Critical Theory

As with other professions, early childhood educators can have set views and beliefs that underpin their work and determine what they actually do in practice. Critical theory questions these often taken for granted beliefs about practice prompting teachers to think about whose knowledge is assumed and how this shapes the early childhood curriculum. Questions about how children’s rights are being upheld, as well as their agency are considered important.

Critical theories assist educator’s to expose children’s experiences of learning while acknowledging that there are many different ways of thinking about what counts as knowledge and what might constitute a curriculum. Education can be seen as a way of transforming the world rather than upholding the status quo. This is achieved through rethinking and challenging practice that privileges particular bodies of knowledge and ways of learning over others. The key idea in critical theories is that educators work with children to challenge taken-for-granted experiences and

explore different ways of coming to know about the world, thus fostering a transformative environment.

Critical theories in practice
If you incorporate a critical theoretical perspective into your work with young children you would generally:

• Take time to critically reflect on their practice.
• Ask questions about why things are conducted in certain ways, for what reasons;
• Listen to each child and acknowledge their agency within the program;
• Include children in decision making process about their learning;
• Adopt a critical enquiry approach to program planning; and
• Hold meetings with colleagues challenging issues of practice, not only concerning administrative necessities;
• Explore different ways of implementing the program, routines and the processes of assessment.
Habermas (1929- )

What is claimed and why?
Jurgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher, focuses his work on the emancipatory possibilities within human life as opposed to the rationalist tradition which sees the world as a ‘given’. He sees everyday life and its practices as of central importance. Habermas argued for the potential of transforming the world through human communication, thus stressing the role of reflective practice within the development of human experience. While Habermas did not address the nature of education directly, his views have had a profound impact on how today’s educators view the taken-for-granted nature of early childhood education and care. It is now clearly accepted that, with a complex and diverse society, there is no single way forward with the development or implementation of decisions around practice with 21st century provision.

In his best known work Theory of Communicative Action (1981), he argued that practice cannot be developed where issues of common activity and importance are not discussed by the group involved with that practice. What he refers to as an “ideal speech situation” requires all participants to have the same opportunities for interaction and contribution as shared understandings and ways of moving forward are discussed and agreed to be acted upon.

In his book Knowledge and Human Interests (1972), Habermas suggests this critique in action takes place through four stages:
• Stage 1 – A description and interpretation of current practice, aiming to make sense of what typically takes place.
• Stage 2 – A search for the reasons behind this form of practice and an evaluation of their purpose. The critique here serving to reveal to individuals and groups how their views, that inform their current practice, can be developed further in an increasingly more productive way.
• Stage 3 – Setting an agenda for developing and changing current practice.
• Stage 4 – Evaluating the achievement of the new practice.

Impact on beliefs and practice
In terms of how Habermas’s views impact early childhood practice there are several principles that can be identified with respect to early childhood education and care. There are implications here for co-operative and collaborative opportunities for educators working together to think about and discuss their work in non-judgmental environments. Also for educators to come to understand better the community-related learning that might be incorporated into their programs, enabling young children to interrogate and explore a range of different environments. In order to achieve this, educators may need to find more opportunities to listen to children and understand better the community experiences children bring to their settings.

Discussion starters
• Dominant and privileged practices shape early childhood education and care.
• Implicit and explicit theories of learning impact on practice.
• Reflecting on practice is important in order to think critically about working with young children and their families.

Questions for reflection
• How do you begin to identify and challenge taken-for-granted practices and aspects of the program that are inequitable for children and their families?
• What role does reflection play in your professional learning, and that of your colleagues?

Freire (1921-1997)

What is claimed and why?

Paulo Freire worked with illiterate poor people in Brazil, where at the time literacy was a requirement for voting in presidential elections. During this time he embraced a non-orthodox form of pedagogy, away from one of ‘transmission’ towards a pedagogy of ‘transformation’. One example of his work documents how he taught 300 sugar cane workers to read and write in just 45 days.

He saw traditional forms of education as oppressive and successful in maintaining the ‘status quo’, indeed he saw educational policies and practices as having social implications. They either perpetuate current practices or they can assist people in constructing conditions for more transformative experiences. Brazil, at the time of Freire’s developing ideas, was a society of increasingly large political, social and economic inequalities in which millions of people were excluded from the ranks of power. They were oppressed and remained

oppressed.

Freire proposed a new conception of education, one that would derive from both a socially different standpoint and worldview. He chose to foreground the culture, knowledge and conditions of the disadvantaged, the excluded and oppressed. By working with these groups and using their world views and experiences as a starting point, believing that uneducated people are not ‘empty vessels’ to be filled with knowledge, Freire developed a new form of ‘emancipatory’ education in which both the teacher and the student have much to learn from each other in the educational process. He called for a rethinking of pedagogy, positioning education as anything but a neutral process. It was viewed as either integrating people to the current system thereby requiring them to conform, or a means where people can critically confront reality and work out how to transform their world. As he explains:

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (1970, p. 54).

He also expected the ‘oppressors’ to rethinking their ways of working and to continually re-examine themselves and their roles for liberation to occur (Freire, 1970, p.60).

Impact on beliefs and practice
Freire’s work was about transformation, and educators working with his ideas will seek to change existing practices, rules, traditions and understandings as a way of achieving this transformation. They will support children in wanting them to be able to critically analyse their daily experiences and learning and reflect on what is taken-for-granted practices in their experiences within and outside of their setting. Educators and children will talk, explore ideas and learn together about different ways of constructing their world, thereby improving and transforming the conditions under which learning takes place.

Discussion starters
• Children can enrich and expand our ways of knowing.
• Opening up new and different possibilities for young children can be challenging.
• Educators influence what happens in early childhood education and care settings.

Questions for reflection
• How can you create a challenging democracy in your early childhood program that includes the views of children?
• Which decisions about their day can children have input into?
• How often so you critically reflect on practice and challenge assumptions about curriculum?