Equality and Diversity Policy ingredients

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Equality and DiversityPolicy ingredients

• Peter Moss
• Thomas Coram Research Unit
• Institute of Education University of London

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• Early childhood policy that supports equality
  while leaving room for diversity to flourish
• a common framework ? strong decentralisation
• Wider commitment to equality and diversity
• Diversity is about people and groups but also
  about ideas and practices
• EC policy to include
• Values
• Understandings
• Actions

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Wider commitmentto equality and diversity

• Countries with best EC services Nordic
  societies - have best record on equality
• Good services do not ?equality wider commitment
  to equality and paying taxes ? equal access to
  good services
• Good EC services like good schools need
  strong and direct public funding (1.5 of GDP
• EC services cannot cure inequality and
  injustice

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Diversity is aboutmany things

• Welcoming and valuing individual and group
  difference
• Challenging discrimination and injustice
• Openness to new thinking and practices
  resisting standardisation and categorisation,
  preconceptions and predefined outcomes

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• Putting everything one encounters into pre-made
  categories implies we make the Other into the
  Same, as everything which does not fit into these
  categories, which is unfamiliar and not
  taken-for-granted has to be overcomeTo think
  another whom I cannot grasp is an important shift
  and it challenges the whole scene of pedagogy. It
  poses other questions to us pedagogues. Questions
  such as how the encounter with Otherness, with
  difference, can take place as responsibly as
  possible (Dahlberg, 2003

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The education of young children as a community
project

• The early childhood worker needs to be more
  attentive to creating possibilities than pursuing
  predefined goals
• to be removed from the fallacy of
  certainties, assuming instead responsibility to
  choose, experiment, discuss, reflect and change,
  focusing on the organisation of opportunities
  rather than the anxiety of pursuing outcomes, and
  maintaining in her work the pleasure of amazement
  and wonder.
• (Aldo Fortunati, 2006)

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EC policyCoherence and diversity

• Common national (and European) framework to
  support equality
• decentralisation to support diversity
• Values
• Understandings
• Principles

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Values

• Equality an inclusive EC service for all
  children and families
• Diversity the norm not the exception
• Dialogue recognise doubt, surrender control
• Democracy - participation of equal citizens
• Rights

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Sheffield Childrens Centre

• The quote refers to our long-standing focus on
  men and childcareBut, for us, diversity covers
  many other areas socio-economic groups and
  political affiliations religious faiths and
  belief forms age, race, ethnicity and
  nationality sexuality family composition
  health status and physical and mental
  abilitiesSocial inclusion is paramount for us.
  We want to ensure equal access and fair outcomes
  with an acknowledgement that all sections of our
  society contribute to the public good and every
  individual has value in her/his own right
• (Chrissy Meleady and Pat Broadhead, 2002)

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Dialogue

• Dialogue is of absolute importance. It is an
  idea of dialogue not as an exchange but as a
  process of transformation where you lose
  absolutely the possibility of controlling the
  final result. And it goes to infinity, it goes
  to the universe, you can get lost. And for human
  beings nowadays, and for women particularly, to
  get lost is a possibility and a risk
• (Carlina Rinaldi, 2005)

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Democracy as a fundamental value

• Democracy forms the foundation of the
  pre-school. For this reason, all pre-school
  activity should be carried out in accordance with
  fundamental democratic values
• (Swedish pre-school curriculum)

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Democracy as afundamental value

• EC centres are democratically organised and
  practice democracy, e.g decision-making,
  evaluation
• Democracy is understood as a way of life and
  relating not a subject to be taught
• Democracy is a way of life controlled by a
  working faith in the possibilities of human
  natureand faith in the capacity of human
  beings for intelligent judgement and action if
  proper conditions are furnished
• (Dewey, 1939)

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UnderstandingsWhat is your image of.?

