Beyond Quality in ECE

Two of the international keynote speakers at Convention were Gunilla Dahlberg and Alan Pence, two of the authors of Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education. I got hold of this book earlier in the year, and have found it very compelling reading.

In a nutshell, the book problematises the notion of quality in current official writing about early education, (and even the prevailing ideas about childhood). This is largely because they have been developed from a Western, and mainly American, viewpoint, and it turns out that these ideas don't work out comfortably when transported into other countries and cultures (or even many groups of minority culture within America and other Western countries). Then, these singular ideas are used to further disenfranchise groups of local decision making, and the ability to determine how to raise their children (for example).

It was very exciting to meet authors I had read 'in the flesh' (so to speak). As it happened, we sat next to these two on the first morning. This is due to my habit of sitting near the front. We got talking, and, as I have thought that some of their ideas worked out very well in the way that Playcentre works (which is currently very non-establishment, in that it's not meeting government agendas either well or willingly), I was able to talk about how their ideas played out in my area.

(Hopefully I didn't bore their ears off!)

(I had a copy of their book in my motel, so later in the week I tracked down Gunnilla and got her to sign it for me. I felt a bit embarrassed about this, but heck, how often do you meet the author of a book you like when you actually have it with you?!)

ps, the pic is of the 1999 edition. I have the 2nd edition, published (and updated) in 2007.

Early Childhood Convention

I have put off blogging about Convention as I have needed space to get my head round it. Practically, there isn't going to be 'space' until my essay is done, so I'd better start writing comments anyway!

The 2007 Early Childhood Convention was held in Rotorua last week, from Sunday afternoon 23 September, to Friday afternoon 28 September. Bern and I both went. We had planned to attend together for 4 years (since the last Convention) as he went last time (in his role as early childhood boffin at the ERO policy unit) and I wanted to go, but missed out. The reason I missed out was that we had asked Bern's mum to come and stay with the kids (which she was happy to do), but she suddenly died of cancer during that year. So I stayed home.

Anyway, this year we are both postgrad education students, and I'm working in early childhood (and am committed to professional development) and Bern is doing general social research, with a preference for education, so all good enough reasons to send ourselves to Convention.

We had a ball! Bern shmoozed like mad (I think the 'nice' way to say this is 'networking'!!) and gave away all his business cards to people potentially wanting research done. I met loads of people I knew, including Playcentre, university, teacher and ministry people. We bought some books, (gave away a couple - another story), had dinner with friends, and together, went to loads of workshops which stretched us (and had each other to 'debrief' with afterwards) and generally had a whale of a time.

(Did I mention that it's the first time we've been away together without the kids for more than a weekend?)

The convention had about 1600 participants, and is apparently the largest early childhood convention anywhere in the world. It's probably so big because it's geared to appeal to teachers as well as academics and policy people. We set a meeting point so we could find each other at break times, and that worked well. We spent the ride home talking about the papers that we are both going to present next time - no pressure, as it's still 4 years off!