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"It's Like a Baby Jail!" Power & Early Childhood Education w/ Dr. Chloë Keegan
4 Plays25 days ago
I’m joined today by Dr Chloe Keegan. Chloe Keegan is Lecturer of Early Childhood Education in the Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education in Maynooth University, Ireland.
Dr Keegan is an early childhood expert with over a decade of experience as an educator, researcher, and policy advocate. Her work focuses on children's rights and power, play and participation, and influencing practice and policy in early education. She completed her doctoral thesis at Maynooth University, developing an innovative method using GoPro cameras to involve children as co-researchers in studying power dynamics. Her research also explores the impact of play bans on children’s well-being, moral development, the influence of stereotypical media on children’s views of sex, gender, and race, and participatory art-based methods in children’s research and video-based reflective practices.
Connect w/ Dr Keegan on LinkedIn
Full thesis: It's Like a Baby Jail
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Transcript
Interconnectedness of Light and Community
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True light is dependent on the presence of other lights.
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Take the others away and darkness results.
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Yet, the reverse is not true.
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Take away darkness and there is only more darkness.
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Darkness can exist by itself.
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Light cannot.
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In stressful, uncertain times, when cynical powers attempt to divide and isolate us, community and solidarity are acts of resistance.
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But there are no superheroes here and no simple answers to be found.
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Only the quest for connection.
Humanizing Education Through Discourse
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In 2025, we are responding to the need for community and solidarity in uncertain times by turning Conference to Restore Humanity into a model for humanizing critical discourse and dialogue, bringing together students and teachers, researchers and doers, thinkers and visionaries to explore complex topics in education and illuminate a path forward together.
Learning from Peripheral Education Spaces
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What if instead of viewing the fringes as an educational afterthought, we treated them as a blueprint for what schools could become?
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In our opening flipped keynote, Dr. Sarah Fine will explore what can be learned from spaces that are often seen as peripheral to the core purposes of school.
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Elective courses, career and technical education pathways, alternative education programs, and extracurricular activities.
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These spaces carry powerful lessons about how to design for authentic relationships and deeper learning.
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And we are taking our flipped keynote model one step further by adding fireside chats, moderated panel discussions, followed by audience Q&A.
Addressing Education's Challenges with AI and Edtech
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Shanae Bond, Maria Monroe-Schuster, Luckett Keish, and Will Richardson will lead us in dialogue about the challenges facing education today and how we can collectively address them in 2025 and beyond.
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Audrey Waters, Shayna V. White, V. Dow, and Charles Logan will help us answer what, if anything, should be the relationship of AI and edtech to education.
Indigenous Perspectives and Educational Strategies
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We'll also be hosting a student panel of young people from Great Plains Action Society, an Indigenous-led grassroots organization advocating for Indigenous rights, to speak to their experiences and perspectives as Indigenous youth today.
00:02:17
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And instead of week-long learning tracks as we've had in the past, we are including two-hour daily workshops with expert practitioners.
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Nawal Karuni will help participants understand and connect family practices to curriculum to create deeper, more authentic caregiver collaborations.
00:02:35
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Dr. Emma McMain reimagines SEL as open dialogue, not a checklist, connecting social and emotional learning to culture and society.
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Angela Stockman invites participants to explore how pedagogical documentation can serve as an act of stewardship, honoring, preserving, and nurturing rich narratives about learners and learning.
Conference Details and Introduction to Podcast
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And we'll continue to use our Discord as a hub for camaraderie, community, and to keep the conversation going beyond the live events.
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Our virtual conference to restore humanity 2025 runs July 21st through the 23rd.
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To make this year as accessible and sustainable as ever, we've cut the ticket price to just 50 bucks.
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You can learn more about conference to restore humanity and register on our website at human restoration project.org slash conference.
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Thank you so much for joining us on our quest for connection as we continue the journey to restore humanity to education together.
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Thank you.
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Hello and welcome to episode 168 of the Human Restoration Project podcast.
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My name is Nick Covington.
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Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Dan Carney, Kevin Gannon, and Julia Valenti.
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Thank you all so much for your ongoing support.
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I'm joined today by Dr. Chloe Keegan.
Dr. Chloe Keegan on Children's Rights and Education
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Chloe Keegan is a lecturer of early childhood education in the, I did not think to look up any of the pronunciation of these words, Frobel?
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so close so close it's okay that's gonna be a barrier to my irish visa isn't it the not even it's not even irish it's some people say froble so it's german yeah okay i would have said that don't worry okay uh department of primary and early education in and i would have said maynooth but oh maynooth okay i got you university in ireland this is why this is re-recorded i'm sweating this is so embarrassing um
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Dr. Keegan is an early childhood expert with over a decade of experience as an educator, researcher, and policy advocate.
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Her work focuses on children's rights and power, play and participation, and influencing practice and policy in early education.
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She completed her doctoral thesis at Maynooth University, developing an innovative method using GoPro cameras that we'll talk about to involve children as co-researchers in studying power dynamics.
00:05:04
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Her research also explores the impact of play bands on children's well-being,
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moral development, the influence of stereotypical media on children's views of sex, gender, and race, and participatory art-based methods in children's research and video-based reflective practices.
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Thank you so much, Dr. Keegan, for joining me today.
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No problem.
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Very happy to be here.
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Great intro.
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You really dug deep.
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Oh, I was digging.
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All right.
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Yeah.
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Let's dig.
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So, yeah, I mean, first of all, just congrats on completing your thesis.
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Was that just in February that you got that all finished up?
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It was submitted in February.
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The Bible was in July.
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Graduation was last Wednesday.
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It's a very long, drawn out process.
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But yeah, we got there.
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We got there.
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We got to wear the floppy hat.
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Oh, that's great.
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Well, congrats.
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And the thesis has a striking title.
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It's called It's Like a Baby Jail, the Impact of Regimented Daily Routines on Children's Participation in Early Childhood Education.
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And that was the motivation that brought us together for today's conversation.
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And this was obviously the culmination of years of experience and work that began to
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For you, when you were yourself an early childhood educator, can you speak to your background and how that laid the foundation for the work that followed and led you to baby jail?
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Yeah.
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So like I would have started back in like 2014.
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So we're talking over 10 years now.
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I'm aging as I go.
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But what initially started, which I didn't
Rethinking Classroom Dynamics and Superheroes
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realize at the time, was when I was working in practice, there were some practices that I was complying to and I was doing it automatically and
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And I wasn't questioning it because that's what you do when you're starting off in education.
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But one scenario was my manager was asking me to get rid of all the superhero play figures and take them out of the classroom because the children were fighting or children were arguing and she was stressed by it.
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The children weren't stressed.
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The children were loving it.
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So I complied and now I definitely wouldn't have.
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But in retrospect, I did.
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But what struck me was the next day.
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So I went in knowing that all these superhero figurines had been taken or put away and hidden from the children.
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The adults knew where they were, but the children didn't.
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And the children spent, I'm going to say the next two to three days just in question, like hunting, like some children couldn't focus on some activities because they were like, but I left him right here.
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Where could he have gone?
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And, you know, it's very heartbreaking to watch that, like, again, in hindsight, because
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I was part of that problem.
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I was part of that adult decision to go, we're going to do this to make the adult world easier or the adult world more comfortable to the detriments of the children who were just playing.
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So the superhero theme fell in then into my degree and my master's where I was looking at, okay, there's play bands on superheroes.
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I know there's a lot of research I refer to that happened in the U.S.,
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And there was a lot of play bands going on just internationally, including Ireland.
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And I was just so interested in going, why is it we're uncomfortable with like gunplay, you know, fighting, all this kind of stuff.
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And that laid the foundation into my PhD.
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But overall, like the common theme is always what I've been working towards is just recognizing what are children actually saying?
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What do they want to do?
Understanding Power Dynamics in Early Education
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And finding out that adults are really just over inserting themselves.
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unnecessarily in play.