• The child as a rich child and citizen
• The EC centre as a public institution, a forum
  and a collective workshop
• The EC worker as a reflective and democratic
  professional

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The rich child

• A child born with great potential that can be
  expressed in a hundred languages an active
  learner, seeking the meaning of the world from
  birth, a co-creator of knowledge, identity,
  culture and values a child that can live, learn,
  listen and communicate, but always in relation
  with others the whole child, the child with
  body, mind, emotions, creativity, history and
  social identity an individual, whose
  individuality and autonomy depend on
  interdependence, and who needs and wants
  connections with other children and adults a
  citizen with a place in society, a subject of
  rights whom the society must respect and support
• (Children in Europe, 2008)

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A forum and collective workshop

• Forum a place of encounter between citizens -
  younger and older
• Public institution, responsibility and space for
  all children and families
• Workshop of many, many purposes, projects and
  possibilities social, cultural, political,
  ethical, economic, aesthetic etc etc.

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Purposes, projects, possibilities include.

• Collective production of knowledges, values and
  identitiesof diversity!
• Collective researching, e.g. childrens learning
  processes, outcomes
• Build solidarity and offer support
• Cultural sustainability and renewal
• Economic development and activity
• Promote gender and other equalities
• Practice democracy and active citizenship
• ???

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A democratic and reflective professional

• a critical thinking
• a researcher
• an experimenter
• a co-constructor of meanings, identities and
  values
• A person who is part of contemporary culture,
  who is able to question and to analyze this
  culture with a critical eyeAn intellectually
  curious person who rejects a passive approach to
  knowledge and prefers to construct knowledge
  together with others rather than simply to
  consume it. (Carlina Rinaldi, 2005)

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Actions

• For equality and coherence
• Integrated responsibility 1 ministry
• Universal entitlement from ?12 months
• Integrated funding - tax-based supply side
• Integrated workforce - early years profession
• Integrated provision 0 to 6 childrens
  centres
• Integrated curriculum - 0 to 6

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Actions

• For diversity
• Diverse workforce 20 men ???
• Framework curriculum open to local
  interpretation and additions
• Democratic experimentation the state stimulates
  and supports local innovations (networks,
  pedagogistas.)
• Participatory evaluation pedagogical
  documentation

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Participatory evaluation

• Evaluation as a democratic process of
  interpretation, a process that involves making
  practice visible and thus subject to reflection,
  dialogue and argumentation, leading to a
  judgement of value, contextualised and
  provisional because it is always subject to
  contestation
• (Dahlberg, Moss and Pence, 2007)

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Pedagogical documentation

• making practice visible by documentation
• interpretation of practice (making meaning)
• provisional and contestable conclusions/
  judgements
• in relation with others, co-constructing by
  dialogue, contestation, reflection
• values multiple perspectives and diversity of
  interpretation

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• Documentation represents an extraordinary tool
  for dialogue, for exchange, for sharing. For
  Malaguzzi, it means the possibility to discuss
  and dialogue everything with everyone
  (teachers, auxiliary staff, cooks, families,
  administrators and citizens)
• Sharing opinions by means of documentation
  presupposes being able to discuss real, concrete
  things not just theories or words, about which
  it is possible to reach easy and naïve agreement
• (Alfredo Hoyuelos, 2004)

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References

• Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. Pence, A.(2007) Beyond
  Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care
  (2nd ed). London Routledge
• Fortunati,A. (2006) The Education of Young
  Children as a Community Project
• Hoyuelos, A. (2004) A pedagogy of
  transgression, Children in Europe 6
• OECD (2006) Starting Strong II. Paris OECD
• Unger, R. (2005) The future of the left James
  Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger, Renewal 13,
  2/3
• Available from Children in Scotland, 5
  Shandwick Place, Edinburgh
• Other reading
• Dahlberg, G. Moss, P. (2005) Ethics and
  Politics in Early Childhood Education. London
  Routledge
• Moss, P. (2007) Bringing politics into the
  nursery. http//www.bernardvanleer.org/news/2007/b
  ringing_politics_into_the_nursery
• Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio
  Emilia. London Routledge