Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education & Care Postmodern Perspectives by Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss & Alan Pence.
This review was first published in the NZJES journal, 34(2), 1999, pp. 368 – 369. Reviewed by Dr Sarah Alexander.
Beyond Quality challenges the discourse of early childhood education and over two decades of a substantial amount of research on the measurement of programme quality.
The authors’ interests in early childhood education differ and they live in different countries – Sweden (Dahlberg), England (Moss) and Canada (Pence) – but the book represents a coming together of international researchers who have a shared unease with the way quality is currently defined as universal and measurable indicators related to outcomes in children’s development.
The arguments presented from philosophical and pedagogical perspectives are seductive, and the book could well provide a turning point in the thinking of many researchers, academics and policy-makers on what quality means in early childhood education and how quality can be achieved (if it can ever be fully realised in practice).
The problem with the current view of quality was first addressed in a published book edited by Moss and Pence in 1994 entitled Valuing Quality in Early Childhood Services. That book reflected the difficulties researchers had in moving from the positivist paradigm toward recognition of multiple perspectives on quality. While there has been some acknowledgement in recent years of the need to consider values and stakeholder views, researchers have in the main continued to argue for quality to be defined narrowly in terms of child development outcomes. This has been due to a fear that an otherwise “anything goes” relativism could result.
Beyond Quality extends the values-based approach detailed in the earlier book, and taking a postmodern perspective, argues that researchers cannot continue to claim the “truth” and the right to define quality for others.
The authors contend that the supposedly indisputable knowledge promulgated by experts – and their practice of reducing the complexities of early childhood settings to set of rationale measurable criteria – is philosophically indefensible. To quote: “Method has been emphasised at the expense of philosophy, the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ prioritised” (p.99). In developing this argument the authors examine the images or constructions of the child, the purposes of early childhood institutions, and locate these within the times (historical, social, and economic) in which we live. The authors use the terms “minority world” and “majority world” to argue that a small part of the world – the developed countries – has defined quality for the majority.
Beyond Quality provides more than a theoretical discussion about the problem with quality; it also incorporates detailed explanations of practice from a postmodern perspective, including work in Stockholm and with aboriginal peoples of Canada. These examples show that there are possibilities for local action and the development of new meanings and practices. Of likely major interest to readers is the advancement of the concept of “meaning making”. Meaning making is about “what is going on in the pedagogical work and other projects in the early childhood institution, in particular making visible and public what children are actually doing, through various forms of documentation, and about different people entering into dialogue about that work” (p. 109). Pedagogical documentation is discussed as an example of how critical thinking and reflection can combine to open up new ways of thinking and new practices.
By arguing against, and proposing an alternative to the predominant view of quality, the authors could be placing their acceptance in the research community at risk. I think, though, that while the authors have gone out on a limb the thoroughness and care which has gone into this book will mean that in the years to come they will be recognised as having written the authoritative text on the problem with the way quality has been perceived, researched, and controlled.
Beyond Quality is probably not a very straightforward read for people who do not already have a good knowledge of the debate on quality within the early childhood literature or of the questioning of positivism within the field of psychology. Having said this, the authors do define key terms and try to make the book accessible to a wide readership, although the depth of philosophical discussion and ideas presented makes this a book that will probably only interest academics. Perhaps a further project for the authors would be to prepare a publication to assist practitioners in questioning the current view of quality, taking inspiration from examples such as the work in Reggio Emilia and Stockholm.
In New Zealand a national quality assurance system is in the planning stage for all early childhood services and is to be linked to funding from government. It is to be hoped that this book has not come out too late for the people behind this proposal to question the reasons for and the usefulness of yet another layer of requirements. Dahlberg, Moss and Pence point out that “original and inspiring work, such as Reggio, comes about from a mix of structure and agency, but while structure can be legislated for, agency can not be” (p. 16). They suggest the development of local knowledge and local action to enable the individual, the group, and the community to engage in critical thinking and meaning making, and to take responsibility and develop new ways of thinking and doing.
Published by Falmer Press, London.
ISBN 07507 07690
