Finding Froebel in the environmental and economic climate of the 21st Century

This editorial for Part 2 of the Special Issue on the pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel situates the articles in the  context of economic pressures and environmental challenges in the Anthropocene. These different positions include environmental concerns, neoliberalism, and the fragility of how methods and curriculum issues can be interpreted, all which took us towards the complexity of life in the Anthropocene. Education Reform Movement. It highlights the contributions made to contemporary research and practice in early childhood education and advancing understanding of a Froebelian approach

Finding Froebel: National and Cross-National Pedagogical Paths in Froebelian Early Childhood Education

This editorial for special issue part 1 on the pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel situates the articles in the context of the Global Education Reform Movement. It highlights the contributions made to contemporary research and practice in early childhood education, and  advancing understanding of a Froebelian approach

Fugitive Futures and Knowledge Brokering: Adding Value, Habits, and Trust in Early Childhood Education and Educational Research

This article is a collective act of writing preoccupied with the future of education. Our perspectives are different but what we have in common is a wish to explore and contribute to educational innovation. Through knowledge brokering, we try to create openings toward expanded meaning fields nourishing valuable diversities of onto-epistemic cultures ultimately preparing students for fugitive futures. Our project is complex and pluriverse like any brokering process for Other and innovation might be. Both method and means however are simple: Through using the concept of oxymoroning as a rhetorical and epigrammatic device for revealing paradox and through this taking part in polysemantic ambiguity, new concepts, knowledges, and habits are possibilized. Through a montage of thoughts, theories, and stories, hopefully thinking for innovation is given a constant continuation.publishedVersio

Barns læring og omsorg henger ikke nødvendigvis sammen i barnehagen

Barn lærer hele tiden, det gjør alle levende vesener. Det å leve krever at hjernen tar inn informasjon fra kroppens sanseapparater og omgjør sansingene til minner som informerer våre handlinger

Exploring Love as a Professional Practice in Early Childhood Education: A Critical Hermeneutic Study

This study addresses love as a professional practice in early childhood education. The practice of love is largely unspoken and takes place within a profession associated with the traditional work of women. The professional practice of love in early childhood education involves a tension between the feminist plight for equality and freedom from preconceived notions of a woman’s ‘natural’ role as caretaker, and the ever present needs of children to be loved and cared for within the predominantly female driven field of early childhood education. The study is informed by a critical hermeneutic perspective and addresses love in the context of early childhood education from three perspectives: the conceptual perspective, the socio-historic perspective and the individual meaning perspective. These perspectives are explored in light of historical and current concepts of love, Foucault’s genealogical insights and additional key literature from the field of study. In response to the conceptual perspective, three common meanings of love in the context of early childhood education were identified: unifying, empathizing and active. Additionally, multiple dimensions of love were identified: the ethical dimension, the practical dimension and the physical dimension. In response to the socio-historic perspective, I found that discourses of love from the kindergarten movement have been obscured by the authority of scientific rationalism and, in Norway, the political goal of gender equality. In response to the individual meaning perspective, I found that discourses of love from the kindergarten movement have been obscured by the authority of scientific rationalism and, in Norway, the political goal of gender equality. In response to the individual meaning perspective, I found that kindergarten teacher’s individual experiences of love involved: the kindergarten teacher’s use of her body as a pedagogic tool, the practice of child guided pedagogy, and the perceived opposition of pedagogy and love. Shared joy between kindergarten teacher and child was also found to be a key experience. When the three perspectives were considered in light of each other, it was found that scientific discourses of pedagogy that have gained authority since the kindergarten movement could explain a perceived opposition between love and pedagogy today. It was also found that love, as described in this thesis, was found to be implicit in pedagogic practices mandated in the Framework Plan for the Tasks and Content for Kindergartens (Ministry of Education and Research, 2011), which kindergarten teachers adhere to. Implications regarding the further development of the professional practice of love are discussed

Care as concubine: stretching the boundaries of care, politics and power in early childhood education and care

The word ‘care’ has been removed from Norway’s most recent framework for early childhood teacher education. According to ECEC practice policy, care is foundational in ECEC and teachers are expected to care, yet caring is not mentioned in the Framework’s description of ECEC, nor is it included as a knowledge or skill goal. Why does care occupy a secondary position to education in ECEC policy development? This article uses Cathrine Malabou’s concept of plasticity and the image of the concubine to stretch conceptions of care in ECEC. Tronto’s care-ethics and the image of a concubine, who bears children for a man, but does not enjoy a legal status in society act as a catalyst for thinking differently about how care is positioned and used politically, domestically and professionally

Embracing uncertainty: a diffractive approach to love in the context of early childhood education and care

Young children spend an increasing amount of time in out of home care, as neuroscientific research reveals the pivotal role love and touch plays in children’s development. In response to this new knowledge, there is a growing interest in love and touch in the context of early childhood education. Sadly, cases of sexual abuse in ECEC settings have ignited fear and uncertainty among stakeholders in regards to what kind of touch and how much love is appropriate to feel for children in ECEC. Research exploring love in early childhood education tends therefore to be concerned with creating certainty in regards to love as a safe and healthy practice. This focus, though neccesary to develop knowledge about love, also silences other uncertain aspects of love in the context of early childhood education that affect early childhood educators. Drawing on Karen Barad’s diffraction methodology, this article engages a diffractive analysis and transforms educators’ solicited narratives of love in pedagogic practice into love poems. The poems attend to the overflowing quality of love as an uncertain, ephemeral phenomenon, invoking moments of pleasure and the desire to connect with children as personal matters, rather than solely professional concerns

Every rose has its thorns: Domesticity and care beyond the dyad in ECEC

Care is traditionally researched in ECEC as a dyadic, human phenomenon that relies heavily of tropes of females as care providers. The assumption that care is produced in dyadic relationships occludes material care practices that occur beyond the dyad. Drawing on Bernice Fisher and Joan Tronto’s care ethics and Karen Barad’s focus on the agency of materiality, I have sought to explore how care is produced outside of dyadic relations in ECEC and how that care relates to domestic practices and flourishing in ECEC

Slaughtering a cow in early childhood education: Pedagogic meetings with destruction as change

This article explores the concept of change in education through an examination of the entangled processes of destruction and creation made visible during a Norwegian kindergarten’s tradition of participating in a cow-slaughter in its local community.  The article offers a methodological exploration, activating the theoretical perspectives of relational ontology, plasticity and critical animal studies. We present the event as a narrative and analyze it through these three perspectives, with special attention paid to unintentional change and change as an ontological concept. The discussion illuminates how children grasped destruction as change through creativity and play, and how ethical complexities are entangled with education, animal-based food production, traditions, play, and research

Slaughtering a cow in early childhood education: Pedagogic meetings with destruction as change

This article explores the concept of change in education through an examination of the entangled processes of destruction and creation made visible during a Norwegian kindergarten’s tradition of participating in a cow-slaughter in its local community. The article offers a methodological exploration, activating the theoretical perspectives of relational ontology, plasticity and critical animal studies. We present the event as a narrative and analyze it through these three perspectives, with special attention paid to unintentional change and change as an ontological concept. The discussion illuminates how children grasped destruction as change through creativity and play, and how ethical complexities are entangled with education, animal-based food production, traditions, play, and research