Contending Purposes of Pre-Kindergarten: A Comparative Case Study of Early Childhood Education Policy in Minnesota

Abstract

Policymakers predominantly represent Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) as an investment in children’s human capital development. Despite the dominance of this policy discourse, limited research explores how it operates as a policymaking strategy or compares the perspectives of policymakers, children, parents, and educators regarding ECEC. This dissertation research addresses this gap through a Comparative Case Study of ECEC in Minnesota, where investment discourse is pervasive. I apply a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Minnesota ECEC policy texts to explore how policy actors privilege investment discourse in legitimating ECEC reform. Through this CDA I highlight the assumptions regarding children’s subjectivity that underlie Minnesota policy actors’ use of investment discourse. I apply Critical Race Theory to explore how Minnesota ECEC policy actors’ engagement of investment discourse reinforces racist assumptions regarding inequality in education.Additionally, this dissertation examines the perspectives and priorities of key social actors in ECEC practice, including children, a pre-K educator, and parents. I draw on school-based research that I conducted in a pre-K classroom in the greater Minneapolis, Minnesota area. I describe how two parents and a pre-K educator emphasize the importance of children’s social-emotional learning in pre-K, and pre-K’s role in readying children for future schooling. I also outline how these participants negotiate investment discourse as they make choices for their children’s and students’ education. Meanwhile, the pre-K students who participated in this research valued opportunities to engage in free play and artistic endeavors, and to visit their playground and the gym. They also emphasized rules regarding safety, as well as strategies to negotiate relationships with peers and process their feelings. I contrast students’ narratives regarding pre-K with policy actors’ prioritization of ECEC as a means to ready children for academic success and eventual economic productivity. I show how students’ priorities are at risk as a result of the heightened academic expectations in ECEC. Drawing on the New Sociology of Childhood, I argue that engaging children in this dissertation research offers emancipatory possibilities for destabilizing investment discourse’s dominance and forging justice in ECEC.