Neo-liberalism at work and play in Early Childhood Education (ECE)

Setting the Scene

Play, Regulation and Resistance

The neoliberal emphasis upon standardisation and accountability in education poses particular challenges for play in early childhood. In the eyes of the state, play must earn its place in the classroom and, in a climate of performativity, justification for play must be made…

Emptying the bookshelves: uncovering policy legacies

The ORIM network

It is a wonderful experience to be in a room filled with people thinking about their work with families around early literacy. This was the…

School readiness: A culture of compliance?

The discourse of ‘school readiness’ is prevalent in Early Childhood policy and I argue that neoliberalism is a structural force that has influenced the ‘school readiness’ agenda within an English educational context. This structural force is manifest via…

Questioning the Status of the ‘Man of Science’ as a Modern Masculine Hero

For many people today, the feminist historian Ludmilla Jordanova writes, ‘the abstract noun science evokes not only grandeur and power but also a particular type of mastery of the world.’ A product of…

Relationality tested? Neoliberal accountability in the Nursery

Contesting regimes of truth

The current landscape of early childhood education in the Republic of Ireland is fractured, with a somewhat unstructured, fragmented system. My research argues that this is due, in part, to a series of neoliberal practices. Foucault (2010) maintains that subjects are produced in…

Family literacy in prisons: fathers’ engagement with their young children