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So, you know, with power and things, that was the biggest thing that came out with the PhD was recognizing and putting a space for seeing, look, guys, we as adults, we don't want to be doing this.
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We don't want to be hindering children.
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We don't want to be silencing them, but we're doing it every day and we're doing it really subtly and it's really bad.
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Yeah.
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And I think it's just such an area that we just take for granted, right?
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Like maybe preschool is preschool, early years or early years.
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And, you know, it's just not even given a second thought as to those structures and routines and, you know, the habits and attitudes and the actions of adults in those contexts, you know?
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I have to know because it's the title of your thesis.
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And I think listeners want to know, too, where that wonderful phrase, it's almost humorous if it weren't so depressing, too.
00:09:15
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It's like a baby jail because it doesn't show up until way late in the thesis, which I thought was really interesting to the context.
00:09:23
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Where does that come from?
00:09:24
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And of course, I have to know then when you heard it, did you go, aha, this is the one, right?
00:09:30
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This helps frame the whole thing or did that moment not come until later?
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Yeah, so it comes later on in the thesis and in the work because that's how it happened in the process.
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So this happened very late in the fieldwork aspect, but it came from three-year-old Byron,
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And three-year-old Byron was talking about his experience in a focus group.
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And this was part of the design which was really helpful was there was not only opportunity for children to record their daily experience using GoPros, but they also reviewed some video clips and then gave extra context to their view on it, having looked at it again, because you're not going to remember your whole day and all the detail.
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So Byron said to me in the focus group, I had asked the question, so what do you think about preschools?
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Very open-ended, just general.
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Some children were talking about art.
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Some children were talking about their friends.
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Byron was the type, and it's Ben,
Economic Influence on Education Policies
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I suppose, we'll talk about in the thesis because we want to just rejig our names and stuff.
00:10:26
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But Ben in the thesis was talking about how he felt like he was in a baby jail because his persona and his behavior in the preschool was very much based around he wants to go outside.
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He wants to go outside gates.
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He wants to be in the hallway.
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He wants to be in the hallway.
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He doesn't want to put on a coat, but, you know, nothing too, you know, radical in his requests.
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But because it was constantly being told no when he needed or wanted to do things, that was his impression of, look, I feel like I'm in a baby jail.
00:10:54
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Now, of course, hearing a three-year-old say baby jail, like that is a term I wouldn't have thought of.
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I haven't read it in all the reading of 10 years.
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So the fact that I was facilitating that focus group and their educators were in the focus group too,
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The educators scoffed and laughed and said, Ben, what do you mean it's a baby jail?
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Of course, the manager slash owner was mortified because she was thinking, well, what does this mean for the research?
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What does this mean about children's experiences?
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And I said, look, we go with it because there was no incentive to kind of go, OK, children think they're prisoners.
00:11:33
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That was never a lens.
00:11:34
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It was essentially looking at, well, what are children's experience of power?
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It was funny because this research was done in a service with degree led staff.
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You know, they're very high quality.
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I had previously worked in them years before and actually got all my training from them.
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So there wasn't an, you know, an assumption that there was going to be malpractice or anything like that.
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And there wasn't, you know, but it was interesting that it was the stuff that they were compliant in were the things that the children felt oppressed by, you know, like the regimented daily routine.
00:12:05
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So, yeah, so Ben brought together that statement of it's like a baby jail.
00:12:10
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And that very much came later on to cusp everything.
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And I think that's how I always deliver my research.
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It's always driven by the voice of the children.
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So even in previous research I've done, it always seems to just mold it into where it's supposed to go.
00:12:24
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But that's why I love doing research with children because you don't know where it's going to go.
00:12:28
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And that just shows from a three-year-old, just a level
Power Dynamics and Educational Theories
00:12:31
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of sophistication, not only showing an understanding of like that concept of jail and what happens to prisoners in a jail, but then to transfer that and make the analogy to their own childcare context is like, that should have been an aha moment for everyone.
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Like the kid is learning something from the context in which, right, he's engaging in these activities.
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It might not be what we're teaching him,
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But by analogy, he's learning that, oh, I'm like a prisoner in this baby jail.
00:13:03
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Absolutely fascinating.
00:13:04
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Coming around to that issue of power, because it seems like, you know, your background in early child education came from the practical experience and working with kids and that interest.
00:13:16
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And I mean, maybe I have the timeline wrong, but the
00:13:19
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The situation within the lens of power perhaps comes a little bit later and you have this fascinating exploration of those ideas, which I think in the context of early childhood education are not very often explored and applied.
00:13:33
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So I found that fascinating.
00:13:35
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I'm so curious, when you first began to dig into that literature, what interesting or surprising connections to early childhood education did you find that solidified it for you as an interesting or important area of study that hadn't been done before?
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That's a great question because you're exactly right.
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So my timeline started off with being an educator and just doing what I'm told.
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I'm studying at the same time.
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So I'm studying part time.
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So I like just
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finishing my PhD officially with graduation last week, marks 10 years of study done and in constant study part-time and working full-time.
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So we're happy with that.
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But I think that's what helped me merge the theory with the practice so strongly because not only are you seeing things happen every day, but you're connected to the theory that you're exposed to.
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Now, I'll be honest,
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In my degree, there was very little, if any, you know, connection to power or in this direct sense of, you know, power dynamics with children and adults.
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And now being a lecturer, I intertwine that into my degrees to students and their teaching because,
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it's horrible to say that I've only actually got into the power theory in my PhD.
00:14:45
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And like, that's really limiting to educators or students in general, you know, that don't go to that level.
00:14:52
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And, you know, it's quite an expensive level to be on.
00:14:54
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It's a big life sacrifice.
00:14:56
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You know, it can be quite intimidating.
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And I just feel like,
00:14:59
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this knowledge needs to be more widely known.
00:15:02
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Like it shouldn't take you, even a side of that, shouldn't take you doing a degree to know this knowledge, you know, to understand, well, how my interactions are potentially silencing another person or another being.
00:15:13
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So it was very much a progress from my PhD and I was doing deliberate modules on power and participation that opened it up.
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And literature wise, now Foucault was a prominent figure.
00:15:25
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Never heard of Foucault.
00:15:26
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I mean, Foucault was not in my life five years ago.
00:15:29
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Who was Foucault?
00:15:30
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What does he talk about?
00:15:32
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But Foucault was introduced to me in a structured module.
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And then through my supervisor, who was very passionate about power and very knowledgeable, Carl Anders, I'll give him a shout out.
00:15:41
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He's a wonderful supervisor.
00:15:44
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He would have been very knowledgeable about Foucault, but not necessarily about early childhood.
00:15:50
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So together, we blended that very nicely, which was great.
00:15:54
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But it's always something that I sit back on.
00:15:56
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I'm like, I wish I knew this 10 years ago because that could have changed my practice completely.
00:16:03
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Or the other side of it is, to be honest, Nick, I also wonder, would ignorance be bliss?
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As in, if I did know about this, would I be more frustrated with the sector early on?
00:16:13
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So it's kind of a career pushing question.
00:16:17
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It's hard to know.
00:16:18
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You've just expressed what so many educators, the process that so many educators go through, right?
00:16:23
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Initial experiences, just kind of understanding how you fit into educational context.
00:16:30
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And you could go, you know, the whole length of your career without ever examining power as like a salient force that's operating in any of these kinds of spaces.
00:16:39
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Right.
00:16:39
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To exactly your point, I think I had a very similar journey, right, in saying, oh, this helps explain and describe and helps me be responsive to
Internal Compliance in Modern Education
00:16:49
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additional needs and responsive to the flow of power in the room and perhaps shape it differently.
00:16:53
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While at the same time, there are other groups of educators who don't ever put that lens on and instead, I think, get frustrated or burned out or
00:17:04
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spend their careers trying to fix kids in a system that, you know, is meant to engender resistance and hostility and things between figures of authority and actual literal children in these power struggles, right?
00:17:20
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It's in that name.
