Out of Place: Economic imperialisms in early childhood education

Abstract

New Zealand has received world-wide accolades for its Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum, Te Whāriki. This paper explores the tension between economic imperialism, and a curriculum acknowledged as visionary. The foundational ideas of Te Whāriki emanate from sociocultural and anti-racist pedagogies. However, its implementation is hampered by the overarching policy discourse of Human Capital Theory (HCT), with its instrumental emphasis on economic outcomes. While Te Whāriki offers local cultural and educational possibilities, HCT is presented by those espousing economic disciplines, as having universal application. These tensions, largely unacknowledged and unexplored, place ECE teachers in positions of difficulty. While trying to meet aspirational curriculum goals in their daily practices, teachers’ attempts are constrained by supranational economic discourses. I ask how Edward Said’s (1999, Out of place: A memoir, New York, Knopf) concept of contrapuntal readings can offer spaces for resistance to the dominance of economics.

Keywords:

• early childhood education policy
• Edward Said
• economic imperialism
• Human Capital Theory

Acknowledgements

Thanks to two blind peer-reviewers for their thoughtful comments. Thanks also to John Moorfield for permission to use terms from his online Māori dictionary in the glossary (http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/)

Notes

1. An early (Ministry of Education, 1993) version had explicit attempts to share power between the dominant culture and iwi Māori. Such statements were removed or less evident in the later (Ministry of Education, 1996) version.