I-Fang Lee

Cultural conflicts of the child‐centered approach to early childhood education in Taiwan

This paper discusses the cultural conflicts around the Western notion of child‐centeredness in Taiwanese preschools. The implementation and translation of Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) in Taiwan is highlighted as an example to understand productions of differences, norms and cultural conflicts in Taiwanese early childhood education. Throughout this paper, it is argued that multiplicities and differences are not acknowledged but instead are dangerously ignored while assumptions are made about a singular norm and homogeneous universal standard. From this perspective, it is asserted that the global circulation of a particular Western notion of child‐centeredness should be (re)conceptualized as a cultural construct through which a particular system of reasoning or cultural knowledge is perpetuated.

UNPACKING NEOLIBERAL POLICIES: INTERRUPTING THE GLOBAL AND LOCAL PRODUCTION OF THE NORMS

Unpacking neoliberal policies: Interrupting the global and local production of the norms Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has been constructed as a new site for educational, sociocultural, political, and economic investment. Coupled with such a growing and popular recognition of ECEC as a significant period of childrens learning and development are critical issues concerning accountability, affordability, and accessibility to quality education and care for all. Highlighting the preschool education systems in Taiwan and Hong Kong as two examples from Asia, this paper aims to open up a discursive space for reconceptualizing the effects of neoliberal discourse and how such a system of reasoning reconstructed notions of inclusion/exclusion to limit the making of quality education and the provision of care for all.

Illusions of Social Democracy: Early Childhood Educational Voucher Policies in Taiwan

Circulating and traveling around the globe, vouchers and school choice discourses currently function as the new “truth” for educators and parents, mobilizing them to imagine different ways of changing the field of education for the better. Without thorough critical investigations/inquiries, educational voucher policies are often thought of as examples of democratic educational reforms in multiple continents, including South America, North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.1 Supported by Milton Friedman’s discussions on educational vouchers as tactics to dismantle government’s monopoly over modern public schooling systems and mobilized by neoliberal discourses of socioeconomic and cultural reform discourses, notions of educational vouchers and choice discourses are packed with ideas of choice and promises of social democracy for the field of education.

Contemporary Childhoods in Asia: Becoming (Pre)School Students in Hong Kong

Drawing from post-structural theoretical and conceptual frameworks, preschools and kindergartens are thought of as sociopolitical institutions where productions of values, rules and regulations are omnipresent. Highlighting a kindergarten in Hong Kong as an example, this article unpacks the production of a desirable childhood in which the making of young children as miniature students is a sociocultural construction in the early years. Seeking to destabilise such sociocultural production of miniature students as a normative way of being and becoming in childhood, this article de-naturalises the process of (pre)schooling while critically analysing the multiple discourses that come to shape the formation of children as school subjects to further unpack the cultural politics and imaginations of what shall count as a good student/child as well as a productive young citizen in the twenty-first century.

Reforming early childhood education as a smart investment for the future: stories from East Asia

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has been (re)nar-rated as an imperative socioeconomic investment in the twenty-first century. Globally, a popular and dominant discourse that “treats” ECEC as a good social investment through the theoretical lens of “human capital” has shifted the meanings of ECEC into pure economic rationality “seeing” quality provision in the early years as an effective approach for promoting economic growth in the future (e.g., see Heckman, 2012; The White House, 2014). Noticeably, in Starting Strong (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2001, 2006, 2011), it is emphasized that high-quality ECEC can make a major and positive contribution to any country’s national development and success in the new global knowledge-based economy. Hence, it is common to see how governments across different geopolitical spaces have come to acknowledge education as a critical driving force for promoting national development and progress while maintaining competitiveness in the global economy.

Young Children's Living and Learning Experiences under the Biliterate and Trilingual Education Policy in Hong Kong

Seeking to understand contemporary Asian childhoods and childrens learning in different lifeworlds (both learning and living experiences), this article highlights Hong Kong as an example to understand childrens early literacy learning under the biliterate and trilingual education policy in Hong Kong. Through looking at the portraits of childrens lifeworlds in relation to the learning of biliteracies and trilingualism, we reflect upon the provocative notions of ‘best pedagogical practice’ as well as considering globalization and Westernization in the socio-cultural and political contexts of Hong Kong. Through the discussions, layers of opportunities are created for teachers to reconceptualize the effects of dominant socio-cultural production of studenthood and the ways in which childrens multiple and varied childhoods are adding dimensions of learning.

(Re)Landscaping Early Childhood Education in East Asia: A Neoliberal Economic and Political Imaginary.

This article unpacks how neoliberal discourse functions as a dominant but problematic system of reasoning that changes and shifts the ways in which we come to think about early childhood education and care. A post-structuralist lens is deployed to understand the production of fears and hopes under the looming shadows of contemporary education reforms and social policies. Highlighting Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea as three cases from East Asian cultures, this article seeks to elucidate how a similar neoliberal economic and political imaginary is at work to (re)construct East Asian children as human capital for the alchemy of productive citizens in the 21st century.

Special issue (Part 1): Regulating childhoods: Disrupting discourses of control

Going to and/or attending (pre)school has become an expected contemporary childhood experience for many children around the world. Discussions and debates concerning the ways in which early childhood education and care should be organized and planned to ensure quality for the hope of a better future are transcending political and sociocultural boundaries. Since the turn of the 21st century, there are multiple international examples of reform policies in the field of early childhood education and care. In particular, several cases of different national curriculum frameworks have emerged from different sociocultural contexts and have come together to (re)configure a new “truth” concerning what may constitute desirable approaches relating to what teaching and learning ought to be in (pre)schools. To highlight a few, these examples may include the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in Australia, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in the United Kingdom, the Guide to Pre-primary Curriculum in Hong Kong, the Guideline for Kindergarten Education in China, the Nuri Curriculum in Korea, the Aistear in Ireland, and many other early childhood curriculum frameworks from different countries. However, despite being articulated in different languages from multiple cultural contexts, these cases of national curriculum guidelines and/or frameworks share a similar system of reasoning to prescribe normative ways of being and becoming for all children in that, among contemporary changes and constructions of desirable childhoods, raising standards while promoting learning outcomes to ensure the quality and accountability of early childhood education and care has become a shared concern in global education reforms. Thus, a dominant and normative discourse about appropriate approaches and desirable pedagogical practices in the early years is at work producing a universal grand narrative across cultural, political, and social boundaries to (re)define restricted ways of be(come)ing for all children. Drawing from critical and poststructural theoretical frameworks, (pre)schools can be conceptualized as sites of power struggles. The authors in this Special Issue aim to unpack the dangers of the dominant discourses to reconceptualize as well as to disrupt the various discourses of control to (re)define desirable ways of be(come)ing in (pre)schools. Reflecting the theme of this special issue, Moss offers the case of early childhood education in England to illustrate the production of both fears and hopes through critical analysis of the dominant discourses at work. Critiquing how

Assemblages of Quality Early Childhood Education and Care in the Cross-Taiwan Strait Geopolitical Space in Asia: Interplay of Opportunity and Risk

This article draws from Deleuze and Guattaris (1987) social ontology philosophical approach to explore how neoliberal imaginaries are promoted within the Cross-Taiwan Strait region in Asia. Highlighting voucher policies from Hong Kong and Taiwan as examples, the analyses and discussions in this article seek to identify lines of flight as well as to understand reforms as the processes of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” through which entangled (im)possibilities for the assemblages of quality early childhood education and care are crafted.