Abandoning Quality in an Early Childhood of Imminence:

Transgressing the ‘Old Wives Tale’ toward an ‘Ethics of the Encounter’

Unrelenting in its dedication to society’s “hegemony of positivism” (Sarantakos, 2013) and its objective, reductionist, static and knowable “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133) (see Crotty, 1998; Dahlberg et al, 2005; Gutek, 2014; Moss, 2014; 2019; Orr, 1992; 2004; Osberg and Biesta, 2008), continuing in its functionalist (Askew and Carnell, 1998; Barton and Walker, 2007; Parsons, 2012) acculturation of “human capital” (Becker, 1993, p. 1) with “worthwhile knowledge” (Rose, 2009, p. 28) for the “capitalist treadmill” (Huckle, 2010, p. 136) (see Apple, 2006; Ball, 2003; 2012; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2014; 2019; 2013a; 2013b; Tomlinson, 2005) and ever-increasingly commodified, marketized and economised by Neiliberalism and its mantra that “unregulated markets will, of their own accord, fund unimprovable results for all participants” (Smith and Doyle, 2013, p. 1) (see Ball, 2003; 2012; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2014; 2019; Tomlinson, 2005), UK Early Childhood Education (ECE hereafter) finds itself ever-increasingly awash with “the story of quality and high returns” (Moss, 2014, p. 10) (see also Canella, 2016; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2013a; 2013b; 2019; Osgood and Giugni, 2016). “Find, invest in and apply the correct human technologies – aka ‘quality’ – during early childhood”, the story suggests, “and you will get high returns on investment” (Moss, 2014, p. 3).

Laying claim to a “universal, knowable and objective standard” (Dahlberg et al, 2007, p. 104), a “universal formula, identified and distilled by experts that can be applied anywhere, at any time to achieve standardised results” (Osgood and Giugni, 2016, p. 142), dominant discourses enshrine a “generic, common sense” (Cottle and Alexander, 2012, p. 637) understanding of ‘quality’ as “the essential ingredient” (Moss, 2013a, p. 15) in ECE. Decreed and defined by the EYFS (DfE, 2017), subsequent guidance (Early Education, 2012; Ofsted, 2015; 2017; 2019) and surrounding policy levers (Lewis, 2018; STA, 2019), ‘quality’ in UK ECE is policed and enforced by ruthless neoliberal “terrors of performativity” (Ball, 2003, p. 215), a “panoptic” (Foucault, 1979, p. 200) “nomalizing judgement” (Foucault, 1979, p. 177) and coercive, hegemonic governmentality (Foucault, 1980; 1982). Under a “discourse of no alternatives” (Unger, 2005, p. 1), “[d]efined by the market, defined as a market” (Monbiot, 2017, p. 29), machining “homo-economicus” (Moss, 2014, p. 70) for a world where “anything which cannot be measured cannot matter” (Moss, 2014, p. 66), recent years have seen the sweeping mechanisation, regimentation and economisation of ECE practices (Canning, 2011; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Mohammed, 2014; Moss, 2013b; 2017; 2019; Moss et al, 2016; Roberts-Holmes, 2013; 2014; Roberts-Holmes and Bradbury, 2016). With “the tail of evaluation wagging the dog of pedagogical practice” (Dahlberg et al, 2007, p. 116), practitioners turn “technical rationalist” (Schon, 1984, p. 21) “policy puppets” (Bashford, 2019; 779), “follow[ing] prescribed steps to achieve prescribed outcomes” (Moss, 2019, p. 53) (Canning, 2011; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Mohammed, 2014; Moss, 2014; Roberts- Holmes, 2013; Roberts-Holmes and Bradbury, 2016; Silberfeld and Horsely, 2014) in an ardent devotion to “what works” (Biesta, 10, p. 491). Meanwhile, for children, such conditions play out in the instrumentalist “pedagogisation of play” (Rogers, 2011, p. 5) (see also Canning, 2011), a reductive, depersonalised “hurry-along curriculum” (Dadds, 2002, p. 173) (see also Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2019; Silberfled and Horsley, 2014; Wood and Hedges, 2016) and high stakes “schoolification” agendas (DfE, 2013; Moss, 2013c; Neaum, 2016).

