“Same, same but different”1:
The dangers of binary definitions of dis/ability in the neoliberal marketplace of early childhood education and care
Lesley Lyons
Abstract
In Aotearoa/New Zealand the Government-mandated requirement to include children with disabilities into regular, “long-day” early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres is protected by several key acts of legislation. This legislation articulates inclusion as a human right, but the discursive rhetoric used to explain the notion of rights and inclusion in this legislation is at times difficult to interpret, laying it open to differences in the way it is implemented. Discursive contradictions appear to be resulting in practices that draw on binary understandings of ability and disability with ability being constituted as the norm or standard and disability as the deficit or “other”. This paper addresses the “rights versus needs” debate and argues that the “rights discourse” is being further hampered by a market-driven, neoliberal restructuring of the ECEC sector in Aotearoa/New Zealand over the past two decades. Such changes have created a sector that is now being asked to juxtapose social justice issues and the rights of all children with economic goals in a growing “for-profit” education environment.
This paper questions whether the increased involvement of private enterprise in the ECEC sector in recent years has unintentionally reinforced a simplistic understanding of disability. I argue that reliance on such understandings will restrict access to meaningful, respectful curriculum in the sector for children with disabilities. Given that Aotearoa/New Zealand’s ECEC curriculum document specifically describes curriculum as being all of the ECEC experiences, activities and events that a child engages in, either directly or indirectly, restricted access to early childhood education for children with disability is a curriculum concern.
Introduction
In this paper I aim to highlight issues, consider dangers and recognise challenges for adults who are involved in ECEC and the inclusion of children with disabilities. Drawing on my own and others’ recent research, I examine the current ECEC environment in Aotearoa/New Zealand and explore the relationship between several key interconnected influences on inclusion. My position is one of commitment to the human rights of all children. I contend that all children, regardless of ability, have the right to be with and learn alongside their peers. Central to my stance is the view that differences in ability are part of the uniqueness of the human condition. Therefore, I consider it to be critically important to challenge beliefs and practices that contravene the rights of disabled people to be included in, and belong to, a community. What worries me most is an apparent renaissance of deficit views of disability since the introduction of privatisation in the ECEC sector. Deficit views of disability draw on simplistic binary comparisons between disability and ability. My concern is that, in recent years we have inadvertently been moving away from previous—and in my view, better informed—attempts to respect and include all children in our ECEC centres.
As a heuristic to draw the reader’s attention to the abled versus disabled binary, in this paper I have at pertinent points inserted a forward stroke or virgule into the word disability (i.e., dis/ability). This separation of dis and ability aims to show how our, perhaps unintentional, labelling and understanding of ability plays a role in the way we treat both abled and disabled children. As Anderson and Merrell (2001) state, the notions of disability and ability imply and construct each other. The virgule insertion here acts as an alert, drawing our attention to the fact that when disability and ability are viewed as binary partners a person with disability may cease to be viewed as a competent individual and instead the differences between abled and disabled are foregrounded.
Several writers have explored disability as socially constructed (Barton, 1996; Fulcher, 1999; Oliver, 1996). This view is adopted in much of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s disability legislation and policy as this quote from the New Zealand Disability Strategy (Ministry of Health, 2001) demonstrates:
Disability is not something individuals have. What individuals have are impairments. They may be physical, sensory, neurological, psychiatric, intellectual or other impairments. Disability is the process which happens when one group of people creates barriers by designing a world only for their way of living, taking no account of the impairments other people have. (p. 7)
This paper offers a particular perspective about the role the current market-orientated ECEC environment may be playing in the construction of young children with disability. This perspective is based in part on what I have observed over the last three decades of my own involvement in the ECEC sector. I also draw on early evidence from a research project I am currently undertaking that attempts to address these concerns by examining the current complexities and tensions surrounding inclusion from the perspectives of teachers, owners and families/whänau in the marketplace environment of the long-day ECEC sector. Long-day ECEC services are those open for the hours of an adult’s typical working day, usually 7.30 am to 6.00 pm. I have worked as a kindergarten teacher, been the owner of a long-day ECEC centre and in recent years a researcher/lecturer in ECEC. I have practised under multiple educational and ECEC sector reforms designed to support children with disabilities. These range from the introduction of special needs units, partial integration of groups from special education facilities, part-time supported inclusion of individual children and, most recently, initiatives to support full inclusion of all children. With the possible exception of the partial integration of groups from other facilities, many of these practices still remain.
