ChatGPT, care and the ethical dilemmas entangled with teaching and research in the early years

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Care as a concept is intricately entangled with our theories and practices in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). The eleven articles in this issue show the striking and intriguing ways in which care manifests itself. My curiosity piqued, I turn to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) application ChatGPT and input various prompts about care. This recently released app produces human-like text in conversational mode. This poses fundamental questions about the relationship between humans and machines, ranging from issues about intellectual property, authorship and ownership of ideas (Peters et al. 2023), to political concern for workers in the Global South who are paid a pittance to ‘clean up’ the violent, racist, homophobic and sexual content that circulates on the (dark) web. This is traumatic for the workers involved who, on the margins, contribute to the billion-dollar Silicon Valley industries such as Google and Microsoft (Perrigo 2023). Already entangled in this complex epistemological, ethical and ontological human-machine labour relationship (Barad 2007), I continue my search. As posthumanists acknowledge, humans and more-than-humans (animals, machines, curriculum guidance, microbes, etc) are ontologically interdependent – part of the same world. As I narrow down my prompts to the philosophical use of the term ‘care’ a list of principles emerges. I thank the machine.

Lightly edited, ChatGPT gives the summary below. The app is descriptive and draws from ‘what is around’ (after extensive filtering). These selection processes are neither transparent nor open to question. Justification, verification, accuracy or truth are a ‘post-hoc activity’. Like a parrot, ChatGPT lacks critical thinking and the ability to evaluate the credibility of sources or their normativity (Peters et al. 2023, 6, 15–17).

Caring practitioners look after children’s holistic development (physical, emotional, social, cognitive and creative); place each individual unique child in the centre of the learning process; uphold the rights of all children in their care; ensure their well-being; support relationship building; mediate play-based learning; instil a love for life-long learning; spark curiosity; value, respect and celebrate each child’s unique background, culture, language and abilities; foster a nurturing environment of acceptance and mutual understanding; engage in reflective practice to ensure their own actions are ethical, positive, and conducive to learning; create an emergent curriculum that builds on children’s own interests; collaborate with families, communities, policymakers and other stakeholders and so on.

Of course, these objectives sound familiar to us in the caring professions; research in this volume’s articles are informed by them. They assume particular adult-child relationships, with the adult taking responsibility for providing care.

Articles in EECERJ tend to go beyond practical strategies and application of methods. They often explore dilemmas generated by the underlying beliefs, values and principles that guide educators when caring for children. As Gajek and Wysłowska report in the first article in this volume, professional dilemmas seem to be inevitable and permanently embedded in caregivers’ interactional work. The profession suffers low pay and lack of prestige and trust in the careworkers’ competency – in this case Polish caregivers in ECEC centres. The authors’ analysis of examples from practice strongly resonates with my own experiences of exploring professional dilemmas with early-year students in South Africa and Finland (Murris 2022). Careworkers’ marginalisation can cause profound contradictions and stress. Their role can be confusing and ambiguous. Legally, they are ‘in loco parentis’ as guardians of children’s safety and well-being. But there is a lack of clarity and intrinsic ambiguity in, e.g. how tenderness and care can be expressed (verbally as well as physically). Parents’ needs and wishes are always in the background of careworkers’ ethical decision-making.

The parental role in carework is explored in the second article. Ebrahim’s study on male engagement in ECEC in Africa concludes that deeply engrained and rigid gender roles form a significant barrier to men’s engagement in childcare. She speculates that affirmative intervention by male religious and traditional leaders could help build more caring masculinities and might popularise and normalise men’s integration as careworkers. The cultural dimension of the feminisation of carework is often spoken about in a feminist ethic of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). In the third article, colleagues in Turkey add another layer of complexity to the genderedness of our profession. Sak et al. say carework itself has been given feminine characteristics, such as patience, nurturing and intuition, which discourages male teachers. This reflects stereotypical beliefs about men being more focused on discipline and being emotionally distant at work and in relationships. The article examines an enhancement programme to motivate men to enter the profession.

The fourth article examines the pivotal importance societal attitudes play in how carework is valued and appreciated and by whom. Transitioning from ECEC to compulsory school environments depends on building respectful and reciprocal relationships between children, parents and other educators across sectors. Children’s transitioning journey should be like steadily crossing a bridge, but as Rouse, Garner and Nicholas suggest, in Australia there is a lack of understanding and appreciation of the role formal School Aged Care (SAC) professionals play in reaching this significant milestone for children and their families. Often viewed as ‘child-minders’, and ‘only’ involving children in ‘recreation, play and leisure’, SAC professionals are not regarded (and don’t regard themselves!) as full members of the school community.

The authors of the fifth article highlight the marginalisation of children’s perspectives in Romania, particularly controversial in the context of the (painful) history of Romanian creches. They focus on what counts as quality in ECEC by experts, parents and practitioners. Their research reveals similarities foregrounding professional qualifications, child-centredness, spaces, health and safety, but that practitioners are guided more by parents’ interests than experts are. Interestingly, the authors the authors Ulrich Hygum and Hygum report that close surveillance is used during ‘risky play’. At the same time, the careworker is like a ‘substitute mother’ – a reminder of how feminine character traits are imposed on carework. The sixth article is another interesting study on quality in the underresearched context of Austrian ECEC. Smidt and Embacher discuss how interactions between teachers, children, colleagues and other stakeholders depends on work experience, educational resources and labour conditions, such as working hours and job security.

