When texts become action. The institutional circuit of early childhood intervention

ABSTRACT

Building on ideals of social cohesion, equality of opportunities and socio-economic benefits, there has been an increasing awareness in Norway of kindergarten employees’ responsibility to initiate early childhood intervention. The process of identifying children in need of intervention involves a complex chain of actions in which documentation is at stake. A massive textual representation of children takes place, in which children are categorized as certain types. The textually-mediated social construction of children has feedback effects on the categories and the classification system itself. The article builds on an institutional ethnography of early childhood intervention, starting within the standpoint of kindergarten staff, and provides a detailed account of an institutional circuit. It displays how texts within this circuit contribute to rendering certain actions institutionally accountable.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood intervention
• accountability
• classification
• institutional ethnography
• institutional circuit

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Kindergarten in Norway is not free of charge, but strongly subsidized by the state, and with reduced costs for low-income families. As a result, children from all social categories attend kindergarten. In 2006 the responsibility for the kindergarten sector was moved from the Ministry of Families to the Ministry of Education, underlining the educational dimension of kindergarten attendance. Still, the ideals of play, care, natural growth and development are highly valued in the kindergarten sector in Norway (Seland 2009). In this article I use the term kindergarten for daycare-services aimed at children below school age, since it is the term that is most commonly used in public documents, e.g. the Framework plan. It is important to note that kindergarten in Norway comprises children from 1 to 6 years old, which is the age for compulsory school entry.

2 The second interviews were conducted with the kindergarten leaders in order to obtain a more detailed understanding of the use of texts in the identification of concern children and subsequent intervention process.

3 The data collection was conducted in accordance with national norms for research ethics. Ethical approval was granted by the Norwegian Center for Research Data (NSD).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Agder and the County Governor of Aust-Agder as a doctoral grant.