Here, the arrogance of positivist neoliberalist discourse, “unable to see itself as just one perspective” (Moss, 2016, p. 8), continues to propound its own perspectival “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133) concerning ‘quality’, “worthwhile knowledge” (Rose, 2009, p. 28) and “conceptions of ideal humanity” (Newell, 2014, p. 2), blustering and barging as if it were “the only show in town” (Moss, 2015a, p. 231) (Basford, 2019; Canella, 2016; Cottle and Alexander, 2012; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2013a; 2013b; 2014; 2019; Moss et al, 2016; Moss and Urban, 2010; Osgood and Giugni, 2016; Olsson, 2009). “Congenitally hard of hearing” (Moss, 2017, p. 12), “the story of quality” (Moss, 2014, p. 10) continues to “silence and erase diverse voices” in the sector (Cannella, 2016, p. 3), stifling and outshouting alternative narratives (Moss, 2013a; 2013b; 2015a; 2014; 2015a; 2016; 2017; 2019; Osgood and Giugni, 2016), as a “technology of normalisation” (Moss, 2016, p. 10). Indeed, as Foucault (1979, p. 194) suggests “power produces knowledge”, “it produces reality”. However, with Social Contructionism (Burr, 2003; Berger and Luckman, 1966; Crotty, 1998) calling for the impeachment of the notion of singular, objective and absolute truth, recognising the “socially constituted, historically embedded… valuationally based” and thus numerously multifarious (Lather, 1991: 52), positivism’s “grand-narrative” (Lee, 2016, p. 108) of universal, technicist ‘quality’ becomes re-categorised as mere perspectival, opinion-journalism. Rather, inherently subjective and context bound, “neither neutral nor self-evident” (Moss, 2016, p. 10), as Pence and Moss (1994, p. 172) suggest, “quality childcare is, to a large extent, in the eye of the beholder”, (see also Basford, 2019; Canella, 2016; Cottle and Alexander, 2012; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Elwick et al, 2017; Moss, 2013a; 2014; 2015a; 2016; 2019; Osgood and Giugni, 2016). Despite being slyly depoliticised and technicised by dominant “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133), oppressively kettled into a hegemonic “discourse of no alternatives” (Unger, 2005, p. 1), as Moss (2019, p. 48; 2013a; 2014; 2017) and others (Canella, 2016; Fielding and Moss, 2011; 2012; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Moss et al, 2016; Moss and Urban, 2010; Olsson, 2009) suggest, “Early Childhood Education is, first and foremost, a political and ethical practice”.

Building on Social Constructionism’s realisation that, as Burr (2003, p.158) suggests “reality [is]… inseparable from our discourse about it”, “constructed by ourselves, not in isolation but as part of a community of human agents” (Dahlberg et al, 2007: 23), as we shift away from “seeing reality as a machine” toward “understanding it as a network” (Capra, 1996, p. 17; 2013) (see also Bronfenbrenner, 1994), Post-humanist thinking leads us, with Deleuze and Guattari (2004), Barad (2003), Braidotti (2013) and others (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016; 2017; Myers, 2016; Olsson, 2009; Pederson, 2010; 2015; 2011; Philliips et al, 2020; Sellers, 2010; 2013; Snaza et al, 2014) to re-envisage ECE and all of reality as a “rhizomatic” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 25) “entanglement” (Murris, 2016, p. 91). Here, as Murris (2016, p. 12) describes, “things are because they are in relation to and influencing each other”, as all actors (human, non-human, adult, child, material and discursive) “intra-act” (Barad, 2003, p. 815), nomadically (r/e/-)merging as “rhizome” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 5) in/to/through (co-/r)evolution with/from/to every other, forever inscribed-in/inscribing a ceaselessly complexifying, incomprehensibly chaotic and relentlessly (re)sounding, (re)mattering and (re)forming rhizo web of intersubjectivities (Braidotti, 2013; Deleuze and Guattari, 2004; Kruger, 2015; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; 2011; Muris, 2016; Myers, 2016; Olsson, 2009; Pederson, 2010; 2015; Sellers, 2010; 2013; 2017; Snaza et al, 2014).

As positivist and developmentalist “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133) and “worthwhile knowledge” (Rose, 2009, p. 28) are disgraced and replaced, giving rise to an “emergentist epistemology” (Osberg and Biesta, 2008, p. 313) centred around the “ethics of immanence” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 177; 2011) – a “love for what is” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 176) – all actors (adult and child) are repatriated with their onto-epistemological right to self-author-ise their own subjective truths, as “knowledge producers, rather than knowledge consumers” (Murris, 2017, p. 531).

