The community with the bad brain? – neuroscience as discourse in early childhood intervention

ABSTRACT

The focus of this article is on understanding Early Intervention as a discourse; how it is generated and reproduced and how it makes possible certain processes and practices and limits others. In particular the research study considers the dominant discourse of neuroscience associated with the notion of early childhood and how this is translated in policy and practice. This is explored through a single complex case study of a self-proclaimed Early Intervention City in Northern Ireland. The study findings highlight the ways in which the policy discourse, claiming an evidence base from neuroscience, locates the origin of social problems in a deficit model of neurological development in early childhood and advocates parenting programmes as a solution which will bring transformative change. The analysis of accounts from the field demonstrated a high degree of critical engagement amongst parents/carers, programme providers and policy makers. While ‘silver bullet’ claims from evidence-based programmes persist and ‘home grown’ initiatives promise community contextualised solutions, social inequalities for young children in the case study area remain persistently intractable.

KEYWORDS:

• Early intervention
• neuroscience
• discourse
• policy
• communities
• Bourdieu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Ballymore is the city which is the subject of the case study and in which the four neighbourhoods, North River, South River, West River and East River are located. Unless stated otherwise, much of the information drawn on with regard to Ballymore including demographic and economic trends and statistics has been derived from a number of publications which because of their focus on Ballymore have not been explicitly cited to ensure confidentiality. Certain details relating to the neighbourhoods and the city have either been removed or altered, or false ones added to maintain anonymity. Such details are not, however, significant to the overall argument set out in the study.

2 The dance of reciprocity in the EI programme describes the interaction between a baby and an adult where both the baby and the adult are involved in the initiation, regulation and termination of the interaction.