00:17:22
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Was there something, again, like if Foucault was a revelation and I didn't encounter his work in college either, what was there like an idea that was like a, I don't know, an epiphany for you that says, oh, this has so much explanatory power.
00:17:34
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It doesn't have to come from Foucault, but anywhere in that power literature.
00:17:39
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Yeah, so I always choose to read the original text because like reading through another lens, I would find, well, they're going to put in their own bias or their own opinion.
00:17:49
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So I wanted to make sure, okay, if I'm going to be informed and I want to make an informed opinion, I need to go and buy Discipline and Punishment, which is the name of Foucault's work that I followed.
00:17:59
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But there was one topic that was just so mind-blowing to me that I was like, this is what I see.
00:18:06
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This is what I'm looking at.
00:18:07
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So it was about how Foucault talks about
00:18:09
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It's the idea of the soul.
00:18:11
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So initially he explains that power first was corporal punishment.
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So punishment was always about punishing the physical body.
00:18:19
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And then think of it in terms of children.
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You're talking about children being, you know, physically punished for, you know, not getting the right answer or just in general, especially in a historical lens and how that shift in childhood changed to now, as he talks about, it's soul punishment.
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So it's the idea that you're not actually...
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punishing the physical body anymore, which we don't.
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You know,
Commodification and Gender Roles in Education
00:18:41
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corporal punishment, any form of physical abuse of any child is now regulated, thankfully.
00:18:46
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But what he is saying is all these structures and all these frameworks, if you look at them more objectively, you look at how, well, what are they actually enforcing?
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And they're enforcing compliance, which essentially is targeting the soul, targeting that inner world of children
00:19:05
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that you don't see.
00:19:06
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So if you're looking in a classroom and they're all sitting down, you know, doing their work and they're all being quiet and there's no noise, but you're like, these are all two-year-olds.
00:19:15
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Why is there no noise?
00:19:16
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That's essentially what Foucault would have talked about in terms of like that restriction of the soul and the idea that we have moved away from corporal physical punishment, but now we've turned it in a way that we're now punishing the soul and punishing the inner world of these beings.
00:19:31
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So that was a moment where I went,
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that's what I'm seeing, you know, and that's, this was before field work.
00:19:37
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So I had this knowledge in my own practice.
00:19:40
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recognizing that you're doing things like documenting children, making them make art when they don't want to, forcing them inside or outside, forcing them what to wear, forcing them when they can eat, when they can't eat, all these basic things that I was like, if I was experiencing this as an employee, as an adult, there would be massive repercussions.
00:19:59
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So why are we normalizing it for our youngest?
00:20:02
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That's what was alarming to me.
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So Foucault really opened that world to be able to give me the language
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And to be able to highlight that breakdown of, well, how do you go from punishing the physical body to then punishing and making mass groups and mass crowds compliant?
00:20:16
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And it's through that conditioning of the soul.
00:20:19
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So that they will eventually not need to be policed in a sense, but that they will just police themselves basically and act in ways that the authorities in the room or in the state or wherever the target context is won't need to intervene because you've intervened in yourself, right?
00:20:36
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And maybe you've even, I'm getting a little bit ahead of things, but you described too how some students will even intervene on behalf of the authorities to help them out too.
00:20:46
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But that's so fascinating.
00:20:47
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Yeah.
00:20:49
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I will probably cut this next question only because I just had it as you were talking about professors and I recalled sharing this with the other HRP folks.
00:20:57
Speaker
But when the reason that I knew that this was going to click you and I on this issue is in your acknowledgments, you thank Professor Hurt Bista, who I adore.
00:21:07
Speaker
His work is so influential on me.
00:21:09
Speaker
And I just have to know, again, while I have you on here, like what was it about his work that that really resonated or connected with you, Chloe?
00:21:18
Speaker
Even with his work, it was just having him.
00:21:20
Speaker
He was a lecturer on my PhD.
00:21:22
Speaker
That's so crazy.
00:21:23
Speaker
Is he at your university?
00:21:25
Speaker
Yep.
00:21:26
Speaker
Oh, that's right.
00:21:26
Speaker
He is.
00:21:27
Speaker
He is.
00:21:28
Speaker
And he would have great networks with my supervisor, Cal Anders.
00:21:32
Speaker
So it's kind of like him, his wife, Sharon Todd, and then Gert Bista would be like this little treeway in Manute University.
00:21:38
Speaker
And they were just a force to be reckoned with, with the amount of knowledge they'd give.
00:21:42
Speaker
So Gert Bista was a lecturer on my first year of modules.
00:21:47
Speaker
And I thanked him because like, him, Carl Anders and Sharon Todd were the people that really formed my thinking before I even knew what this was.
00:21:56
Speaker
I mean, my thesis started off about superhero play.
00:21:59
Speaker
I thought it was just going to be an extension of my master's or my degree.
00:22:02
Speaker
No, they came in and they really just opened my eyes to this idea of just power.
00:22:06
Speaker
Elevated.
00:22:07
Speaker
Elevated public education and what is education?
00:22:11
Speaker
And I know recently, well, not too recently, but...
00:22:13
Speaker
I had seen Gert published an article about art and, you know, about that schoolification of art.
00:22:19
Speaker
So, you know, I kind of knew that we were touching on similar bases in an indirect way.
00:22:26
Speaker
But I mean, the underlying passion and value is always about that.
00:22:29
Speaker
Well, public education and what's it for?
00:22:31
Speaker
Why are we doing it?
00:22:32
Speaker
And then I apply it to early childhood.
00:22:34
Speaker
So that's where we that's where we get to here.
00:22:37
Speaker
You know, now that, now that you mentioned it, yeah, like that is the university context that I see on his papers, right?
00:22:43
Speaker
I just had never, in different contexts, it didn't even click with me.
00:22:47
Speaker
God, I'm so jealous.
00:22:48
Speaker
That's, that gives me another reason.
00:22:49
Speaker
We're just, this podcast is just reasons Nick needs to move to Ireland to pursue a
00:22:55
Speaker
education.
00:22:55
Speaker
But
Innovative Educational Research Methods
00:22:56
Speaker
that's so amazing.
00:22:58
Speaker
In the context of Ireland too, and I promise we'll get to the study in more depth here, it's kind of remarkable how in the beginning after situating things in power, you really
00:23:11
Speaker
go to great lengths to describe how those values are also embedded into these policy documents that were fascinating as a, you know, someone who doesn't live in Ireland or understand the context, but sees the impact of the language of markets and, you know, perhaps what some people call neoliberalism.
00:23:30
Speaker
written into documents not related to college and career readiness for high schoolers or vocational ed or STEM or anything else as would be my experience as like an upper grades teacher, but actually targeted towards early childhood education, the language of investments and returns on yields and all these other things.
00:23:50
Speaker
Just for listeners, could you just explain that context and how you connected that to the expressions and the experience that kids have and that you were seeing in schools?
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, so it actually started with, I felt it was really important to analyze our national early childhood framework, AASHTAH, because that underpins play, it underpins interactions.
00:24:11
Speaker
It's a big influence on how people interact and how children, you know, in terms of activities that they do on their daily basis.
00:24:18
Speaker
And to be honest, Nick, I just thought I was doing an overview.
00:24:22
Speaker
But it wasn't until I started to look into it, I looked at the history of AASHTAH.
00:24:27
Speaker
because Ashtar was blueprinted on Tewaraki in New Zealand.
00:24:31
Speaker
And so I thought, right, well, I can't stop there.
00:24:34
Speaker
I have to figure out, well, where did the New Zealand Tewaraki come from?
00:24:39
Speaker
And I was so dumbfounded to know the discussions that were had around doing the first ever early childhood curriculum framework.
00:24:49
Speaker
It was for marketization.
00:24:51
Speaker
It was to spotlight New Zealand as the front runner.
00:24:54
Speaker
It was
00:24:55
Speaker
for competitiveness.
00:24:56
Speaker
It wasn't for children's rights.
00:24:58
Speaker
It wasn't for early childhood.
00:25:00
Speaker
The purpose was around money.
