Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Early Childhood Education: Tools for Understanding Inequity and The Pursuit of Social Justice

Abstract

Formal early childhood education is a relatively modern institution to which increasing numbers of children are routinely exposed. Since the modern invention of childhood, the early childhood years have been increasingly established as a site for public and private investment in the name of individual and community development, the achievement of educational success, increased human productivity, and ultimately labour market productivity and excellence. As various forms of early childhood education have developed around the world, each has been imbued with values, perspectives, norms, and standards of its pioneers. They have also drawn upon and reinforced certain truths, knowledges, practices, and expectations about children, childhood, education and society. As microcosms of society whose inhabitants are largely novice members of the communities of which they are part, teachers in early childhood education are routinely addressing issues of exclusion, injustice, and inequity with children and families. This article illustrates how such issues manifest in knowledge and practice within the early years by drawing upon education research that engages with the methods and tools of French historian and poststructural philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

Foucault’s interests in the nexus of power-knowledge-truth and its consequences for life, offers avenues for comprehending how modern institutions, such as systems of early childhood education, invest in and bring about certain forms of knowledge and practice. His methods of genealogical inquiry and discourse analysis make visible the workings of power as it moves on, in, and through human bodies. The perspectives made visible by Foucauldian analyses show how techniques, developed and applied within institutions, form humans in particular ways. Thus it is possible to see the interplay between power-truth-knowledge, how things come to be, and how they may change.