Privatisation of the ECEC sector
In order to contextualise these concerns, an overview of the current contexts in the early childhood sector is called for. Apart from Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu (The Correspondence School) which caters for approximately 600 children of preschool age (Ministry of Education, 2011), no ECEC services in Aotearoa/New Zealand are now state-provided. Instead, a diverse range of services has been established by a number of community-based and private business providers within a market-driven education environment. Private ownership in the ECEC sector has burgeoned since the introduction of these reforms, with current statistics showing an almost 2:1 majority over community (nonprofit) centres (Ministry of Education, 2011). Accompanying this shift to private investment is a discursive shift in the way the sector is viewed by the various stakeholders. Privatisation has seen the early childhood education profession redefined as an “industry” with commercial status and an accompanying view of the child as a tradable commodity (Goodfellow, 2005). In this industrial climate efficiency, effectiveness, performance and economics are key imperatives, and the sector’s equity and social justice policies, as mandated in the curriculum, appear to be marginalised. As Goodfellow (2005) states, on the one hand the child is personalised through professional knowledge and social, moral and ethical views of caring, but on the other the child is depersonalised through an economic view that prioritises viability and cost effectiveness. Moss and Dahlberg (2008) describe this as depoliticising important social issues and displacing real political and policy choices with a series of managerial imperatives.
While community-owned ECEC centres are not strictly part of the neoliberal marketplace model because they are not-for-profit organisations (their structure prevents distribution of profit to individual investors [Ministry of Education, 2011]), they are bounded by the same market forces. To remain solvent they must compete for their market share and this may be forcing them to adopt the same free-market strategies as their for-profit counterparts.
Curriculum concerns
All ECEC providers, both privately and community operated, attract considerable government funding and, without exception, are charged with the responsibility of meeting legislative and curriculum obligations for children with disabilities as part of their work. This responsibility is legislated in the Human Rights Act (1993), United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1989), the New Zealand Disability Strategy (Ministry of Health, 2001) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2006). Additionally, by way of the New Zealand Early Childhood Regulations (New Zealand Government, 2008), all licensed ECEC centres are required to use Te Whäriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), the early childhood curriculum, as their guiding document for practice. Te Whäriki: He Whäriki Mätauranga mó ngä Mokopuna o Aotearoa (Ministry of Education, 1996) is a stand-alone, bicultural early childhood curriculum which contains reference to the inclusion of children with disabilities. The document was developed in the early 1990s during the time of considerable economic restructuring in Aotearoa/New Zealand. These structural changes included significant education reforms which, for the first time, included the early childhood sector (Mitchell, 2003). As Duhn (2008) comments, while early childhood education remains noncompulsory in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the preschool child has now become part of a grid connecting the “normal” young child with compulsory schooling and other educational institutions. Although the legislation for human rights and social justice is woven through Te Whäriki, and clearly evident in the document’s strand of Contribution, the document is a product of both liberal and neoliberal discourses (Duhn, 2008).
The dual influences of the broad neoliberal agenda and the more specific social justice/inclusive intention of the curriculum has led to contradictions in the body of Te Whäriki as it addresses the inclusion of children with disabilities. For example, the curriculum strand labelled Contribution advocates that “children experience an environment where there are equitable opportunities for learning, irrespective of gender, ability, age, ethnicity or background” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 66). It advocates for an understanding of the rights of others and a respect for, and ease of interaction with, children who are different from themselves. On the other hand, and also in the strand of Contribution, the development of “positive and constructive attitudes to competition” is promoted (p. 70), which, perhaps in contrast, reflects a characteristically neoliberal focus on individualism.
Te Whäriki curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 1996) devotes just two paragraphs of the 100-page document to the inclusion of children with disabilities. In these it asserts that the “Care and education of children who have special needs [disabilities] is provided within the diverse range of early childhood services” (p.11). The importance of developmentally appropriate activities is also highlighted alongside the need for Individual Development Plans for children who require additional resources and support. Unfortunately, the reference to inclusion stops there, so that while inclusion is clearly an intention, there is little in the document that promotes a view of the child with disabilities as other than “other”. Thus we have this conceptual binary of ability versus dis/ability rather than the more inclusive rights notion that I am proposing here. Even though the document is now into its second decade of use, there is little evidence to compel a sector commitment to inclusion, or examples of how to enact it.
