- Title
- Thinking differently about guidance: power, children's autonomy and democratic environments
- Creator
- Millei, Zsuzsa
- Relation
- Journal of Early Childhood Research Vol. 10, Issue 1
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1476718X11406243
- Publisher
- Sage Publications, Inc.
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- This article critiques guidance approaches to discipline, that are employed in early childhood environments with an aim to create democratic environments for children, and as part of ‘good’ practices. Advocates of guidance claim that this is a more humane or democratic approach to discipline that empowers children, and therefore, power in the classroom appears as more equalized or distributed. The author adopts a particular perspective in the field of educational psychology by using Foucault’s conceptualization of power and confession (1981). This analytical context opens up avenues to problematize guidance’s claims about the nature of teacher–child power relations, and children’s autonomy. Guidance is then re-read as a subtle, often invisible way of regulation, that sheds new light on a particular kind of autonomy children are allowed. The article concludes with an emphasis on the necessity to be vigilant with guidance. Vigilance is needed to keep in sight that guidance is a discourse that positions subjects in power relations and its quest for democracy is a part of its discourse with power implications rather than its ultimate goal.
- Subject
- classroom management; Foucault; governmentality; educational psychology; school discipline
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1057188
- Identifier
- uon:16149
- Identifier
- ISSN:1741-2927
- Language
- eng
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