1: introducing the division- is there one?

            In my experience over the last year and half in the early childhood care and education degree program, one of the most important concepts I have encountered is the question of the division between theory and practice in our work with young children. I have had a number of experiences- in different practicum and work settings- where I have been told that what I am learning in school doesn’t work in the field- it’s just theory. Teachers have told me that they know their children and their classrooms – and the theory doesn’t translate to practice. Now that I sit with one foot in a University childcare center and the other in academic explorations of early childhood education, I wonder what is lost and what power structures continue to be maintained in classrooms when we don’t translate the theory that can question the norms of early childhood education into our practice.

            I have been thinking about how to present the concept of theory and practice for a long time and struggling to find the words. I want to communicate and explore the idea that theory and practice are inseparable- but the language itself creates a division. I liken this division to the separation of mind and body. This division is already being challenged in education as we embrace the holistic child: social, emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual... It seems that we are able to recognize the child as a complex being- who speaks in a multiplicity of languages and brings with her a history, family, community and lifeworld (Van Manen, 1997) that shape the meanings she makes in every experience in the classroom. What is the lifeworld of the educator? What does she bring with her into the classroom, into her image of the child and her image of education?

            Some of what the educator brings with her is theory: Theories about children, about education, about teachers, about art, about best practice, about development, about learning, about literacy and many other things. These theories have been constructed through our culture and daily practice (Mac Naughton, 2005) and have become invisible. As we begin to break down the barriers between theory and practice- we can think with specific philosophers and theories in order to question and disrupt the theories and hierarchies that have become invisible in our practice. Lenz Taguchi (2007) writes about her experience working with a group of teachers, thinking with the ideas presented by the French philosopher- Derrida, to help them deconstruct their image of the child. The teachers questioned their ideas about children’s art and the dominant ideas about children’s art in their culture “as expressions of the child’s inner psychological and cognitive development through essentialist and universal stages” (p.277). This questioning of the dominant ideas in a culture or classroom is not easy. It involves disrupting the role of the teacher as an expert who knows children and knows what will happen in her classroom. Derrida states that “deconstruction happens: through a process of not knowing, uncertainty, indeterminacy; being always a bit lost to one another. This is what makes possible a space for another kind of communication, learning and change.” But, as we embrace the difficulty of not knowing, we are also able to embrace the beauty of co-constructing knowledge with children and being in the space of education with children.

Lenz Taguchi, H. (2007). Deconstructing and transgressing the theory-practice dichotomy in early childhood education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39, 275-290. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00324.x

Mac Naughton, G. (2005). Doing Foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas. New York: Routledge.

Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy(2^nd ed.). London, Ontario: The Althouse Press.