Lauder (2004) has previously argued that the neoliberal education market was an attempt to take education out of the political sphere and into an economic sphere within which competition would allow for the “best” to achieve dominance. For ECEC this approach assumes that the operation of the free market provides parent choice which ensures that services are established where they are most needed, and that they will be responsive to family circumstances. Lauder (1991) and Marginson (1997) have asserted that neoliberalism constructs a particular understanding of the world, dividing people into purchasers (or customers) and providers (or sellers) who come together in a marketplace to trade a commodity. Usually the trading of a commodity involves purchaser choice—the seller does not select the buyer. Within the marketplace of ECEC one might naively assume, therefore, that the services required for children with disabilities are out there to be bought. However, research undertaken both in New Zealand and overseas indicates disparities in access and participation between typically-developing (able) under 5-year-olds and their disabled peers (Grace, Llewellyn, Wedgwood, Fenech, & McConnell, 2008; Purdue, 2009; Purdue, Ballard, & MacArthur, 2001). For example, Grace et al. (2008) conducted a study in Australia where ECEC provision is similarly structured to Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study examined mothers’ experiences of searching for a welcoming ECEC centre for their child with disabilities. Thirty-nine mothers were involved in the study, all of whom were keen to have their child enrolled in a “regular” setting. The study highlighted real difficulties with rejections ranging between five and 20 applications for enrolment per family. Many centres would only accept an enrolment once funding and support were in place.
These findings support the findings of New Zealand researchers Purdue et al. (2001), who found that teachers often restricted attendance of children with disabilities to times when a funded education support worker could be present. Purdue’s later research (2009), also conducted within the Aotearoa/New Zealand context, confirmed her earlier findings that many adults viewed children with disabilities as significantly different and exceptional, with special curriculum and teaching needs and, in some cases, as better off having their needs met by outside agencies. Early findings emerging from my own research indicate that teachers continue to have concerns about the availability of funding and support services for children with disabilities; as one participant said, “there is not enough money or input or anything!” This concern about government funding and support seems to be underpinning the reluctance to commit to a child with disability.
This prevailing view of disability as being costly in terms of resourcing and paid specialist assistance legitimises a binary view of dis/ability. The child is identified as dis/abled by a complex funding regime, their needs rather than rights are the focus, and their deficits rather than their competencies underlined. In positioning this within the complex environment of providing education and care in a competitive market model, the child with disabilities may be viewed as a less than prudent investment. A significant consequence of this view is denial of, or limited access to, the curriculum that is intended to provide for, and promote the learning and development of, all children. Referring back to the definition of curriculum in Te Whäriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), the “indirect” learning experience for the child with disabilities is likely to be that of “other”.
At this stage in my research, most of the teacher participants interviewed appear to be positive about the “idea” of inclusion, yet they have consistently articulated tensions in the day-to-day practicalities of inclusion. Participants have cited difficulties arising from inconsistent staffing, initial teacher education not adequately addressing inclusion, unavailability of professional development, pressures on teachers’ time and unsuitable physical environments. Many of these concerns support previous reports that reflect the outcomes of a neoliberal education environment generally. For example, in reporting on the differences between community-owned and privately-owned ECEC centres in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Mitchell (2002) noted that the market model of delivery had impacted negatively on key factors such as staff qualifications, pay rates and staffing stability.
Why neoliberalism is challenging the right to inclusion policy in ECEC
I cite neoliberalism as a major player in the renaissance of a binary view of dis/ability. Neoliberalism is characterised by the privileging of economic competitiveness, which results in the devolution of governance, entrepreneurialism, international testing, language and literacy directed at trade, auditing standards and the exporting of education (Robertson & Dale, 2002). The aim of the neoliberal position overall is to reduce the state’s financial burden, allowing it to withdraw from direct responsibility and to promote policies that encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own economic wellbeing. Neoliberalism promotes personal agency and places those who are less able to act for their own “survival” as being of lesser value in society (Peters, 2001).
