Inclusions and exclusions in Swedish Early Childhood Education
This presentation emerges from a continued interest in the intersections of childhood and nation, and the growing presence of nationalisms in national and international politics. We focus on the importance of bottom-up aspects of nationalism, including the “assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people” (Hobsbawm, 1992, p. 10). Hence, we take our starting point from ordinary people and their social practice in early childhood institutions, as they talk about, give meaning to, accomplish, undermine or subvert the nation through routine activities. We present examples from recent early childhood education practices and developments in public and political discourses about early childhood education in Sweden.
We seek to answer the following questions:
- How are particular children and teachers being socialized into a national identity and culture?
- How, when, and in what ways do they participate in a national culture on a day-to-day basis, if at all?
- How and when do children and teachers replicate nationhood and how do they re/interpret, resist, contest and re/produce their own versions of nationhood in ordinary practices of everyday life?
- In addition, how does nationhood operate in the routine activities of children and teachers in Sweden, and how those are or might be valorised for exclusionary purposes?
Zsuzsa Millei is a Professor at the Faculty Education and Culture, Tampere University, Finland and Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg where she leads the Nationalism and Childhood group under the Global Childhoods Network. Her research addresses child politics by exploring how politics (power, government, nationalism, and ideology) intertwine with childhood and children’s everyday life in child institutions. She has recently edited a special issue on ‘Banal and Everyday Nationalisms in children’s mundane and institutional lives’ in the journal of Children’s Geographies and her latest publication is Towards Earthly politics in education: Going beyond national, global and planetary environmental imaginaries.
Annika Åkerblom is a researcher and associate professor in early childhood education in Gothenburg University. She is, together with Zsuzsa Millei, leading the Nationalism and Childhood group under the Global Childhoods Network. Her research focus is on language and nationalism and centers around early childhood critical didactics and how different aspects of language condition children´s spaces in preschool institutions. She has recently edited a special issue in the journal Global Studies of Childhood; Globalisation in and of Nordic early childhood education: Tensions between the local and the global and her latest publication is ‘Can you teach me a little Urdu?’ Educators navigating linguistic diversity in pedagogic practice in Swedish preschools