Commodification, Corporatisation and Children's Spaces

Press, Frances; Woodrow, Christine

doi:10.1177/000494410504900305

Cited by 67 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Within Australia, three recent imperatives have driven the early childhood social policy agenda: worldwide interest in the early years in response to 'brain research' (Department of Family and Community Services, 2004); overwhelming evidence of the impact of economic policy on young children and families (Vimpani, 2005); and the shift in childcare provision away from a government controlled non-profit sector to a rapidly expanding for-profit, private provision (Press & Woodrow, 2005;Sumsion, 2006). The following discussion highlights Australia's responses to these imperatives.…”

Section: Emerging Interest In Early Childhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social policy discourses frame early childhood institutions as a strategy of social intervention 'capable of protecting the society against the effects of poverty, inequality, insecurity and marginalisation' (Dahlberg et al, 1999, p. 66). As Press & Woodrow (2005) observe, in Australia the early childhood sector is constructed variously as: facilities that enable maternal workforce participation; sites for compensatory programs for children experiencing disadvantage; and facilities that prepare children for school. The child within these institutions is commonly referred to as a future investment, 'our most important future economic resource' (Commonwealth Task Force on Child Development, Health and Wellbeing, 2003, p.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy

Cheeseman

2007

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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Growing international interest in the early childhood years has been accompanied by an expansion of public programs in Australia targeting young children and their families. This article explores some of the influences and rhetoric that frame these initiatives. It encourages critical examination of the discourses that shape the nature of early childhood programs in Australia and identifies a range of barriers that inhibit the involvement of early childhood teachers in the design and delivery of social policy initiatives for young children. As the imperatives of programs seeking to overcome social disadvantage take prominence in Australian early childhood policy initiatives, pedagogical perspectives that promote universal rights to more comprehensive early childhood experiences can easily be silenced. The article calls for pedagogical leadership to overcome these barriers and promote the democratic rights of all children to high-quality and publicly supported early childhood education and care programs.Moss (2001) observes that early childhood education and care can often be viewed as 'technology for social stability and economic progress, the young child as a redemptive vehicle to be programmed to become a solution to certain problems' (p. 13). This powerful observation sets a context for the following critical analysis of the influences on early childhood social policy in Australia. Often expressed in the separate domains of health, welfare and education, this article exposes the dichotomies that these artificial demarcations create in a social policy context. While early childhood teachers may consider themselves influential in the design and delivery of education and care programs, powerful policy agendas are dominating the discourses of early childhood education and care that favour health and welfare imperatives over more comprehensive and pedagogically driven possibilities. Within this context, the term 'pedagogies' is used to express approaches to curriculum, learning and teaching that recognise the complex interconnectedness of health, welfare and education in young children's lives -approaches that are grounded in images of children as capable and resourceful.The article begins by outlining the global impetus for public interest in early childhood as an important life phase. It then analyses Australian responses to these influences and describes consequent changes to public provisions for young children within this country, drawing on specific examples, particularly within New South Wales. It argues that the selective use of particular types of research evidence and reliance on a narrow range of evidence is diminishing the importance of early childhood pedagogies. The article highlights a subtle and yet powerful shift in the intentions and outcomes for children's services across Australia. It alerts early childhood teachers to pervading images of the 'vulnerable and needy' child within social policy and how these images are acting to shape curriculum and ways in which teachers work with childre...

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Section: Emerging Interest In Early Childhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy

Cheeseman

2007

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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“…A recent trend within for-profit provision has been the growth of corporate childcare chains (Press and Woodrow, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The business of care

Gallagher

2017

Progress in Human Geography

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The aim of this article is to outline a geographical research agenda for studying the marketization of childcare in Western neoliberal contexts. While childcare has been a key site of interrogation for feminist geographers, highlighting the profound inequities of marketized care for many who work in and use childcare, the contours of the childcare market as a situated and constructed economic entity has remained under-examined. I suggest that at a time when more families than ever rely on extra-familial childcare, an appreciation of how childcare markets function is urgently needed.

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“…These studies conceptualise change as aligned with shifts in ways of thinking about government (e.g. Hultqvist, 1998;Dahlberg et al, 1999;Woodrow & Brennan, 1999;Grieshaber, 2000;Soto, 2000;Hultqvist & Dahlberg, 2001;Moss & Petrie, 2002;Bloch et al, 2003b;Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Press & Woodrow, 2005). Common in this work is the focus on the ways discourses constitute and reconstitute the family, parent and the child and their care and education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Smarten up the Parents’: Whose Agendas are We Serving? Governing Parents and Children through the Smart Population Foundation Initiative in Australia

Millei

Lee

2007

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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This article critiques the Smart Population Foundation Initiative (SPFI), which was established to 'bring parenting information and the science of child development to Australian parents and carers ' (Smart Population Foundation, 2006) and to satisfy the need for a credible and easily accessible source of information for parents. The article draws on the notion of modern governance developed by Rose and analyses the Initiative as a deeply political project. It looks at the Initiative from a critical distance created by the context of governmentality. The authors argue that the discourses produced by the Initiative constitute a particular notion of parent as 'smart' (lifelong learner, responsible and informed). These discourses govern parents through 'ethopolitics' to take up a certain art of parenting as their supposed free choice. Through standardising and sanctioning a particular way of acting as a parent, the SPFI translates governmental objectives into parents' own values and practices. As a result, the discourse the SPFI constitutes about parenting effectively 'shuts down' multiple understandings of being a 'good' parent. Hence, parents' conscious formation of their parenting practices are inhibited and with that, the ethical debates around this contentious issue are silenced.

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Commodification, Corporatisation and Children's Spaces

Cited by 67 publications

References 11 publications

Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy

Pedagogical Silences in Australian Early Childhood Social Policy

The business of care

‘Smarten up the Parents’: Whose Agendas are We Serving? Governing Parents and Children through the Smart Population Foundation Initiative in Australia

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