ABSTRACT

Over past decades in early childhood education, there has been an emerging critique of developmental discourses. Despite this, the universality of child development theory persists and along with it, expectations of a linear progression via prescribed stages and ages. Developmentalism produces a normal in the classroom that sanctions comparisons, positioning any difference to the normal as problematic. In this paper, using observation and conversation data from a larger poststructural ethnographic study of three inclusive early childhood classrooms in Australia, the effects of developmental discourses on the classroom and on inclusive practice are examined. Providing an alternative view of inclusion, the paper focuses on the operations of the normal, exposing the exclusionary effects of developmental discourses on children, and among children. As children negotiate difference in the classroom, they draw on sanctioned developmental understandings in coming to know themselves and others. Interrupting the power and authority of these discourses and the way they produce certain ways of being and becoming could provide some promise for inclusive practices.

摘要

在过去的几十年中，在早期儿童教育中，出现了对发展性话语的批评。尽管如此，儿童发展理论的普遍性仍然存在，随之而来的是对通过规定阶段和年龄的线性发展的期望。发展主义在课堂上产生了一种认可比较的常态，将任何与常态的差异定位为有问题的。在本文中，使用来自澳大利亚三个包容性幼儿教室的大型后结构民族志研究的观察和对话数据，检验了发展性话语对课堂和包容性实践的影响。本文提供了另一种包容的观点，重点关注正常的运作，揭示了发展性话语对儿童和儿童之间的排斥性影响。当孩子们在课堂上协商差异时，他们利用认可的发展性理解来了解自己和他人。打断这些话语的力量和权威以及它们产生某些存在和生成方式的方式，可以为包容性实践提供一些希望。