This article focuses on the national policy framework for early childhood education (birth to 5 years) in England – the Early Years Foundation Stage, specifically the use of child development theories as the underpinning knowledge base for practice. The aim is to understand what constructions of learning and development are foregrounded in policy, and their implications for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Critical Discourse Analysis methods are used to expose learning and development as messy constructs, and to propose three arguments. First, the evidence base for the Early Years Foundation Stage relies on selective appropriation of child development theories, and findings from government-funded research. These sustain normative discourses, reflecting a Piagetian ontology of ‘development leads learning’, through which children become ‘knowable’ and ‘measurable’. Second, the Early Years Foundation Stage shifts from developmental processes to learning outcomes as the basis for constructing curriculum, assessment of children’s outcomes and school readiness. Third, the Early Years Foundation Stage constitutes a discursive regime, which influences how practitioners must fulfil performance criteria that serve multiple purposes of assessing outcomes, evaluating standards and defining ‘quality’. From a critical perspective, this analysis questions the efficacy of the Early Years Foundation Stage in addressing the problems of equity and inclusion in diverse societies. The Early Years Foundation Stage exemplifies the policy technologies that can be discerned in international contexts, through which specific forms of curriculum coherence and control are produced. An alternative ‘learning leading development’ onto-epistemology is proposed, which offers potential for challenging the (il)logic of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

中文翻译：

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学习，发展和幼儿课程：英格兰早期基础阶段的批判性话语分析

本文重点介绍英格兰的儿童早期教育（出生至5岁）的国家政策框架-早期基础阶段，特别是将儿童发展理论用作实践的基础知识。目的是了解政策中应注意哪些学习和发展结构，以及它们对课程，教学法和评估的影响。批判性话语分析方法用于将学习和发展暴露为混乱的结构，并提出三个论点。首先，早期基础阶段的证据基础取决于对儿童发展理论的选择性拨款以及政府资助研究的结果。这些维持规范性话语，反映了“发展引领学习”的皮亚杰式本体论，通过它孩子们变得“可知”和“可衡量”。第二，早期阶段的基础阶段从发展过程转变为学习成果，这是构建课程，评估儿童成果和入学准备的基础。第三，早年预科阶段构成了一种话语权制度，它影响从业者必须如何达到服务于绩效目的的绩效标准，以评估结果，评估标准和定义“质量”。从批判的角度来看，该分析质疑早年基础阶段在解决不同社会的公平和包容性问题方面的功效。早期基金会阶段体现了可以在国际环境中发现的政策技术，通过这些形式可以产生课程连贯性和控制性的特定形式。提出了另一种“学习领先的发展”本体论论，它具有挑战早年基础阶段的逻辑的潜力。