In this light, educational spaces are reconceptualised as “a mutual contagion between human… and nonhuman… entities” (Pederson, 2015, p. 1) (see also Kruger, 2015; Murris, 2016; Myers, 2016; Snaza et al, 2014), ceaselessly proliferating, (re)forming, (re)discovering and (e)merging from/in/to/through chaotic, transient and nomadic “learning ecologies” (Kruger, 2015, p. 329), “material-semiotic entanglements” (Osgood and Giugni, 2016, p. 140), “momentary, unstable learning assemblages” (Pederson, 2015, p. 1), as all actors (adult, child, material, discursive) “intra-act“ (Barad, 2003, p. 815) and “mak[e] themselves intelligible to each other” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 6), all-ways (always and in all ways) (e)merging, in a state of simultaneous, collective and individual autopoiesis (Barad, 2003; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016; 2017; Olsson, 2009; Sellers, 2010; 2013). Here, as Sellers suggests (2013, p. 1), all actors/phenomena are always already “be(com)ing”.

Sellers (2013, p. 1) describes the always already “be(com)ing curriculum” that emanates: forever “in flux” (Sellers, 2010, p. 563), “constantly reconstituted, ebbing and flowing” (Sellers, 2010, p. 562) in a ceaseless, autopoietic (re)mattering of “living-learning” (Sellers, 2013, p. 26), curriculum becomes “less of a thing and more about happening” (Sellers, 2013, p. 1) – “curriculum processes around us and we process through it” so that “as the child becomes the curriculum, curriculum becomes the child” (Sellers, 2013, p 1). Here, true (Rogers, 2011), agentic, epistemologically emancipated play facilitates generative, unbounded rhizo “convergences of flows and intensities” (Myers, 2016, p. 422), as intra-acting subjectivities dance in a continuously reverberating “to-and-fro movement” (Gadamer, 1982, p. 93), “learning to know each other” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 41) as matter(s) meld(s) into a matter(ing/s) of meanings (re)made (Murris, 2016; Olsson, 2009; Sellers, 2013). Significantly, play is liberated from any “goal which would bring it to an end” (Gadamer, 1982, p. 93), as entities shift, drift and exist like revolving balls in a bearing, each “moving every which way against one another”, “always already becoming intensities of liminality” (Sellers, 2013, p. 118).

Here, the arrogant bombasticity of Positivism’s developmentalist “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133) and its hegemonic “story of quality” (Moss, 2014, p. 10), the “discourse of no alternatives” (Unger, 2005, p. 1), is only further discredited and disenthroned. Pre-determined ages, stages, goals and expectations are contextual, inconsequential and are sharply rendered obsolete; the sole focus, for Olsson (2009, p. 49) and others (Lenz Taguchi, 2011; Massumi, 2002; Sellers, 2013), becomes the liberation of movement and experimentation, here “there is no end other than the processual condition… Process is both means and end” (Sellers, 2013, p. 113). Despite a long history of “taming, predicting, preparing, supervising and evaluating learning” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2009, p. xiii), positivist, adultist attempts to corral and control must come to admit that they are swamped in a mire of unfathomable, unpredictable and unrelenting rhizomatic chaos and complexity (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016; Myers, 2016; Pederson, 2010; 2015; Sellers, 2013; 2011; Snaza et al, 2014). Every mo(ve)ment made, every word (un)spoken, every action (un)enacted and every thought (un)thought irreversibly shoots ceaseless tendrils out into the “be(com)ing” (Sellers, 2013, p. 1) “entanglement” (Murris, 2016, p. 91), repercussing into a fracas of “unintended consequences” (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 3) so that “the learning that may unfold (or be blocked)” (Pederson, 2015, p. 1), can no longer be anticipated (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016; Olsson, 2009; Sellers, 2010; 2013).

Practitioners are called/forced to “step back and down from their adultist positionings” (Phillips et al, 2020, p. 171), recognising themselves as mere “intra-acting” (Barad, 2003, p. 815) matter within the complexity of the classroom “mangle” (Myers, 2016, p. 422) (see also Sellers, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Olsson, 2009; Murris, 2016; Pederson, 2015). Knowing oneself as a mere mattering of subjectivities, a be(com)ing in the “mangle” (Myers, 2016, p. 422), and meeting all others as a mattering of the same, “as if they were a part of you” (Phillips et al, 2020, p. 174), all actors are afforded “ontological, as well as epistemological equality” (Murris, 2016, p. xi), all “equitably expert” (Sellers, 2010, p. 557) – indeed, as Wade (2015, p. 97, emphasis added) suggests, in the mangle, “we are all the same matter and all matter the same”.