In the seventh article, colleagues in Spain stipulate that quality provision should be available for all children, including those with disabilities. This benefits not only the children, but society as a whole. Drawing on prior research that peer attitudes about normalcy might be the biggest challenge for inclusion, Aparicio Puerta et al. developed an instrument to assess attitudes. However, they report that children might be inhibited in their responses, not stick to the tasks, or be unable to identify and express their ideas. Indeed, including young children in research poses creative challenges about research instruments, but it would be ironic to exclude them from research about inclusion! Providing the right conditions to listen to children attentively and take their ideas seriously inevitably causes moral dilemmas and generates salient political issues about quality (Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999) and adult-child relations. It also provokes important questions about who is doing the caring and what care means in education. To answers these questions we need to be aware of our power as educators and the extent we trust children’s ability to make moral and other judgments (Haynes 2005).

We can turn to exemplary ECEC theories and practices for pedagogical inspiration (in all phases of education) (Murris and Haynes 2020). Reggio Emilia is one such example, especially when combined with Philosophy for Children (Murris 2017). These democratic pedagogies are not age-bound (Murris 2000). Children are rarely given the freedom to ask open-ended questions that are important to them, sometimes about existential and taboo subjects such as death and dying, or politics, religion or race. These often provoke censorial responses (Haynes and Murris 2010; 2012). Children’s pertinent questions can alarm practitioners because they touch on adults’ deeply-held beliefs, personal sensitivities or moral fears. As adults, we patrol the boundaries of privacy and confidentiality (Haynes 2005). Indeed, as figures of authority, we perform various, sometimes competing roles (Murris and Haynes 2020). Insurance policies or detailed guidelines are impossible, because the uniqueness of each ‘case’ in its complexity fails to fit their generalities. Caring for truth and reasonableness can cause grief, concern, sorrow and trouble as the Middle English word for ‘care’ (caren/carien) etymologically suggests.

As public servants, educators don’t operate in a vacuum. They are accountable and under constant pressure to abide by rules and regulations set by local education authorities and national governments. They are under pressure by school leaders, funding agencies and – strongly present in this volume – parents as stakeholders. Although not explicitly about moral values or the ‘minor politics’ of ECEC (Dahlberg and Moss 2004), the next two articles are motivated by how and what children learn through play.

The need to link play-based learning and academic achievement is one example of how philosophical principles rarely stand on their own. As Wu in the eighth article in this issue argues, curriculum constraints and parental pressure for academic achievement encourage instrumental approaches to play. From the theoretical baseline that play and learning are inseparable and that play is a necessary element of child-centred learning and whole-person development in preschool education, the author proposes returning to Fröbel's original writings. For Fröbel, whilst play is the best way to educate children, it is often misunderstood as free play, laissez-faire, simply ‘stepping back’.

The nineth article is also motivated by the need to convince parents that play is beneficial for children's social and academic development. It isn’t sufficient that the national curriculum’s advice to preschool educators is to incorporate play activities in their teaching. Wing Kai Fung and Kevin Kien Hoa Chung argue that although much research suggests a connection between young children’s prosocial skills (e.g. sharing play materials and taking turns, understanding others’ perspectives and feelings, and offering help to those in need) as predictors of their school readiness, no evidence has been found for the important link between playfulness (e.g. leading and entering group play, contributing interesting and imaginative play ideas, and creating positive emotional exchanges among peers) and school readiness.

The tenth article reveals some of the complexities involved when observing children at play. Rantala and Heikkilä investigate whether Swedish teachers can tell the difference between play that is abusive and play that has led to some kind of ‘normal’ dispute or conflict. After all, pre-school children are routinely involved in disputes, fights, pushing, kicks and sometimes even bites during play. This is often not acknowledged as children are positioned as innocent and vulnerable in Western childhood discourses (Murris 2016). Childhood, just like care, is rarely viewed as anything else but good, beneficial and ethical, in other words, innocent (Hohti and Tammi 2019). The discourse about abuse is often psychologised and increasingly legalised, thereby missing out on opportunities for educational responses to conflict. Important values such as caring for ‘others’ and respect, can be taught, especially during conflict when learning is more experiential and powerful.

A non-idealised vision of care involves acknowledging our own involvement in perpetuating dominant values (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). Care goes beyond being nice or kind to each other, and involves material-discursive practices of noticing, attuning to and paying attention to the ‘other’, not just other humans, but also the ‘more-than-human’, such as other animals, organisms, physical forces, spiritual entities and even machines (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). A posthumanist ethic implies responding in ways that render each other capable, whether human or more-than-human. The final article in this issue also touches upon posthumanism when children and educators play across the Zoom digital platform.

Fleer and Rai’s article expresses care for families in daycare centres in Australia and how they play. They argue that they are often isolated geographically and left out of digital play research. Grounded in Vygotskyan theories of play, the article imagines how to enact and recreate a picturebook by Pat Hutchins, although it is unclear how their analysis connects with the posthumanist take on the relation between the digital and the real world. The use of the material (affective maps) and the digital itself remain conceptualised in the service of the humans at play.

This volume exemplifies how research in ECEC is inseparable from the apparatuses that help produce caring practices, e.g. the curriculum, policy documents, recording instruments, the furniture and the discourses and theories we enact in our pedagogical or research practices (Murris 2022). I conclude by asking ChatGPT to summarise a posthumanist approach to care in education. It gives me too much to share here and some of it is mistaken or incomplete. But I do enjoy our chats. The very experience reaffirms that ‘my’ cognition is not confined to my mind alone. My thinking is ‘distributed’ and always a ‘thinking-with’, always in relation (Haraway 2016). Thinking-with care can lead enquiries into difficult and troubled areas, provoking fundamental and fascinating professional dilemmas for us to consider. I thank the machine, again.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2023.2250218)