Contesting Session

1. Contesting
MECMD3VNA Session 1
2017
Siobhan O’Connor

2. Structure
• What does contesting
mean?
• Why the need to contest?
The Crises facing the world:
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=YY9nxG2ZQ7w
Rising inequality
ttps://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=vA_ySzck_Pg
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=njttmk7t2-I

3. Why focus on ecce?
• Numbers of children attending some form of
ecce?
2017 statistics:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uplo
ads/attachment_data/file/622632/SFR29_2017_Text.
pdf
• Valued experiences for learning and development
• Beneficial for children? Why?

4. Is it of benefit?
• How do we know ecec is of benefit to children?
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uplo
ads/attachment_data/file/455670/RB455_Effective_p
re-
school_primary_and_secondary_education_project.p
df.pdf
• How else do we know ecec is of benefit to
children?

5. A good level of development:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652602/SFR60_2017_Text.pdf

6. A good level of development: can you consider why
we may want to apply the concept of contesting?
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/more-reception-pupils-
have-good-development-and-4-other-findings-from-
eyfs-results-data/
https://www.pre-school.org.uk/news/2016/10/latest-
eyfs-profile-statistics-show-results-continuing-
improve
http://www.eif.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/Final-Overview-Best-Start-
at-Home.pdf

7. What is ‘contesting’
• ‘There are many ways of thinking about, talking about and doing it (ECEC)
• There are alternatives, many discourses or narratives to be told about early childhood
education.
• This diversity, is welcome and inevitable, since we live in a world rich in diversity and multiple
perspectives
• Encounters with difference can provoke experimentation, movement and new thinking; the
recognition and valuing of alternatives and confrontation and contestation between them.
• ‘Contesting’: meaning confrontation and debates between ‘a multitude of perspectives’, an
everyday and everywhere occurrence, whether in services themselves, in their surrounding
communities, in the academy, or among policy-makers and politicians’
(All above quotes: : Moss, P., Dahlberg, G., Olsson, L. and Vandenbroeck, M (2016) Why contest
early childhood. Available
at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305817038_Why_contest_early_childhood )

8. One story of ECE: A
dominant discourse
• A narrative or story that has a
decisive influence on a particular
subject
• Offering explanations (theories) that
are formed within and in turn help
form paradigm.
• Paradigm can be understood as the
lens through which each and every
one of us views the world and makes
meaning of it, a combination of
beliefs, values and understandings (or
theories) that adds up to our
perspective on life.
• Or it can be understood as the
particular position that gives us a
particular perspective.
• Because of paradigm, our take
on things is necessarily
perspectival, partial and
provisional; there is no possibility
of being above the world, of
adopting a ‘god’s eye view’,
objective and universal.
• Paradigms are, like stories,
diverse and complex
• Paradigm is a choice, not an
inevitability.
• And these changes, in turn, have
profound consequences for
policy, provision and practice, not
least for early childhood
pedagogy.
(All quotes: : Moss, P., Dahlberg, G., Olsson, L. and Vandenbroeck, M (2016) Why contest early childhood. Available
at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305817038_Why_contest_early_childhood and Moss, P. (2017) Power and
resistance in early childhood education: From dominant discourse to democratic experimentalism. Journal of pedagogy, 8
(1): 11 – 32. DOI 10.1515/jped-2017-0001. Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/jped.2017.8.issue-
1/jped-2017-0001/jped-2017-0001.pdf

9. Dominant discourses
• An example of a dominant discourse that has
power and authority?
• Why has this dominant discourse emerged as so
powerful?
• What are the effects of this dominant discourse?

10. Migration

11. An example: ECE
• ‘The field of early childhood education may
contain a multitude of perspectives and a diversity
of narratives - but most have been marginalised to
‘what works’.
• ‘This what works discourse making universal truth
claims – in effect insisting it is the only story to be
told about early childhood education’

12. The Paradigms of ecec
• The dominant discourse views the world from the
position of a paradigm of positivism, believing the
world can be truly understood through the
discovery of universal, stable and replicable laws,
objectively arrived at through processes of
measurement and reduction that overcome
(control for) complexity and context. With natural
science as an ideal, this paradigm puts much faith
in the figure of the objective, rational and
authoritative expert, able to muster the evidence
that will reveal to us how things truly are and what
we must do to change them.

13. Contesting is necessary
• ‘To mitigate the dangers - create an environment
of critical thinking
• Treat all stories (our own included) with caution
and scepticism
• Where contesting is accepted practice, where
analyses of power relations are routinely brought
to bear on narratives, and where no narrative can
ease its way unchallenged to claim it is natural,
neutral and the only show in town’.

14. Critical thinking and
resistance
• ‘Resistance movement: to contest the dominant
discourse, resisting its truth claims and keeping
spaces open for alternative thought and action.
• Exploring alternatives and constantly
demonstrating how they may be put in practice’

15. • ‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces
real change. When that crisis occurs the actions
that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to
develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep
them alive and available until the politically
impossible becomes politically inevitable.
(Friedman, 1982, p. ix).’
• Have we reached a crisis? Stay tuned and attend
next week’s lecture 

16. bibliography
• Moss, P. (2017) Power and resistance in early
childhood education: From dominant discourse to
democratic experimentalism. Journal of pedagogy, 8
(1): 11 – 32. DOI 10.1515/jped-2017-0001. Available
at:
https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/jped.2017.8.i
ssue-1/jped-2017-0001/jped-2017-0001.pdf
• Moss, P., Dahlberg, G., Olsson, L. and Vandenbroeck,
M(2016) Why contest early childhood. Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305817038_
Why_contest_early_childhood