Questioning democratic notions of governance: A case study examining how a kindergarten teacher and her students give voice to and enact a neoliberal framing of schooling

Abstract

An important factor that may be missing from recent attempts to counter, resist, and/or reconceptualize the neoliberal framing of the early education process is the actions of children, particularly those that reinforce the neoliberal assemblage of schooling they learn through their interactions with their teacher in school. This article begins to address this issue by employing Foucault’s conceptions of governmentality to examine how a teacher and students in a kindergarten classroom located in the USA give voice to and make choices that reflect the dominant neoliberal discourses of schooling. Such an analysis creates the opportunity to consider what needs to be done to assist both early educators and the children themselves so that they can live in the presence of each other within their neoliberal classrooms otherwise.

Beginning to Dismantle the Binaries that Frame the Neoliberal Kindergarten

“…Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a), I developed a potential list of binaries that emerged in relation to my research question (Thomas, 2016). These binaries revealed how familial, education, and political stakeholders made sense of the changed kindergarten in a manner that privileges policymaker's neoliberal reforms (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b). In the end, I settled on three binaries that capture how these stakeholders did so to provide insight into how policymakers' neoliberal policies that shape the changed kindergarten may be conceptualized otherwise: 'learning for the future vs. for the now,' 'teacher-led vs. student-led learning,' and 'the haves vs.…”

“…Through examining the findings from a larger exploratory VCME research study (Adair et al, 2018;Brown, 2021;Tobin et al, 2009) that sought to understand how a set of stakeholders in Texas (n=62) and West Virginia (n=26) made sense of the types of learning experiences kindergarteners are and should be having in school and why (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a;Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b;Brown, Englehardt, Ku, & Barry 2019c;Brown, Barry, Ku, & Englehardt, 2021), I, in this article, seek to identify and dismantle some of the binaries that frame the changed kindergarten. I do so by examining the following research question: How did education stakeholders in this study appear to use binary logic, which privileges policymaker's neoliberal reforms, to make sense of the changed kindergarten?…”

“…As such, policymakers have deemed the 'state' as a "regulator and auditor of the 'learning market'" (Biesta 2006, 175); public education systems are to provide citizens with the credentials needed to participate in the market (Ailwood, 2008). As I have noted before (e.g., Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b), this is done through public school educators, including kindergarten teachers, providing children with the necessary "inputs" so that they can attain the required "outputs" on specific standardized achievement tests (Ball, 2007, p. 28).…”

“…Thus, most kindergarteners across these two states are or will be viewed as lacking. As such, they will require teacher-directed instruction to prepare them to be the kind of learners who can become future earners and consumers as determined by a series of test scores (Ailwood, 2008;Brown, 2021;Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b).…”

“…Education researchers have documented how policymakers' neoliberal education reforms have turned kindergarten into a learning environment that privileges children's academic performance over their development and learning (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a;Graue, 2009). Many of these critiques, including my own with colleagues (e.g., Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b), are rooted in a binary logic (e.g., ready vs. unready student) that positions the constructs defining public schooling, the act of teaching, the process of learning, families, and even the children themselves in opposition with each other (Mac Naughton, 2005). By accepting this binary logic without problematizing it, policymakers' neoliberal reforms remain intact (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005).…”