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Ed 705 Socio Cultural

Foundation
JASMIN F. SILVA
DevEdD Student/Reporter
(Re)Centering Quality in
Early Childhood
Education: Toward
Intersectional Justice for
Minoritized Children
MARIANA SOUTO-MANNING
AYESHA RABADI-RAOL
Teachers College, Columbia University
minoritize
- to make a person,
group, etc a minority;
treat a person, group,
language as lesser in
status; marginalize
Intersectional justice
- fair and equal distribution of
wealth, opportunities, rights
and political power within
society
 This Chapter offers a critical
intersectional analysis of quality in early
childhood education with the aim of
moving away from a singular
understanding of “best practice,” thereby
interrupting the inequities such a concept
fosters.
While acknowledging how injustices are
intersectionally constructed, we specifically
identified critical race theory as a counterstory to
White supremacy, culturally relevant and sustaining
pedagogies as counterstories to monocultural
teaching practices grounded in deficit and inferiority
paradigms, and translanguaging as a counterstory to
the (over)privileging of dominant American English
monolingualism.
While each of these counterstories forefronts one
particular dimension of oppression, together they
account for multiple, intersecting systems of
oppressions; combined, they expand the cartography
of early childhood education and serve to (re)center
the definition of quality on the lives, experiences,
voices, and values of multiply minoritized young
children, families, and communities.
Rejecting oppressive and reductionist
notions of quality, through the use of
re-mediation, this article offers design
principles for intersectionally just early
childhood education with the potential
to transform the architecture of
quality.
Young children from multiply minoritized backgrounds are the
fastest growing demographic group in the United States (Pew
Research Center, 2016). Despite this demographic diversity,
the field of early childhood education continues to promote
the concept of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)
defined by the National Association for the Education of
Young Children (NAEYC) as signifying quality (Connors &
Morris, 2015; NAEYC, 2009), without adequately
acknowledging or including the experiences, practices, and
identities of children from multiply minoritized backgrounds
(Goodwin, Cheruvu, & Genishi, 2008; Mallory & New,
1994; Pérez & Saavedra, 2017).
The purpose of this chapter is to offer a critical
intersectional analysis of quality in early
childhood education with the aim of moving
away from a singular understanding of “best
practice,” thereby interrupting the inequities
such a concept fosters.
The purpose of this chapter is to offer a
critical intersectional analysis of quality in
early childhood education with the aim of
moving away from a singular
understanding of “best practice,” thereby
interrupting the inequities such a concept
fosters.
We employ intersectionality as “a way of understanding and
analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human
experiences” (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 2). From such a
perspective, the field of early childhood education’s definition of
quality is socially, historically, culturally, and racially constructed.
We reject the acultural and colonialist normative aims of a single
“best practice” defining quality in early education and refute the
notion that DAP is “at the core of being an excellent early
childhood teacher” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009, p. 33). Herewith,
we engage with intersectionalities in doing, redoing, and
transforming (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016).
We highlight how traditional notions of quality in early childhood education
are exclusionary, rooted in White monolingual and monocultural values and
experiences, and apply deficit paradigms to frame the developmental
trajectories of multiply minoritized children. We then engage with the
theoretical tool of re-mediation (Cole & Griffin, 1983; Gutiérrez, Morales, &
Martinez, 2009) to (re)center the concept of quality. In contrast to
remediation, which blames individuals for the results of systemic injustices,2
Griffin and Cole (1984) proposed the notion of re-mediation to put forth the
idea that perhaps it is the tools and artifacts, and/or the learning
environments that must be reorganized in ways to encourage deep learning.
We define the term (re)center as both centering and
recentering. The term accounts for the reorientations that
place people of color’s ontologies and epistemologies
foundationally to interrupt the Eurocentric notion of quality
defined by DAP (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). We employ
(re)center here to explain the purposeful and intentional
positioning of practices, knowledges, values, and experiences
of multiply minoritized young children, families, and
communities as essential to redefining quality in early
childhood education.
We also make visible how the positioning
of multiply minoritized children, families,
and communities in this normative
definition of quality is damaging and stands
in stark contrast to NAEYC’s own Code of
Ethical Conduct (NAEYC, 2011), as
illustrated by the following principles:
P-1.1: Above all, we shall not harm children.
We shall not participate in practices that are
emotionally damaging, physically harmful,
disrespectful, degrading, dangerous,
exploitative, or intimidating to children. This
principle has precedence over all others in
this Code
P-1.2: We shall care for and educate
children in positive emotional and
social environments that are
cognitively stimulating and that
support each child’s culture, language,
ethnicity, and family structure.
We specifically used terms associated with
the major paradigms that have historically
positioned children from multiply
minoritized communities and backgrounds
(Goodwin et al., 2008): “deficit,” “diversity,”
“inferiority” (in their plural and singular
forms).
 DAP as “BEST PRACTICE” In Early Childhood
Education
Three paradigms have punctuated the landscape
of early childhood education in the United States
over time: inferiority, deficit, and cultural
difference (Bloch, 1987; Genishi & Goodwin,
2008; Goodwin et al., 2008; Valdés, 1996). They
rest on the following assumptions:
Inferiority: Children from multiply
minoritized backgrounds have been
seen as biologically inferior—as having
smaller brains and lower IQs than White
children, who have been seen as racially
superior
Deficit: Children from multiply minoritized
backgrounds have been seen as experiencing poor
upbringings in their homes and communities and
developing a deficit—whether linguistic or cultural—
for example, as having a word gap, as being “at risk,”
as needing a head start to succeed in schools and
schooling (grounded in the desirability of colonial
monocultural, monolingual norms imposed
ethnocentrically and violently onto them)
Cultural Difference: Children from
multiply minoritized backgrounds
have been seen as different from the
colonial monocultural, White,
monolingual norm.
These paradigms historically trace the
development of early childhood education as
a field and continue to function today,
upholding “deep-seated, uninterrogated
assumptions, values and beliefs of cultural
normativity that perpetuate coloniality”
(Dominguez, 2017, p. 227) and undergird DAP
DAP was first defined by the NAEYC, one of the largest education
professional organizations in the world, as “a framework of principles and
guidelines for best practice in the care and education of young children,
birth through age 8” (NAEYC, 2009). It was conceptualized in the 1980s,
when NAEYC developed a system to accredit early childhood education
programs, which included guidelines requiring programs to provide DAP
and learning opportunities for young children (NAEYC, 2009). Because DAP
was linked to the assessment and rating of early childhood education
programs, NAEYC defined and exemplified DAP in a self-published guide
(Bredekamp, 1987), now in its third edition (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009).
Since then, DAP has been widely used to assess quality in early childhood
education and “best practice” for the care and education of young children
(Connors & Morris, 2015; NAEYC, 2009).