00:25:03
Speaker
So I explained that in my thesis and it's something I want to draw on a little bit more like in future work because I think it's really important for people to figure out
00:25:11
Speaker
Where are these frameworks coming from?
00:25:13
Speaker
And this is one of my issues.
00:25:14
Speaker
I find like the likes of say, Aster now has gone through review and I haven't done an analysis of it yet.
00:25:19
Speaker
It just recently went in review.
00:25:21
Speaker
It's now been republished for 2024 and has taken on an awful lot of change.
00:25:25
Speaker
So just for context, Aster, I was analyzing ROS from 2009.
00:25:29
Speaker
To be fair, a lot has changed between 2009 and when I was doing the analysis in 2021.
00:25:34
Speaker
But even still, to look at that history and kind of connect that, that blueprint was based on a marketization, capitalizing on childhood, not for a child's rights, not based on play and not based on the meaning of early childhood.
00:25:49
Speaker
It was used in terms of competing, in terms of let's be the first country to do this, but not for the children.
00:25:55
Speaker
It was for money.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I mean, looking at Ashtar, again, I thought I was going to do when I get to Ashtar, Ashtar has this narrative of it's so child-centered.
00:26:05
Speaker
And I thought, again, buying into this, which I honestly don't now, and we'll do a second analysis on the new one to see where we're at.
00:26:11
Speaker
But in the 2009 version of Ashtar, I was so taken aback by the language.
00:26:17
Speaker
Like you've said, it was very restrictive.
00:26:21
Speaker
It was very much relying on the adult.
00:26:23
Speaker
Children had to learn to depend on the adult to navigate their learning.
00:26:27
Speaker
And children had to abide by these aims and learning goals.
00:26:31
Speaker
And
00:26:32
Speaker
To me, that's very much like a schoolification.
00:26:34
Speaker
You know, you're making early childhood academic.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then the fact that that's trickling down to babies,
Balancing Policies and Children's Autonomy
00:26:40
Speaker
toddlers and young children.
00:26:42
Speaker
Now, to be fair, in Ashtore's credit from what I have seen now in the update is they've taken out the aims and they've taken out the goals.
00:26:49
Speaker
So they're more kind of like ideas for practice, which is more supportive of that flexibility.
00:26:54
Speaker
But I can't say anything more on that because I haven't gotten formed on the new Ashtore.
00:26:58
Speaker
But what I am aware of is, like you've said, departmental.
00:27:02
Speaker
you know, statements on these updates or initiatives.
00:27:07
Speaker
When I tailored them back, I didn't expect to find what I found, which was a lot of them are linked to, you know, infrastructure or investing in the future economy.
00:27:15
Speaker
It was all language to do with children are being marketed so that they can be used as a commodity for improving economy.
00:27:23
Speaker
And I was just, this is, this is mind blowing.
00:27:25
Speaker
So that's where I fall between the view of in the thesis where are we valuing children as beings, which is, you know, as they are now respecting childhood as it is now, or are we looking at childhood as becoming as in we're looking at, well, how can they benefit us later on in life when they grow up?
00:27:44
Speaker
I mean, it's so devaluing of, of childhood.
00:27:46
Speaker
So it was alarming to,
00:27:49
Speaker
to look at all of these political frameworks, the discussions being had and all backed up by evidence.
00:27:55
Speaker
So, you know, it's hard to argue.
00:27:57
Speaker
And it's something that I was very, very surprised at because I didn't think that's where I was going to end up.
00:28:02
Speaker
And I did.
00:28:03
Speaker
I could not believe the connection, the New Zealand, Ireland, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles apart or whatever, just literally half a world away.
00:28:12
Speaker
And here they are borrowing, again, not concepts about, I don't know, like indigenous education or ways of knowing and, you know, play and trust and, you know, all these things, but borrowing those commodification ideas, not even letting these kids get their foot in the door, right?
00:28:27
Speaker
I get
00:28:28
Speaker
Maybe as kids start to transition in earlier grade levels, hey, got to start thinking about the rest of your life out of school.
00:28:35
Speaker
Let's see how we can – how do you fit into a global economy or an Irish economy or an American economy, right?
00:28:43
Speaker
And how can we start to tailor more of the experience to the things that you're interested in and what you see yourself doing for the rest of your life?
00:28:51
Speaker
But this is literally like –
00:28:53
Speaker
After maternity leave ends and you drop kids off and it's like, all right, let's start commodifying.
00:28:59
Speaker
We got to build that human capital to improve our return on investment.
00:29:04
Speaker
It's striking.
00:29:04
Speaker
And I think even with those changes, you think about the generations of kids who...
00:29:10
Speaker
grew up under one context who maybe now are teachers, right?
00:29:14
Speaker
One thing we know about teachers is they teach in ways that align with their experience as students.
00:29:20
Speaker
And so it almost is insidious in the sense that, you know, raising a generation of learners also kind of unintentionally or intentionally, I don't know, means you're training up another generation of teachers to teach in a similar way to uphold that same set of values, even if the values change later on.
00:29:40
Speaker
And that's where the neoliberalism came in.
00:29:43
Speaker
I'll be honest, neoliberalism, not on my tongue before the PhD.
00:29:48
Speaker
I mean, if you came at me even anything to do with politics, I'd be like, no, I'm opting out on that.
00:29:53
Speaker
I don't know enough.
00:29:54
Speaker
But with the neoliberalism, like also with Foucault, like talks about governmentality and that idea of like how you're conditioning mass crowds and how you do it in ways that's quite silent or quite invisible.
00:30:08
Speaker
so that you're getting people to comply at a mass level.
00:30:11
Speaker
So that neoliberalism aspect was really interesting for me to come in, but quite uncomfortable because, I mean, my conditioning as an educator was always like, this is the best sector to ever be in.
00:30:23
Speaker
And I still stand by that.
00:30:24
Speaker
But what I worry about is we are now marketing early childhood and we're focusing so much on money.
00:30:31
Speaker
We're focusing so much on.
00:30:33
Speaker
Now, while I will say in Ireland, we're looking for more funding for the sector.
00:30:37
Speaker
And I mean, how much more you need so much more funding, especially to invest in your youngest.
00:30:41
Speaker
I mean, that's so important.
00:30:42
Speaker
But what I'm always seeing is we're losing that value of early childhood.
00:30:48
Speaker
We're missing out on that.
00:30:49
Speaker
Well, what makes us special?
00:30:51
Speaker
What makes us different to primary school or secondary school?
00:30:54
Speaker
It's the fact that we value play so heavily in everything that we do, but we're losing sight of play.
00:30:59
Speaker
And we're looking more now at early years sector.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I just see it as a business.
00:31:03
Speaker
And I don't see how, and even with my research, I don't see how you could not see it that way anymore.
00:31:08
Speaker
And it's quite disheartening because at the end of the day, the consumer is the parent.
00:31:15
Speaker
The business is the service.
00:31:16
Speaker
The child is the product.
00:31:19
Speaker
The child is the thing that needs to produce something for these adult groups.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I, again, this didn't come to me in any way, shape or form until I actually explored the research with the children.
00:31:33
Speaker
Now, obviously, they're not having words like neoliberalism, but what they are showing is I don't want to do art, but they're being conditioned to do art.
00:31:42
Speaker
Why?
00:31:43
Speaker
To give home, to show the parents you've done art.
00:31:45
Speaker
Why are you taking my picture?
00:31:47
Speaker
To show mommy and daddy what you do in school.
00:31:50
Speaker
It was always about documenting or proving to parents
00:31:55
Speaker
Well, what are you getting for your money?
00:31:57
Speaker
And it was just a moment of, yes, I can understand the educator side.
00:32:02
Speaker
We are in a space where we need to advocate so much for our value, but we need to stop academic making our sector.
00:32:10
Speaker
We need to stop schoolification of our sector to kind of prove we're professionals.
00:32:14
Speaker
We're professionals of play.
00:32:16
Speaker
You know, yes, we don't do tests.
