Social and Historical Perspectives Flashcards
1
Q
ECCE shaped by:
A
a complex set of factors (formative influences)
- changing social, economic and demographic circumstances
- defining conditions and events at particular times in history
- enduring societal values, beliefs, myths and preoccupations
- societal role and interests of key institutions (government, business, religious institutions) and ideas about what children like and what they need
2
Q
ECCE systems in different countries
A
- ECCE systems vary from country to country
- each country’s system reflects its distinct context, history demographics priorities and culture
3
Q
ECCE systems evolve because..
A
- social needs change
- labor markets shift
- political regimes change
- citizens of the country can become more aware of the consequences of priorities, choices and values and introduce that awareness into public debate
- advocates emerge with specific policy agendas
- knowledge base for policy and practice changes
4
Q
America and the ECCE
A
- Americans exhibit qualities that keep the ECCE unsettled such as,
- willingness to experiment
- ambivalence about core beliefs
- recognize a gap between their ideals and their actual behavior
- never done trying to figure out how to define and address children’s needs and families’ needs
5
Q
Core American Ideas and Beliefs
A
- shape ECCE in the US
- belief that individual interests and rights take precedence over common interests
- distrust of government
- marketplace is best guide and framework for common life as people
- those with economic power have a right to a greater voice
- view of families as a counter-weight to a harsh and unforgiving marketplace
- belief in family privacy rights
- childrearing is a private right and responsibility
- at the same time: belief that there exists a common understanding of what good childrearing consists of
- reification of motherhood and ambivalence towards mothers of young children who choose to work
- family self-sufficiency- families largely responsible for their own well-being
- when families cannot meet their own needs: responsibility first falls to local and private structures and only later to government
- tendency to separate children’s fate from those of their parents (distinction between child and family welfare)
- belief that circumstances of a person’s birth should not determine his or her eventual position in society or success in life
- belief that a certain degree of inequity is natural
- education is the great leveler of inequality - most powerful vehicle for social and economic mobility
- minimize differences
- social problem solving involves experimenting and finding out what works
6
Q
Social welfare system
A
- shaped by the search for a response to economic insecurity, hardship and inequality that was adequately strong yet would not force Americans to question basic assumptions and beliefs, social and economic arrangements
- shaped more by crisis than deliberate debate about needs, rights, obligations, roles
- evolved as a residual, treatment/remediation-oriented and categorical system rather than a normatively based, developmentally oriented and universal system
7
Q
Maternalist social welfare system in US
A
- focus on women’s and children’s issues, especially domestic issues (rather than on broad socioeconomic issues)
8
Q
US social welfare framework
A
- marked by a tendency to use helping services as an expression of our sense of responsibility to vulnerable children and families
- tendency to make distinctions among those who are poor- to assess, to categorize, to calculate deservingness, to help carefully rather than whole heartedly (worry about perverse effects of helping)
9
Q
child vs family welfare
A
- viewed as a separate phenomena
- viewed through a psychological lens
- function of character, quality of decision making and son on
10
Q
ECCE
A
- child focused system
- de-emphasis on attending to families’ basic needs and rights
- justify ECCE by ability to address societal challenges (economic inequality, inequality in schooling, assimilation of immigrants, righting past social wrongs, etc)
- has become our main vehicle for responding to poverty and vulnerability
11
Q
ECCE
A
in instrumental terms rather than as an inherent public good
12
Q
ECCE
A
- decentralized
- mixed system
- partly private, partly public
- regulation in many places
- religiously sponsored component which is exempt from rules and regulations of larger system
13
Q
ECCE and goals
A
- mixture of goals!
- protecting children, providing basic care, socializing children, compensating for poor and immigrant parents’ limitations as teachers, enriching
- *mix of purposes with different goals for poor children and their more economically advantaged peers– a two-tiered system
14
Q
ECCE funding and value
A
- inadequately and in my instances reluctantly funded system
- devalued ECCE workforce due to not being supported with public resources (also devaluing of difficulty of work and importance of work)
15
Q
ECCE changing over past two decades
A
- assuming a growing role and responsibility for ECCE policy, funding and program development
- dramatic increase in maternal employment rates (ecce experiences are now normative for kids)
- idea that early childhood is a critical period more accepted now
- becoming a NATIONAL, PUBLIC CONCERN not a local private concern anymore
- standardizing ECCE
16
Q
shift from ECCE as a dimension of child and family welfare to ECCE as a vehicle for addressing education concerns
A
- linkage of ECCE to public school agendas
- close achievement gap
- viewed as starting point for elementary education
17
Q
complicating variables in ECCE
A
- still trying to define and address children and families’ needs (competing impulses)
- EC concerns are multi dimensional
- difficult to create a coherent field (multiple histories, philosophies, purposes)
- develop out of crisis rather than deliberate debate
- remains unclear who can and should speak up about these issues for children and families
- reluctance to acknowledge gap between ideals and realities for families - families bear brunt of social and economic forces
18
Q
on-going work for the field
A
- finding right rationale and expectations for ECCE
- giving ECCE deeper cultural authenticity
- more reflective and inclusive discussions about goals and expectations
- finding the right model for ECCE
- working through what it might mean for parents to have a better defined role in contributing to policy discussion and learners about the field
- figuring out how ECCE should relate to schooling
- holding on to ECCE’s distinct identity and values
- helping families find an approach to cope with demands of work and child rearing
- deciding how standardized ECCE should be
- figuring out what equal treatment is for kids
- figuring out how to make sense of and respond to diversity
- approaches that do not split children and parents
19
Q
Premises of Schooling
A
- socialization experiences
- equalize life opportunity
- more efficient to group children of same age together for purposes of teaching/learning (together in large schools, lowering the fixed cost per child, teach to the middle)
- children will be motivated by competition with peers
- standardized tests allow children to be compared to one another and capture what they have mastered
20
Q
Problems with Schooling
A
- children come to school with sizable differences in life experience, background knowledge, mastery of school related dispositions, self-regulatory capacities, understandings of school, home language, resources etc
- most children start school feeling good about themselves, but this declines as children progress through school
- standardized expectations are apparent by kindergarten
- some children don’t fit the particular set of strengths valued by schools
21
Q
Schools, race/class
A
- quality of schools (physical resources, skill and experience of teachers, class size, resources) varies by social class, race, ethnicity and neighborhood
- schools continue to be segregated by race and class
- children of color are often taught by teachers from different racial and cultural backgrounds than their own. These teachers bring assumptions to the classroom that complicate their ability to reach children.
