In early childhood education and care policy, there are two dominant discourses: ‘investment and outcomes’ and ‘children’s rights’. There is little research on how these discourses play out in educators’ accounts. In this article, the authors examine the case of discourse pertaining to children’s relaxation in early childhood education and care. They demonstrate that Australian relaxation policy for children in early childhood education and care constructs children as passive and incompetent subjects. Some educators reproduce early childhood education and care policy tensions by vacillating between investment-outcomes and children’s rights discourse in their accounts, while other educators deviate from the policy constructions and adopt children’s rights discourse.

在幼儿教育和照料政策中，有两种主要的论述：“投资与成果”和“儿童权利”。关于这些话语如何在教育者的叙述中发挥作用的研究很少。在本文中，作者研究了与儿童在幼儿教育和照料中的放松有关的话语案例。他们证明，澳大利亚针对儿童早期教育和照料的放松政策将儿童建构为被动和无能的学科。一些教育者通过在他们的账户中在投资结果和儿童权利话语之间摇摆不定来重现幼儿教育和护理政策的紧张状况，而另一些教育者则偏离政策结构，采用儿童权利话语。