00:32:19
Speaker
We shouldn't do tests like primary school or secondary school.
00:32:22
Speaker
Children need to focus on socializing, you know, communication, emotional regulation, things that aren't going to be very clearly tested in such a standardized way.
00:32:30
Speaker
You know, it's very individual.
00:32:32
Speaker
And that's what we're losing.
00:32:33
Speaker
I think it's just that commodity approach of, well, the country needs to invest in children so that when they grow up, they can make us money and it's an investment and a return.
00:32:42
Speaker
And it's just, what?
00:32:44
Speaker
Really?
00:32:45
Speaker
That's where the value is now.
00:32:47
Speaker
It's no longer about play and, you know, having, you know, emotionally regulated people and people who are interested in climate action or values that are important or people who can voice themselves in a meaningful way.
00:32:58
Speaker
It's now focused on do what you're told, comply, listen to what authority says, and then continue that when you're an adult.
00:33:06
Speaker
It's just I'm lost for words nearly.
00:33:07
Speaker
Well, where do we end up with that?
00:33:09
Speaker
And the notion that we need to explicitly build skills and start tracking, assessing, evaluating, documenting those from the earliest ages when it might not even make sense to start teaching some of those things because kids in some early childhood contexts don't have a child development.
00:33:29
Speaker
They're not of the right age where that makes sense.
00:33:31
Speaker
And here they are just pushing that stuff into lower and lower grades.
00:33:35
Speaker
I'm burning to ask a follow-up about this because it comes up at the end and I was so interested in reading it.
00:33:40
Speaker
How much of what you're talking about there also has to do with what you describe as the, let's see here, docile bodies of administration and the role of female educators?
00:33:52
Speaker
How much of what you're talking about here has something to do with early childhood education in particular being
00:33:59
Speaker
a female dominated sector of education compared to administration or government jobs and things being largely male dominated?
00:34:07
Speaker
What did you find or how did you parse out that part of the analysis?
00:34:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:12
Speaker
So that was a big key in understanding the data because you have to put into context, it's a female dominated sector.
00:34:19
Speaker
So not only was I tracing back where the practice and the play and the policies come from, but I also had to track back, well, why is it a female dominated sector?
00:34:29
Speaker
So initially in Ireland, it's the best I can speak to is in Ireland, you're looking at essentially, you know, childhood care took place in the home.
00:34:39
Speaker
So it was very much based on within the family, you know, the typical role of the man is out for work and the mother stays at home.
00:34:47
Speaker
And that was very much a trend to like the mid 1980s.
00:34:51
Speaker
So it is very prominent still in that culture of, you know, you're a woman, you stay at home, you mind the kids.
00:35:00
Speaker
And it's not so prominent in society, which is great to say,
00:35:04
Speaker
But it's very prominent in early childhood, that idea that, well, you need to stay and mind the babies or mind the children.
00:35:11
Speaker
And that idea that, you know, you just mind them, you don't, there's no educating them.
00:35:15
Speaker
You know, the idea of, well, how do they learn?
00:35:16
Speaker
Do they learn anything at all?
00:35:18
Speaker
It's very devalued in, you know, what's actually going on in early childhood.
00:35:23
Speaker
So in terms of the female dominated sector part,
00:35:26
Speaker
I was most interested in the fact that, OK, well, the female dominated workforce for the early childhood sector came about because it was the idea of, well, if you're going to do a job like mind children or care for children at the home, let's take it out of the home and let's monetize it.
00:35:42
Speaker
That's, you know, now, to be fair, you can also say it was a great move because not only is it monetizing, but it's putting in regulations.
00:35:50
Speaker
you know, you're making sure that the children are getting quality care.
00:35:53
Speaker
You're gonna make sure that they're getting quality standards, which you can't, you know, regulate in the home environment without any, you know, visibility.
00:35:59
Speaker
So I was interested in the fact that yes, it was an improvement for the quality of care and quality of education, but that the fundamental aspect was again around the idea of bringing women back to the workforce.
00:36:12
Speaker
So if that is, and as is the case,
00:36:17
Speaker
you're then looking at women now being in a position as educators and still being devalued as women that just babysit or they just mind younger children.
00:36:27
Speaker
And while it doesn't come out very strongly in the thesis to a certain extent, it's looking at how women in professional roles are still being devalued.
00:36:37
Speaker
And women, no matter what level of education they have, are still not looked at as having that knowledge.
00:36:43
Speaker
and not recognized as understanding the value in their role.
00:36:47
Speaker
So I found that very frustrating.
00:36:50
Speaker
And I also found that, okay, we're looking at a big system thing here.
00:36:54
Speaker
I'm not just looking at adults telling children what to do.
00:36:57
Speaker
I'm looking at professionals in a professionalized sector being told what to do and being penalized if they don't produce the production that government levels expect.
00:37:08
Speaker
And
00:37:09
Speaker
I think that was the most worrying thing was the idea that you'll have children and women now.
00:37:14
Speaker
So kind of looking at the earlier sectors like a marginalized sector, which is so beyond how I would have seen it before.
00:37:21
Speaker
But when you're looking at actually the research and you're looking at particularly the research that the children collected, it's hard to argue again because I understand the educators.
00:37:31
Speaker
I understand their stress.
00:37:32
Speaker
They want to do a good job.
00:37:34
Speaker
They are constantly feeling guilty if they don't produce what is expected of them.
00:37:39
Speaker
They're in this rut of feeling like they have to document everything they do for proving to who?
00:37:45
Speaker
To prove to another group of adults above them that, yeah, I'm doing my job properly.
00:37:50
Speaker
So it's constantly trickling down this administration.
00:37:53
Speaker
You know, well, we want to make sure that children know their numbers.
00:37:56
Speaker
OK, me as the adult, I'll make sure children know their numbers.
00:37:59
Speaker
OK, now me as the inspector, I need to make sure the educator is teaching the numbers in a
00:38:04
Speaker
supportive or, you know, child's rights base.
00:38:06
Speaker
But like at the end of the day, if you're going to have a system that's rooted in outcomes or rooted in standardizing learning, which is where we're going towards with early childhood, you're going to have that trickling down of admin.
00:38:20
Speaker
And the issue is you're losing not only the child, but you're losing that professionalized woman.
00:38:26
Speaker
Because in Ireland,
00:38:29
Speaker
There's a great push for professionalizing educators to degree level.
00:38:34
Speaker
And me as a lecturer in those degree programs, it's so inspiring because those people that come every day to study and work, they have so much insight and they have so much experience.
00:38:45
Speaker
But what is very disheartening, and I can't fault them, is they leave after they get the degree.
00:38:49
Speaker
Because like I said to you earlier, Nick,
00:38:52
Speaker
is getting more knowledge on this actually a hindrance?
00:38:54
Speaker
Because then you realize what you're in.
00:38:56
Speaker
And then you're thinking, why am I putting up with this stuff?
00:38:59
Speaker
I need to leave and I need to do something else.
00:39:01
Speaker
So there's a massive high staff turnover.
00:39:03
Speaker
And I really think it's directly linked to the fact that there's no value in a female dominated workforce.
00:39:09
Speaker
They're not funding it in the way that it should be funded.
00:39:11
Speaker
There's no recognition for the people that are putting in the work to get qualified.
00:39:16
Speaker
And it's just an absolute mess.
00:39:19
Speaker
I can't
00:39:20
Speaker
describe it in any way, shape or form.
00:39:21
Speaker
And I would argue if this was a male dominated sector, would it be treated this way?
00:39:26
Speaker
I don't know.
00:39:26
Speaker
Now I can't say would or wouldn't it, but what I can say is we have a female dominated sector that's getting completely devalued and it's just, what do we do from there?
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
Insert answer here.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:42
Speaker
We'll come up with that.
00:39:43
Speaker
I'll edit in the answer in post is what we'll do.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's like at the end of the day, the female educators are kind of sandwiched in the trickle-down system of administration.
