Re-imagining the image of the educator in post-secondary early childhood education: calling for epistemic justice

ABSTRACT

Early childhood education (ECE) spaces within settler-colonial societies operate as sites of violence and oppression whereby non-conformity to white, rational, ableist, cisgender norms is weaponised as developmental deficits. In this paper, we refer to the refusals of non-dominant ways of knowing as forms of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). We describe the foundational underpinnings of ECE throughout the twentieth century in Ontario, Canada and trace how normative ideas of children, educators, education, and childhood developed through a largely positivist, developmental orientation. Ultimately, we call for epistemic justice (Fricker 2007) as an emancipatory way forward in post-secondary ECE programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Child studies
• epistemic injustice
• early childhood education
• Canada
• William Blatz

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use the term ‘early childhood education’ or ‘ECE’, though we wish to be explicit in our understanding of care as foundational to any conceptualisation of education.

2. When we use the term ‘developmentalism’, we are referring to the biomedical, psychological theories that drove the emergence of Early Childhood Studies as a discipline. Child development knowledge, as it exists today, came about through Enlightenment philosophical theories developed in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (Fallace 2015; Varga 2011, 2018, 2020).

3. We appreciate this thought from a generous reviewer.

4. Ontario Canada is the only jurisdiction in North America that has a regulatory college for Early Childhood Educators (the College of Early Childhood Educators or CECE). The College of Early Childhood Educators has been formed since the Early Childhood Educators Act 2007, which was enacted in 2009 (see College of Early Childhood Educators, n.d.). ECEs must registered with the CECE in order to practice and are held accountable to the CECE’s Ethics and Standards of Practice. Disciplinary action (including fines and the revocation of one’s RECE status, if/when ECEs violate these standards).

5. We realise that conversations around if femininity can be hegemonic are complex and we are tacitly aware of how femmephobia operates societally to devalue and regulate femininity and feminine care and emotional labour. Please see Davies and Hoskin (2021) for more, as well as relevant femme theory literature.

6. Schools’ is in quotation marks because these were not places of education or care, but violence.

7. While residential schools have been closed for over twenty years, it’s worth noting that the child ‘welfare’ system has largely picked up where these schools left off (see Blackstock, Bamblett, and Black 2020). From the 1960s − 1990s child welfare agencies removed and adopted out thousands of Indigenous children to white families that adhered to child development principles and practices (referred to as the ‘Sixties Scoop’). Such racist practices are still alive and well today as illustrated by the fact that the child welfare system is disproportionately comprised of Indigenous (and other racialised) children (Blackstock, Bamblett, and Black 2020).

8. Please see Kelly, Manning, et al. (2021), Kelly et al. (2021), described in Davies (2023a, 2023), Davies and Joy (2023), and Davies, Brewer, et al. (2022).

9. There were many institutes for child studies/home economics colleges in Canada, with these being only two of many institutions where eugenics and euthenics ideas were taught.

10. However, forcibly removing every Indigenous child from their mother, guardians, community, and family was not considered problematic.

11. We would like to articulate how there are many academics who work in critical race theory and Black feminisms who are also making similar important calls in the field in different global contexts. One important example is the work of Pérez and Saavedra (2017).

12. We would like to acknowledge that there are many academics who work in critical race theory and Black feminisms who are also making similar important calls in the field in different global contexts. One important example is the work of Pérez and Saavedra (2017).