot help but to admire the large variety of trees that inhabit the space. There are trees that are contorted and warped, some that have boils, and others that are covered in lichen and moss. These trees are admired for their beauty and strength, and we remark on how unique they are in their forest.
When walking around a developed city the trees, while still trees, are different. In the city the trees with boils and deformities are removed as “unsightly” and replaced with perfectly manicured specimens. Gone is the perception of strength and beauty. Trees that have been grown and groomed to fit the “perfect” model of what a tree should be, are instead displayed for all to admire.
Burman poses the question (2017), “do children grow or are they made” (p. 68)? We see children as empty vessels that must be trained, taught, and filled with purpose. Have we been conditioned to view children in this manner? That activities must be constantly provided to help the children meet developmental goals, and quickly pruning away any deficiencies. Training the children, like trees in a nursery, to fit our ideal concept.
Burman (2017) states that, “Childhood, conceived of as a period of dependency, meant that education and socialisation were required to lead and train the child in the ‘appropriate’ direction” (p.75). Much like the trees we see when we walk around a city, we teach young children to fit into the predetermined moulds that society has set out as acceptable and valuable. We as educators strive to help create the ‘perfect’ child, one that is regulated, productive, and valuable to society.
Why do we feel the need to take something uniquely perfect, and change it to fit a societal view of perfection and productivity?
Aggregation
by Courtney Amber
I am mesmerized by the dedication to their craft. Buzz to this flower, buzz to that, buzz back to this one and again and again; their nuggets of pollen, a materialization of efforts, are adorned as a badge of accomplishment. They have one objective, collect as much as possible to bring to the hive in the name of production. I can’t help but hear words from beyond, whispering to me – Don’t they remind you of someone?
Educators, in the early years and typically as a female gendered role, have become an embodiment of the worker bee; foraging for the latest and greatest concepts and theories to bring back to the classroom. Erica Burman speaks at lengths about the forces which urge the educator to swarm in an everlasting cycle of acquiring and depositing. For instance, as we grasp the child through developmental psychology, centering them as knowable subject, the educator’s role becomes domesticated into retriever. This is not a critique of the educator, rather, I am speaking to the systems which send us into the field to hunt for more, time and time again. The expert emerges from the hive. This is where I found myself as an early years educator; moving for the sake of moving, searching for the sake of finding.
As Roberts (2014) states in Burman (2017) “…‘women’s bodies seem to have emerged as an important terrain upon which to displace the contradictions of capitalist accumulation’, and, in the process of celebrating women’s supposed qualities of altruism and care, their roles and positions are ‘retraditionalised.’ ” (p. 79-80). This increasing tradition of positioning female educator as expert consumer of knowledge, seething under the smoke of Capitalist consumerism, below the pretence of the survival of the colony, is what I offer to you for interpretive consideration.
Transcript of the video:
Love them, instruct them, teach them- but don’t interfere. Leave yourself at the door and make sure to smile. Hands up, hands down, make sure it’s emergent but also grade them without giving them a grade. You must discipline the child because they need boundaries- no not like that, develop a better sense of the child, the whole child. Collaborate individually by following this framework and of course always follow policy and procedure. Two hours minimum outside wheather they like it or not, it’s good for them. Make it fun but be in charge- respect is earned at circle time. Stand up, sit down, form a line of inquiry for your pedagogical project. Don’t let them fall through the cracks but please divide into groups for your next activity. Give me an A, give me a B, give me a human capital C! More, less, outside, inside, nurture, nature is the best medicine, it’s where children belong. Teach them democracy but don’t let them dictate. Your mom has to work, wipe your tears, you’re happy here. Arrange some branches over there, watch out, you’ll lose an eye! Safety first, here, let me help you. You are so capable. What do you want to be when you grow up sweetie? You can be anything you want- just be quiet. There’s not enough time to do that right now, let’s transition to a play based curriculum instead. Have you read the latest research on early intervention? You can never help too soon- unless it too late. It’s time to renew my license to kill, have you finished your hours? We have to get you ready for your future, childhood is just a phase.
Above all else, ensure for nothing less than the best production of quality, after all, that’s the real goald.