00:39:55
Speaker
As you had said, it's like,
00:39:56
Speaker
standards and procedures and protocols and policies up here trickle down to, you know, some site administrators, probably men down to a largely female staff, then ultimately like pile on to kids too, in an attempt to try to hit a fast forward button on these three-year-olds to make them, you know, acquire skills faster, which, which is impossible.
00:40:16
Speaker
So in a lot of ways, it seems like, again, these qualified trained,
00:40:21
Speaker
educators are like set up for success in a system that's not designed either for them or for the kids that they're trying to serve, you know.
00:40:30
Speaker
So kids are frustrated.
00:40:32
Speaker
The adults are frustrated.
00:40:34
Speaker
What a mess.
00:40:35
Speaker
It's important that you've highlighted on gender as well, that I did highlight the gender divide even with the children.
00:40:41
Speaker
So being in a female dominated sector, there was such a difference in how the male children versus the female children were treated.
00:40:49
Speaker
So, for example, you know, children that were female, if they ran around the classroom, you know, they were told more gently, no, no, you know, we don't run.
00:40:56
Speaker
You know, the expectation was, well, you understand, you know what we do.
00:41:00
Speaker
Whereas when the boys ran, it escalated quite quickly from shouting to stopping them physically, maybe grabbing an arm or getting in front of them and stopping them.
00:41:10
Speaker
Or what I found as well was the punishment, punishment for children.
00:41:14
Speaker
running around was always to do with the boys, which was to make them sit at a table and do a jigsaw or do pegs or do something that was very much a controlled activity.
00:41:24
Speaker
And then made sit do that until they were told by the adults, okay, you can go now.
00:41:29
Speaker
So I didn't see in any of my research now, to be fair, it's been done over a course of four weeks.
00:41:35
Speaker
So not a lot, but a lot of the routine is, you know, it's repetitious.
00:41:40
Speaker
So what you're seeing at the start, you very much still see at the very end.
00:41:44
Speaker
And
00:41:44
Speaker
At no point in my field work did I see a girl, a female child be forced to sit in a sedentary position to do an activity told by the adult.
00:41:54
Speaker
It was always boys.
00:41:55
Speaker
So I think more research and more looking into that, I mean, I think it's a detrimental space to be in as a little boy in a female-dominated sector, being told what to do by an adult woman in school, potentially going home, being told by an adult woman at the home what to do.
00:42:10
Speaker
And
00:42:11
Speaker
I'm very interested in male rights and also the view of, well, how can you be a man in this society if you're being treated very early on to almost be sedentary, you know, and to not work with your feeling of I need more physical exercise or I need more physical outlet to compare to maybe female girls who maybe get more of a satisfaction through art or satisfaction through, you know, being in the kitchen or baking or whatever it is.
00:42:39
Speaker
Now, it's not to say that, you know,
00:42:41
Speaker
male or female children can't swap and, you know, they've different needs and different interests.
00:42:45
Speaker
But in my study, it was very clearly evident, you know, it was very clearly evident that the female children were more coaxed into the stereotypical female roles of sit, play, you know, draw, be in the kitchen.
00:42:58
Speaker
And they were more like, you're a good girl being praised for being quite compliant, quiet.
00:43:04
Speaker
But the boys were more likely to be shouted at or penalized, punished for
00:43:09
Speaker
as I would have seen, just needing that more physical release to run or to be more active in their physical body.
00:43:15
Speaker
It was kind of hard to watch as well, Nick, because there was a scene where a boy was told stop running, but you could see in his physical body, he needed more of that physical energy to be expressed.
00:43:27
Speaker
So it's like his body was cut in half.
00:43:29
Speaker
So he was standing,
00:43:31
Speaker
And his bottom half was not moving, but his upper half was just in constant motion, constant motion, because that wasn't being told, okay, you can't do that.
00:43:39
Speaker
You can't move your arms or you can't be swinging your arms.
00:43:42
Speaker
So it was almost like those little boys were being divided physically.
00:43:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:47
Speaker
To follow the rule of no running, you're doing that, you're complying, but to the detriment of themselves that they were like, I need to run.
00:43:54
Speaker
I need more physical activity.
00:43:55
Speaker
And I'm very much confined in this indoor environment.
00:43:58
Speaker
That's not meeting my needs.
00:43:59
Speaker
So
00:44:00
Speaker
Essentially, I found even through that in the female dominated sector, the male children were more penalized than the females.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's remarkable.
00:44:07
Speaker
And so frustrating, I think, too, those gendered expectations, because whether it's just kind of implicit or explicit, they end up harming children of different genders who then express non-gender conforming behaviors, too.
00:44:21
Speaker
Because then if you have girls who want to go play rough with the boys, you might have teachers intervene and say, like, no, you can't do that or whatever.
00:44:29
Speaker
Or likewise, boys who want to engage actively, right, not necessarily passively or being forced to as like a
00:44:36
Speaker
coercive behavior, but right actively with traditionally girl play, you know, with dolls or other kinds of things, they might be pushed in the other direction, too.
00:44:46
Speaker
So it is.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's just it's just so interesting how those expressions of gender really like
00:44:51
Speaker
are throughout at every level.
00:44:54
Speaker
Let's talk because I teased it at the, at the top in the, in the introduction about the methods that you use to investigate these children, which I thought were really interesting and maybe even pioneering in the sense that you have this huge section about your pilot and the trials and tribulations of trying to get these kids to wear GoPros to document their day.
00:45:19
Speaker
Did you have any basis to go off for this or were you just flying, you know, by the seat of your pants like, hey, I want to engage in this methodology, but there's nothing really to pull from.
00:45:29
Speaker
Let's let's try and make this work.
00:45:31
Speaker
This it took a whole notebook, Nick, to get to the GoPro idea because I knew what I was looking to research.
00:45:39
Speaker
I knew I wanted to understand what are the daily power interactions between adults and children.
00:45:46
Speaker
I looked at, you know, drawing, interviews, focus groups, all these different types of methodologies that I had experience in.
00:45:52
Speaker
But I was like, I don't think this is going to capture the children's voice.
00:45:56
Speaker
Because what I was worried was if children said, did a drawing of, OK, I feel like I'm in a baby jail.
00:46:02
Speaker
Say, for example, you could have an educator easily come over and reinterpret it differently.
00:46:08
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:46:08
Speaker
They don't mean that.
00:46:09
Speaker
They mean this, you know.
00:46:10
Speaker
So I didn't want the findings to be questioned.
00:46:13
Speaker
because I wanted to be able to say, well, this is what the child said, and here is the evidence to back it up.
00:46:19
Speaker
It's recorded, it's a visual, you know.
00:46:21
Speaker
So, but this was also really important because I knew that it was going to be a kind of research where there was potential, even though I didn't expect to, but where there was potential where children would argue or question the authority of educators.
00:46:34
Speaker
So, in those situations where I would be
00:46:36
Speaker
platforming it as children are not having their needs or wants met here.
00:46:41
Speaker
I was then also through the field work, being able to sit down with educators and say, look, this clip has come up and I just want to show it to you.
00:46:48
Speaker
There was one scenario where there was an educator who kept, to be honest, berating a child to say sorry.
00:46:56
Speaker
And he just didn't want to say sorry.
00:46:58
Speaker
The context was he took a ball and he wanted to use the ball.
00:47:01
Speaker
Very straightforward situation in a preschool.
00:47:04
Speaker
But this one educator very much pestered him and kept following him and was very in his face.
00:47:10
Speaker
And you could see on the video, it was very intimidating to the point that the child just said it just to be done with it and then walked away.
00:47:17
Speaker
And it very much was, it was hard to watch.
00:47:19
Speaker
But this was, again, a clip that I could show the educator and the manager owner in during the field work just to be aware of, look, this is what's been captured.
00:47:27
Speaker
Now, the great thing about them as being such a high quality service, they were able to recognize the reflective aspect of it and go, okay,
00:47:34
Speaker
You know, we need to remind staff, especially staff that may be at a lower education level, that, you know, you don't need to force children to say sorry.