Lenz Taguchi (2010, p. 4) has described the “intra-active pedagogy” that develops: “a process of collaborative invention and creation” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2010, p. xiv), intra-active pedagogy is a “pedagogy of listening” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 11; see also Rinaldi, 2001, p. 1), facilitating “a listening dialogue” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 34) as we (all actors) collaborate to “negotiate our different understandings” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 34). Sellers (2010, p. 557) describes children’s “milieus that slide alongside/over/through those of adult worlds”, fleeting “assemblages of desire” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 441) that lead be(com)ing lines of flight within the classroom entanglement (Olsson, 2009). Through a “pedagogy of listening” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 4), “installing themselves in the here-and-now” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2009, p. xxii), it is the role of practitioner to “hook onto these flows of belief and desire” (Olsson, 2009, p. 50), these “lines of flight” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 10; see also Olsson, 2009), and to “work with them rather than against them” (Olsson, 2009, p. 50); to “’listen’ to the situation and learn to surf it” (Dahlberg and Moss, 2010, p. xvii). For Olsson (2009, p. 21) ECE becomes focused on “the construction of problems”, “arranging situations where children can work with their questions” (Olsson, 2009, p. 11), orchestrated not toward adult-erated developmentalist destinations but evolving organically and nomadically, rhizomaticlly meandering as “a way to creating a future” (Colebrook, 2002, p. 21). Crucially for Lenz Taguchi (2010; 2011) and others (Olsson, 2009; Sellers, 2013) practitioners’ adaptability, flexibility, open inductivity and willingness to collaborate becomes the new “essential ingredient” (Moss, 2013a, p. 15); we must become “adept at responding to opportunities as they present, whenever… and however… and whatever…” (Sellers, 2013, p. 66).

In this new light, there can be no “one size fits all”, no “universal formula …applied anywhere, at any time to achieve standardised results” (Osgood and Giugni, 2016, p. 142-3); ‘quality’ too exists “always in the process of becoming” (Osgood and Giugni, 2016, p. 140). Though alternative pedagogies often attempt to salvage the term with emancipatory redefinitions, that is not the goal here; as Moss (2013b; 2014; 2015; 2016) and others (Dahlberg et al, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; 2011; Moss et al, 2016; Osgood and Giugni, 2016) suggest, the concept sits on a positivist throne that is rotten beyond repair, irrevertably objective, universal and certain. Discourses of ‘quality’ will never truly accommodate complexity, subjectivity, diversity and multiplicity (Cottle and Alexander, 2012; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Moss, 2016; 2013a; Moss et al, 2016), this is a search that will only ever be “a wild goose chase” (Moss, 2016, p. 111), “a search for fool’s gold” (Penn, 2011, p. xi). Rather, the time has come to leave positivist imaginary behind and, as Moss (2016, p, 8, emphasis added; 2013a; 2013b; 2015; 2017), Osgood and Giugni (2016), Dahlberg et al (2007) and others contend, to finally “get beyond quality”.

As a disgraced “discourse of no alternatives” (Unger, 2005, p.1) takes its unwilling, solemn leave, Dahlberg and Moss (2005, p. 224) have described the “ethics of the encounter” or “relational ethics” (Moss, 2011, p. 4) that come to preside over “intra-action” (Barad, 2003, p. 815) in the ECE “entanglement” (Murris, 2016, p. 91).Governed only by the “ethics of imminence” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 177), in a place where all actors are afforded “ontological [and] epistemological equality” (Murris, 2016, p. xi), where, “we are all the same matter and all matter the same” (Wade, 2015, p. 97), it is the onto-epistemological ethicality of our pedagogical relationships that will become the new measure (Braidotti, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; 2011; Olsson, 2009) – as Massumi (2003, p. 10-11) warns, in a reality characterised by ceaseless chaos and uncertainty, judgment shifts, firstly and finally, onto “how we inhabit uncertainty together”.

Whilst positivism will long continue its arrogant belligerence over our practice, Early Childhood Education remains deeply “political and ethical” work (Moss, 2019, p. 47). By all means, continue to read, revere and retell positivisms ‘old wives tale’, but, alongside Moss (2013a; 2013b; 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2019) and others (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Dahlberg et al, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016; Sellers, 2013; Osgood and Giugni, 2016) I implore, if nothing else, realise this: “choice is possible…. [and] where there is choice, it becomes impossible not to choose” (Vandenbroeck, 2020, p. xiii).

 

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