Emerging from the neoliberal position is an image of an ideal individual, which Peters (2001) describes as an “entrepreneurial self”. He suggests this “self” embodies a shift from a culture of dependency (on the state) to one of self-reliance. A focus on educating for self-reliance is a critical dimension of the neoliberal approach to education. In the neoliberal argument, education is linked to an individual’s future contribution to the economy. The development of future citizens who are able to provide for themselves with minimal cost to the state is a desirable outcome of education. This discourse of self-reliance, sometimes referred to as “self-responsibilising” discourse (Peters, 2001, p. 58), is characterised by and promotes personal agency with regards to physical and intellectual achievement, self-actuality and the accumulation of goods and finances. The discourse clearly privileges economic independence over social justice imperatives in society. The ideal society, therefore, is comprised of those who have, can and do (the able), and those who have not, can’t and don’t (the dis/abled) are viewed as problematic and costly. Hence neoliberal policies reinforce a binary oppositional view of dis/ability. If being able implies taking personal responsibility, being dis/abled also becomes a personal responsibility. Personalising disability in such a way allows for a shift backwards from the rhetoric of overarching human rights policy and from the intent of Te Whäriki (Ministry of Education, 1996). Clearly, presenting disability in this way detracts from human rights policy and the intent of Te Whäriki. Framing disability within the bounds of personal agency discourses has created contradictions to the legislation situating the young child with disabilities outside the Aotearoa/New Zealand ECEC curriculum’s aspiration for all children “to grow up as competent and confident learners” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 9).
Paradoxically, the only additional funding support systems available to enable the full inclusion of children with disability are themselves enabling the constraint. The additional funding structure focuses on individual deficits, because access to funding is reliant on the identification of additional “need”, medical confirmation of the “need”, resourcing of the “need” and professional support to manage the “need” (Lyons, 2005). The implicit message is that inclusion is not straightforward but problematic and costly. It also implies that ECEC teachers are not experts, able to assess and meet the learning requirements of all children. In my mind this is further reinforcing the binary view of dis/ability in the sector. The rights of the child with disabilities to access and participate fully appear to have become lost in a milieu of complex and “disabling” discourses and their associated funding schemes. Such resourcing regimes are legitimising a view of the child with disabilities as being a less cost-effective investment than his/her “able” counterpart.
Furthermore, it appears that the free market environment, which was supposed to provide choice for the consumer, has in fact reduced consumer choice in the sector. As large corporate investors in the sector achieve greater market share, the choices for consumers become limited. As the market competition reduces the binary view of dis/ability becomes entrenched in controlling corporates, and a commitment to inclusion is further subjugated by economic goals. In this market the potential for children with disabilities to be included alongside their peers is likely to be further impeded.
Another factor impacting on the right of inclusion for children with disabilities is coming from the compulsory school sector of education, as neoliberal principles become manifest in such strategies as National Standards. During the introduction of National Standards, Prime Minister John Key (2010) stated: “National Standards will ensure that all parents, not just the lucky few, can expect their school to regularly test their children against national benchmarks in reading, writing and maths” (para. 8). This standards testing increased the anxiety levels of principals who were concerned that their schools may not be “doing well” in the statistics. Reporting on the issue of National Standards, Laxon (2009) noted that some principals feared that “their schools may be held accountable for 5-year-olds failing to meet the national standards at the end of their first year” (para. 5). It prompted the Early Childhood Council, the largest representative organisation of private investors in ECEC, to argue for young children being taught more specific skills and content before they start school (Laxon, 2009). The flow-on effect has been that many private ECEC providers are now responding to the pressure to include specific aspects of the Year 1 primary school curriculum into their early childhood programmes. A cursory look at ECEC advertisers on the Internet revealed many advertisements claiming structured provision for the development of a child’s literacy, mathematical and technological skills in preparation for success in formal schooling.