00:47:41
Speaker
They need to understand their actions and they need to understand empathy, you know, not making them say a piece, a word just to prove a point, you know.
00:47:50
Speaker
So that's the angle that I was going with.
00:47:54
Speaker
I was aware that there may be practices that might be in conflict with either the educator's view of themselves, you know, what the children were saying.
00:48:01
Speaker
And I didn't want it to dismantle
00:48:03
Speaker
you know, the high quality that this service was promoting, I was very much looking to go, I know this is a systematic issue and I need to be able to look at the system overall.
00:48:12
Speaker
How am I going to do that?
00:48:13
Speaker
So I looked at, I looked at, is there a way of having like CCTV?
00:48:19
Speaker
And straight away, that was a no.
00:48:21
Speaker
Like a CCTV because, yeah, because now there's no CCTV in the service, but it was, I was trying to think of, well, what different ways can I
00:48:29
Speaker
record or capture the day-to-day field without being in it because if I go in it I'm going to be influencing those power dynamics I need to be out of it but I needed to see it and I can't very much stand outside the window peering through so you know and that's why the likes of like thinking of CCTV or maybe a camera on a tripod but then how is that going to work if they go inside to outside
00:48:54
Speaker
So all of these conversations being had.
00:48:56
Speaker
All the transitions.
00:48:58
Speaker
Everything, all the transitions and the fact that I wanted it to come from the children.
00:49:02
Speaker
I also had Foucault in my ear going surveillance.
00:49:06
Speaker
You know, he talks an awful lot about, well, if you're surveilling behavior, you're going to make it change the way you want it to change.
00:49:13
Speaker
So I was very much thinking, how am I going to do research that involves a surveillance method that actually refutes surveillance?
00:49:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:49:21
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:49:23
Speaker
So I just, it was just me just thinking of different ways in terms of video, because I knew video was going to help me and help the children validate their voices without it being questioned.
00:49:31
Speaker
And if it was, I could go back and say, look, this is actually what did happen.
00:49:35
Speaker
I came across then GoPros just through researching and Googling.
00:49:38
Speaker
And I thought, why not?
00:49:39
Speaker
The great thing was, though, then I was able to go down a rabbit hole of research.
00:49:42
Speaker
And there is a few select studies that have done GoPro cameras in terms of capturing, you know, daily experiences.
00:49:48
Speaker
Not in the way that I've done it, which is, you know, great to be able to say, but I was able to utilize that research and apply it to childhood and say, look, yes, the benefits of GoPro is it's more mobile.
00:50:00
Speaker
If you get an extra fitting, you can have very enhanced microphone sound.
00:50:04
Speaker
And, you know, it's very versatile in rain, which is also what I was conscious of.
00:50:09
Speaker
You know, what happens if it gets wet?
00:50:11
Speaker
you know, things that you'll have to think of, it's not just going to be indoors.
00:50:14
Speaker
You also have to think of, well, children are going to be running and they run fast.
00:50:17
Speaker
I mean, I don't know, working in preschools, they have speed on those runners.
00:50:22
Speaker
So you'll get knocked out through that.
00:50:25
Speaker
So the GoPro camera came through all of those considerations.
00:50:29
Speaker
A lot of consideration went into it.
00:50:31
Speaker
So it wasn't my first point of protocol.
00:50:33
Speaker
And to be honest, I had no experience.
00:50:35
Speaker
I had no experience in video methods.
00:50:36
Speaker
So I had to make sure that when I was
00:50:39
Speaker
you know, testing out that I was designing a pilot to kind of go, right, me and the children are just going to figure this out.
00:50:47
Speaker
I just found it so interesting because not only there's like this conversation about power and early childhood education, all of this, and it's like, oh, by the way, there's a whole discourse here about video methodologies and how I did it and how it worked in early childhood education that is like a contribution in its own right to the field of qualitative research.
00:51:07
Speaker
So you're hitting a lot of points in there too.
00:51:12
Speaker
I just, I love that.
00:51:13
Speaker
Gosh, I feel like I could talk with you for the next three hours.
00:51:17
Speaker
So if the three-year-old in the study described it as baby jail, I wonder what did you find or what do you think?
00:51:26
Speaker
What aspects of the daily routine do you believe contribute the most significantly to that perception?
00:51:32
Speaker
And what radical rethinking of those routines do you think might be necessary to create better environments to honor agency and well-being for kids?
00:51:42
Speaker
So I've talked about this before, and I think it's really important whether you're an educator or a parent or just an adult in general with children in your lives is you're always going to have to balance what's excessive and what's necessary.
00:51:54
Speaker
So in terms of a daily routine, it's really important in early childhood to know your regulations, to know your guidance, to know your best practice.
00:52:03
Speaker
And what does it say?
00:52:04
Speaker
Now, in Ireland,
00:52:05
Speaker
There's no specific, you know, outline or way to do a routine, but it is the idea that there's activities that children can engage in.
00:52:14
Speaker
So some preschools may not have a structured at nine, we do circle time, at half nine, we go outside.
00:52:20
Speaker
Other people might take a bit more of a free flow approach.
00:52:23
Speaker
So it's very flexible.
00:52:24
Speaker
Other services may take a more direct approach for planning, potentially for the needs of children who need to know about future activities to know, settle and emotionally regulate.
00:52:33
Speaker
But also,
00:52:35
Speaker
What I find is, regardless of your purpose of setting up a daily routine, say in a more structured manner, say from nine to 10, maybe you have to do with like sharing spaces with other classrooms, whatever your reason, I always say you need to look at what is excessive.
00:52:50
Speaker
And what I found in my research, what was excessive was those daily interactions of if you're forcing children to put on a coat, is that battle necessary?
00:53:00
Speaker
I would say no.
00:53:02
Speaker
Bring all your coats outside.
00:53:04
Speaker
If the child wants to run around in the rain, that's fine.
00:53:08
Speaker
Because my worry is, especially I was previously an outdoor nature specialist, my worry is from this research, we're encouraging children to depend on adults when they're regulating their body.
00:53:21
Speaker
So me and you, Nick, right?
00:53:23
Speaker
We sit in a room.
00:53:24
Speaker
We know we're getting sweaty or we're getting too warm or I'm freezing cold.
00:53:28
Speaker
Right.
00:53:29
Speaker
I can change it.
00:53:29
Speaker
I can affect my environment.
00:53:31
Speaker
If children at a young age are waiting for an adult to tell them, no, no, keep your coat on and they're pink from running around, they are clearly overheating.
00:53:40
Speaker
But they're being told, no, keep that on.
00:53:42
Speaker
Well, physically, they're completely disconnecting from their body, their internal processes, and they're not going to be in tune with their body as a being.
00:53:51
Speaker
So it's to look at those very small battles and recognize they have massive implications for children ability to actually regulate and make sense of their day.
00:54:04
Speaker
So stop telling children to wear a coat.
00:54:07
Speaker
But the other part of the routine that was really, really spotlighted an awful lot was art.
00:54:14
Speaker
So this idea that
00:54:17
Speaker
early childhood is based on, as it should, you know, using a lot of art and children use art to express themselves and engage and make sense of their world.
00:54:26
Speaker
But if you have a daily routine where art is done at 10 o'clock and we do the family tree and that's it.
00:54:32
Speaker
As I show here, there's children that don't want to do it at 10.
00:54:35
Speaker
They don't want to do a family tree.
00:54:37
Speaker
And from an objective lens, I'm sure a lot of people would agree, well, that's fine.
00:54:41
Speaker
But the issue is, it's not just that small interaction.
00:54:44
Speaker
I know the fear of the educator is, oh, but, you know, then that child looks like they haven't done anything or I've nothing to give the parents.
00:54:51
Speaker
And how does that look?
00:54:52
Speaker
And, you know, I have this checklist that I have to complete.
00:54:55
Speaker
I would just say, stop.
00:54:57
Speaker
You know, art to do those structured activities is not part of regulation.
