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Buttoning up the gold collar — The child in neoliberal visions of early education and care

  • Research Article
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Human Affairs

Abstract

This study refers to the discursive transformation in perceptions of preschool age children generated by central European Union policy on early childhood education and care. This policy is representative of the pervasion of contemporary entrepreneurial culture and curricula within preschool education. At the same time, the field is also starting to become subordinated to the neoliberal trend of economising the social. This study highlights the fact that, within discourses on the child, these trends are encouraging a particular conception of childhood and of developmental theories. This conception is also enabling entrepreneurial logic to be applied to the preschool education sector via the use of theoretical tools. Consequently, children are being shaped into so-called knowledge-workers, or gold-collar workers, as they are referred to in current employment discourse. Even authorised preschool education documents (e.g. NAEYS’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice etc.) are responding to this transformation by introducing a new type of normality into this sphere, as can be seen in the Slovak state education programme for preschool education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences Centre for Research in Education, Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dubravska cesta, Klemensova 19, 813 64, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Ondrej Kaščák & Branislav Pupala

  2. Department of School Education, The Faculty of Education, Trnava University in Trnava, Priemyselná 4, 918 43, Trnava, Slovakia

    Ondrej Kaščák & Branislav Pupala

Authors
  1. Ondrej Kaščák
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  2. Branislav Pupala
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Correspondence to Ondrej Kaščák.

Additional information

This research is the outcome of a project funded by VEGA 1/0224/11 The archaeology of neoliberal governance in current education policy and in theories on education and VEGA 1/0091/12 The culture of performativity and accountability in the current wave of education reforms.

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Kaščák, O., Pupala, B. Buttoning up the gold collar — The child in neoliberal visions of early education and care. Humaff 23, 319–337 (2013). https://doi.org/10.2478/s13374-013-0130-8

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