There is a natural consequence here with regards to subsequent public perception of the early childhood centre’s position in the marketplace. The survival of the centre in this arena of consumer choice is dependent on appeal to the largest client base which in turn may be linked to its ability to implement school preparation practices. This is reiterated in recent findings by Duhn (2010) who noted that for-profit providers will respond to the market and consumer demand. It is unlikely that ECEC centres entering this niche in the market will be perceived by parents of children with disability as welcoming and inclusive. Furthermore, the notion of “preparation for schooling” aligns with a view of child development and learning as linear and creates challenges to recent philosophical shifts in early childhood education which have embraced, amongst others, the pedagogy of the Reggio Emilia ECEC centres in Italy. Since the mid-1970s international organisations have pointed to Italian ECEC for children with disabilities as amongst the most inclusive in the world (Smith, 1998). The child within Reggio Emilia philosophy is viewed as an active, co-constructor of his/her learning, as powerful and possessing of rights. Referred to as “Special Rights”, disability is considered as one of the unique characteristics brought to the group. My research findings indicate that this philosophical approach has been welcomed by several families of children with disabilities. In describing early years learning, Loris Malaguzzi, one of the principal founders of the Reggio Emilia schools, states:
What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught. Rather, it is in large part due to the children’s own doing as a consequence of their activities and our resources. (Malaguzzi, 1998, p. 67)
For adults working in Aotearoa/New Zealand ECEC, the realignment with traditional child development discourses is to revert to the binary opposition view of dis/ability. It is a deficit identification model that has been used by the early childhood sector as a measurement mechanism which is akin to those underpinning National Standards. The discourse of traditional child development renders a “universal truth” to a view of development as following a relatively straightforward and biologically determined pathway (Canella, 2000; Dalli, 1999). The binary opposition view of dis/ability is reinforced as indicators of difference are developmentally identified and largely unchallenged.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether or not adult providers in the ECEC sector claim social or economic goals as motivation for entering the sector, in the current competitive climate all ECEC providers now need to be, at the very least, economically stable. Including children with disabilities into regular settings is problematic if economic needs underpin all our decisions. As indicated in Te Whäriki (Ministry of Education, 1996) the sector has seemingly embraced the philosophical rhetoric of inclusion and now the challenge lies in converting this into real-life practices. If we fall back on, or realign our practices with, the mechanisms of medical and developmental paradigms of disability we might appear to be advocating for inclusion, and yet perhaps unwittingly encouraging the opposite. I fully acknowledge the complexities involved in today’s ECEC market but I also believe the profession is in danger of being subsumed by the values of neoliberalism and as such losing its focus on the rights of all children.
There is currently a need for greater research into the nature of inclusive education for young children with disability in the “marketplace” of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s early childhood education and care sector. It is important that we gain a deeper understanding of the influences and challenges for teachers and families of children with disability if the sector is to shift towards the true intent of inclusion that is embodied in the curriculum document. Human nature is such that we are hungry for knowledge and understanding about ourselves and others. We also have a need to give names to the knowledge we discover in our quest for understanding. We have a need to identify the similarities and differences between ourselves and those around us (Davis, 1992). In itself, this is not a concern unless we believe this understanding gives us accurate information about others. It is critical that we are able to deconstruct the social and political environments in which we live and the powerful forces at work to influence our values, beliefs and behaviours. It is now likely that the greatest challenge for the ECEC sector will be to frame the child with disability as a valuable participant in the marketplace model of early childhood education. Access to, and full participation in, high-quality, respectful curriculum is essential for all children regardless of ability. Denying access to children with disabilities to participation in ECEC on the same terms as their “able” peers will serve only to reinforce and personalise difference both “directly and indirectly”.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge and thank Jessica Rose Thomson for her critical interest in inclusion, and her attention to detail in the development of the framework of this article. Thank you also to Toni Bruce and Wayne Smith for sharing knowledge and experience to support the completion of this article.
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Note
The author
Lesley Lyons is a Senior Lecturer in ECE at the Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland. Lesley has extensive field experience in early childhood education and care and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Waikato. Her research involves an examination of the impact of privatisation in the sector on the inclusion of children with disabilities.
Email: l.lyons@auckland.ac.nz
1The title of this article incorporates the phrase “same, same but different”. This phrase is a common colloquial expression in Thailand. The phrase captures the idea that things can be mostly similar but still different in some important way. One school of thought is that the phrase is drawn from Ecclesiastes 1, 9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (New International Version Bible, 1984). My original intention was to use this phrase to support an argument that a reliance on binary oppositions disallows society to see the “sameness” in people. I believe this is so. However, in writing I thought more about the relevance of the phrase as a warning that should we not remain mindful of the human rights intentions for inclusion of children with disabilities in education in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we may be destined to repeat practices that segregated, excluded and disallowed participation in society. Our reasons may be “different” but the outcomes, “same, same”.