22
Q
competitive model of schooling
A
- children of the same age are discouraged from learning together or helping each other
- older children have little opportunity to help younger ones
- school is a one way process, minimize what children bring to school from home/community
- schools leave it to children to bridge the worlds of home and school
- blame placed on parents/communities when children struggle in school, never on the school itself
23
Q
labeling
A
-stigmatizing, but also help to identify and provide extra help to children who are struggling in school
24
Q
less advantaged children
A
- lose learning gains they made during the school year over the summer months
- school makes a bigger difference for less advantaged children because differences in non-school environments are greater among different groups of children than are differences in school environments
25
Solutions to schooling
- reduce differences in what children bring to school through preschool education
- focus on schools (reform efforts have focused on every imaginable macro and micro aspect of school life)
PK3: meeting unique developmental needs of children from preschool through grade 3, schooling requires responsive, sensitive relationally-oriented teaching, curriculum planning across grade levels
26
PK3
preschool program well integrated into the school
- small class sizes
- differentiate instruction for varying pace of learning
- connecting parents key to school experience
27
standardized tests
- focusing learning time on teaching to teach
28
charter schools
- publicly funded, but privately operated schools
- exempt from policies of the public school system
- rules negotiated by teachers' unions
- impossible to characterize
- run by community based organizations, churches, philanthropists, universities, companies
- no evidence that charter school students do any better or worse
- often exhausting for founders and staff
29
Martha Minow and differences in America
* history of African Americans efforts to achieve integration in education
* history of education for disabled children
* history of bilingual education
all three used courts to remedy past and continuing wrongs
- all three drew on constitutional rights
- integration/inclusion (for african american and children with disabilities)
- right to maintain a distinct cultural identity
- equal treatment
- dilemma of identifying children by a particular characteristic
- neglect of full individual self
30
Disability
- both a real and social construction
- new forms of disabilities are discovered and receive social recognition
- prevalence rates of certain disabilities change (due to changes in cultural preoccupations, knowledge, public policy and other factors)
31
educational services to children with disabilities
- prior to 1960s: exclusion
- placement in separate programs (or institutionalization)
- ARC (associations for retarded citizens): advocates for children and adults with disabilities, fought that exclusion denied them rights such as due process and equal protection
1975: Education for All Handicapped Children Act
- required states to provide a free, individualized public education to all disabled children in the least restrictive environment (law re-authorized every 5 years or so, now called IDEA), at first for children 5-18 now 3-21
* overrepresentation of children of color in stigmatized categories of disability
- fed government only pays for about 10% or less of total costs of special education
32
Disabilities
- growing proportion of children with learning disability (40-45%) or speech language impairment (30%) followed by mental retardation (10%) or emotional disturbance
- attentional/behavioral disorders also growing but meaning and diagnosis are variable
- another growing category is children with autism
33
inclusion
- gradually greater presence of children with disabilities in regular classrooms
- aids assigned to provide individual attention
- core classroom activities should in theory be modified to accommodate learning needs of children with disabilities, but typically are not
34
Challenges with Inclusion
- pushing for inclusion actually points out differences
- some have fought that approaches designed for children with disabilities are also beneficial for non-disabled peers
- class issues: more advantaged families demand attention and resources (whereas less advantaged tend to back away from this)
35
Language Policy
- permissive periods of language policy (18th and 19th century)
restrictive periods- 20th century
36
ELLS
1/3 of children live in homes where a language (other than English is spoken)
- language is the core of personal identity and at the same time mediates access to the curriculum of schooling and later on access to jobs
- bilingualism
- using courts and using constitutional arguments to establish the right to be taught in one's home language, if that is necessary for understanding educational material
- passage of legislation to mandate states to provide some kind of bilingual education
37
Bilingual education
- interpreted differently
- bilingualism is sometimes viewed as a strength and sometimes as a vulnerability
- bilingual children benefit form a heightened metalinguistic awareness
- meta-cultural awareness too
- children can sometimes be trapped between two languages
- use hybrid model: younger ELLs need physical artifacts, gestures, visual aids, repetition more concrete conversations and teachers who can move back and forth between English and home language
38
Challenges of ELL
- children are reduced to language learners and ignore the fact that they have the same complex learning and developmental profiles as other kids
- teachers with ELL learners in their class feel ill-equipped and inadequately supported
- inclusion challenges apply
- rate of english proficiency is variable
- we still lack adequately clear picture of developmental processes involved in second language literacy
- when ELLs are struggling academically, it is difficult to sort out the causes
- social class issues interact with ELL issues
- subtractive process (losing one's home language)