00:55:01
Speaker
There's no legislation to make children do family trees.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yes, they should explore art, but not to the point that they're regimentedly being told,
00:55:11
Speaker
paint brown here, put green here.
00:55:13
Speaker
So I would take for any listeners that are educators or just parents, people engaging with art and children, take a step back and go, are you regulating children's art or are you encouraging it?
00:55:25
Speaker
So if you're doing little things like, well, why don't you do that there?
00:55:28
Speaker
Make this green.
00:55:29
Speaker
No, no, trees aren't purple.
00:55:31
Speaker
I'd say stop.
00:55:32
Speaker
A big influence of me is Sir Ken Robinson.
00:55:35
Speaker
He does great work on, you know, creativity.
00:55:37
Speaker
And I think he would be turning in his grave to be able to see
00:55:40
Speaker
this idea of children being enforced to make artwork in a space that doesn't need it.
00:55:47
Speaker
So the underlying thing is, to be honest, Nick, with your daily routine is you need to just step back and go what's necessary and what's excessive.
00:55:54
Speaker
What do you have to, like even lunch.
00:55:56
Speaker
Lunch does not have to be at a designated time.
00:55:58
Speaker
What we do see now in Ireland is some people do a rolling lunch.
00:56:02
Speaker
So children can get their snack when they want and if they want.
00:56:06
Speaker
Some children, though, the issue is that they forget to eat.
00:56:09
Speaker
But the other side of it is,
00:56:11
Speaker
that they're learning.
00:56:12
Speaker
They're learning to become in tune with their internal process of hunger.
00:56:15
Speaker
So again, the issue is, are you going to have children forced to sit down, make them eat until they finish all their lunch to show mommy and daddy, yes, they ate everything?
00:56:24
Speaker
Or are you going to have a conversation with a parent going, they were so invested in their work for the last hour and a half, they forgot to eat.
00:56:31
Speaker
So maybe just give them a banana in the car going home.
00:56:34
Speaker
just so much more natural, more humanistic.
00:56:37
Speaker
And I'm trying to apply it to an adult world.
00:56:38
Speaker
Like if my boss told me, Chloe, you have to eat at 10, I'd be like, I'm not even awake.
00:56:42
Speaker
You know, I'm not even there.
00:56:44
Speaker
So why are we doing it to our youngest?
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah, it all to fit that production metaphor, right?
00:56:49
Speaker
Which is what it sounds like.
00:56:50
Speaker
You have to produce art in a particular way.
00:56:52
Speaker
You have to eat at a certain time, not because the activity itself is valuable or you need to, but because that's what the clock says you have to do at this certain time.
00:57:01
Speaker
And that's what we're going to do it.
00:57:02
Speaker
I wonder then thinking of
00:57:04
Speaker
like those would be sort of site-based interventions, you know, something that staff could talk about or sites could talk about, hey, how can we structure things in a more humanistic way?
00:57:14
Speaker
Is there, in imagining how some of those changes could potentially put them at odds or in tension with bigger state policies, is there any remedy then at the policy level that you'd like to see since you've analyzed it at both of those in both contexts?
00:57:30
Speaker
How do we...
00:57:31
Speaker
match the site-based humanistic changes with the policy or is a chicken egg problem, I guess.
00:57:37
Speaker
I don't know where to start with it.
00:57:38
Speaker
Well, see, the great thing is, and I'll have to advocate for our sector is when I've looked at, say, regulation or inspection criteria, it's so fair.
00:57:47
Speaker
It's so flexible.
00:57:48
Speaker
It's so open.
00:57:49
Speaker
It's not restrictive.
00:57:50
Speaker
What I'm finding is it's the educators that are putting extra admin and work on themselves or potentially their manager or owner who are trying to say this needs to be proven.
00:58:00
Speaker
So like in terms of inspection criteria, there's nothing to say that you have to do monthly observations.
00:58:06
Speaker
They say you document children's learning just to show that you're interested, seeing where they're going, you know, maybe that you need to plan for more resources to show and enhance that interest.
00:58:16
Speaker
But it's not in a restrictive way of you have to do a monthly observation every month.
00:58:22
Speaker
And this is what I'm finding really difficult is there's actually a disconnect on the ground.
00:58:26
Speaker
So the regulation is quite open and it's very fair.
00:58:30
Speaker
In terms of ASTHR, of course, that was very regimented and very strict.
00:58:34
Speaker
But again, that was from 2009.
00:58:35
Speaker
So you would expect it was a very different context.
00:58:38
Speaker
And I'm quite confident, to be honest, in the new ASTHR review, but I'm quite hesitant because I'm not informed on it at all.
00:58:44
Speaker
So I won't have an opinion on it until I do analyze it more deeply.
00:58:48
Speaker
But from what I've seen in terms of other policy or anything else more recently,
00:58:53
Speaker
Because also to be aware, Nick, in the last five years, let alone the last 10 years, the policy in early childhood Ireland has absolutely boomed.
00:59:01
Speaker
You know, there's lots of discussion about children's rights.
00:59:03
Speaker
There's lots of push for children's participation.
00:59:05
Speaker
And I can't fault all those movements, objectively.
00:59:10
Speaker
It's the conversations I'm having on the ground where educators are feeling like, oh, well, I have to do these documents or I have to do art every day or I have to...
00:59:19
Speaker
I have to follow the seasons, you know, it's settling in and I have to do the family tree.
00:59:23
Speaker
And at the end, we have to do graduation.
00:59:25
Speaker
I don't know where that's coming from because I know it's not coming from quality practice and it's not coming from regulation.
00:59:30
Speaker
So what I'm trying to find is... That was going to be my follow-up.
00:59:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:33
Speaker
Where does that come from?
00:59:34
Speaker
Where does it come from?
00:59:35
Speaker
And to be honest, I think a lot of it is fear.
00:59:39
Speaker
Fear on the educator, fear on the sector to prove that they're professional enough to be valued.
00:59:44
Speaker
I think there's a lot of that stigma around you're still babysitters.
00:59:48
Speaker
Well, why aren't you in primary school?
00:59:49
Speaker
You're not good enough to be in primary school.
00:59:51
Speaker
There's always this kind of competing narrative that's primary schools, primary teachers and people working in primary in Ireland get lots of great pay scales, benefits, annual leave, whereas that's not translated in the earlier sector.
01:00:06
Speaker
So there's not a lot of investment in terms of like the quality of employment, which is also affecting the high staff turnover.
01:00:12
Speaker
And I think a lot of the documentation is kind of coming from our own initial conditioning, having gone through primary and secondary.
01:00:18
Speaker
You know, yes, I can do planning.
01:00:20
Speaker
Yes, I can do documents.
01:00:22
Speaker
I can do checklists.
01:00:23
Speaker
I can prove that these children are going to do everything here in the next nine months.
01:00:27
Speaker
And I, again, will say it doesn't need to be done.
01:00:31
Speaker
We need to come back to remembering what's great about our sector and its play.
01:00:37
Speaker
It's socializing.
01:00:38
Speaker
It's interactions.
01:00:39
Speaker
It's being a child in childhood.
01:00:42
Speaker
that isn't being schoolified to be this marketed product.
01:00:45
Speaker
You know, we need to come back to, well, what does early childhood mean?
01:00:48
Speaker
And I think we're losing that a little bit.
01:00:51
Speaker
And I'll just hit stop on the recording right there because that last blurb is so perfect.
01:00:57
Speaker
You know, if only there were an old French guy who could give us a lens to understand how we police ourselves, you know, even though there's not pressure coming from somewhere else, hmm, somebody should get on that, but...
01:01:11
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
01:01:13
Speaker
This has been such a joy, such a pleasure, such a privilege to talk with you.
01:01:17
Speaker
Dr. Chloe Keegan, congrats again.
01:01:19
Speaker
Thank you.
01:01:23
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
01:01:27
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
01:01:30
Speaker
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01:01:35
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
01:01:41
Speaker
Thank you.