597149

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GSC0010.1177/2043610615597149Global Studies of ChildhoodGibson et al.

Article

Global Studies of Childhood

2015, Vol. 5(3) 322–332
Governing child care in neoliberal © The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/2043610615597149
of children as economic units gsc.sagepub.com

and early childhood educators

as investment brokers

Megan Gibson
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Felicity McArdle
Charles Sturt University, Australia; Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Caroline Hatcher
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Abstract
At any given time in the field of early childhood, there are discourses at play, producing images of
children, and these ways of seeing children might be competing, colliding and/or complementing
each other. It is fairly widely accepted that in many countries there are versions of dominant
discourses that shape and are shaped by current practices in the field of early childhood. These
include (1) romantic notions of children running free and connecting with nature and (2) the ‘Bart
Simpson’ version of the naughty, cute or savage child, untamed and in need of civilising. These are
far from being the only two discursive constructions of children present in current policies and
practices. If early childhood professionals are to be active in shaping and implementing policies
that affect their work and workforce, it is important that they are aware of the forces at play.
In this article, we point to another powerful discourse at play in the Australian context of early
childhood education, the image of children as economic units: investments in the future. We show
how a ‘moment of arising’ in contemporary policy contexts, dominated by neoliberal principles
of reform and competition, has charged early childhood educators in Australia with the duties of
a ‘broker’, ensuring that young children are worth the investment. In this article, we begin with
(1) a key policy document in early childhood education in Australia and examine the discursive
affordances which shape the document. Next, (2) we pinpoint the shifts in how the work of
child care is perceived by interrogating this key policy document through a methodology of

Corresponding author:
Felicity McArdle, School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Panorama Avenue, Bathurst, NSW 2795, Australia.
Email: fmcardle@csu.edu.au
Gibson et al. 323

discursive analysis. We then turn attention (3) to the work of this policy document along with
other discourses which directly affect images of children and the shaping role these have on the
work of educators. We conclude with (4) a consideration of how the work of early childhood
professionals has come to be shaped by this economic discourse, and how they are being required
to both work within the policy imperatives and likely to resist this new demand of them.

Keywords
Child care, discourse, economies, image of child

Introduction
Popular images of children include romantic notions of children running free and connecting with
nature. Just as popular is the Bart Simpson version of the naughty, cute or savage child, untamed and
in need of civilising. Just as powerful in its affordances, although arguably not yet as ‘visible’ to early
childhood professionals, is the discursive production of children as economic units, investments (in
our futures). Froebel’s (1895) early childhood educator was a ‘gardener’, nurturing the young chil-
dren like flowers growing in the garden, separate from the ‘adult’ world. But the early childhood
professional is also now being drawn into the broader economics of (Australian) society, produced as
an investment broker, and charged with watching over the ‘investment’. New policies and practices
in Australia, and other countries, are distinctly part of this economic landscape and its affordances,
which act to both enable and constrain the work of early childhood professionals.
In Australia, during the period between 2007 and 2009, early childhood became a policy focus
in the Rudd government ‘education revolution’ (Australian Labor Party (ALP), 2007). As a key
platform of the 2007 ALP federal election campaign, the education revolution claimed to herald a
‘new phase in national approaches to education policy’ (Reid, 2009: 3). A document that emerged
in the early childhood policy landscape was New Directions for Early Childhood Education:
Universal Access to Early Learning for 4 Year Olds (Rudd and Macklin, 2007). New Directions
made a call for early childhood to be re-conceptualised, with children as central not only to educa-
tion but also to the economy of the nation.
This article begins with an account of New Directions (Rudd and Macklin, 2007) as a key policy
document in contemporary early childhood education in Australia. We read this document as a marker
of a ‘moment of arising’ (Foucault, 1984: 83), a shift in the discursive terrain. Next, (2) we provide a
partial account of a larger study which interrogated the key policy document through the application
of a methodology for discursive analysis. Here, we pinpoint shifts in how the work of child care is
perceived, when neoliberal reforms reach the early childhood kindergartens and long day care set-
tings. We focus on (3) the work of this particular policy document, along with other discursive
affordances, which directly affect images of children and how these work to shape the work of educa-
tors. Finally, we consider (4) how discourses of children as ‘natural, free, playful, uncivilised’ com-
pete with discourse that produces children as economic units, and their educators as brokers, charged
with overseeing the investment. We suggest that the ‘cost of loving’ captures a collision between the
more familiar and traditional notions of care/love, considered inherent in the field of child care, and
other discourses of investment/economics, newly in play in the field of early childhood.

Background
This article draws on data that were generated through a forensic inquiry that examined an early
childhood political document that was considered key, due to its time and context. In a larger study
324 Global Studies of Childhood 5(3)

(see Gibson, 2013), the document, New Directions, was scrutinised and read as text, with the aim
of identifying indicators of the various discourses in circulation at a particular time when the early
childhood landscape was being disrupted. The mapping process involved an examination of this
‘discursive surface’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 37). Through this genealogical approach, it was
possible to locate certain contradictions, reversals and minute deviations (Foucault, 1984), all
of which work to constitute the early childhood ‘professional’. New Directions was selected for
scrutiny as an important development, as an ‘event’ at a particular moment in time, a ‘moment of
arising’ (Foucault, 1984: 83). It is a political document that was selected for its current influence
on the early childhood field and, in particular, workforce reforms that call for 4-year degree-
qualified teachers to work in before-school contexts, including child care.
While Foucault (1981) did not prescribe a form of discourse analysis as a method, his writings
nonetheless provide a valuable framework for illuminating discursive practices and, in turn, how
people are affected, through the shifts and distribution of power. The economic discourse, for
instance, entails certain ‘conditions that enable people, according to the rules of true and false
statements’, to be produced or constituted as a ‘subject’ (Florence, 1994: 462). How children are
spoken into existence, for example, as investments in the future, then this produces certain condi-
tions for their educators and carers, and disallows others. When a number of discourses are in play,
intersecting, competing and colliding, they produce the subject (Foucault, 1981) and, in the case of
this article, produce the child and the child’s early childhood teacher.
The technique for reading document-as-text applied to this reading of the data employed a
genealogical approach (Foucault, 1984). This is different from other approaches to history through
its interest in ‘making strange the present, rather than the past’ (Meredyth and Tyler, 1993: 4).
Without tracing histories of early childhood policies and practices here, we nevertheless draw on
genealogical approaches to analysing the present. If early childhood educators are to manage the
level of change that accompanies the reforms, then a degree of awareness about the present and
how it is shaped is critical. Recognising the ubiquitousness of neoliberal principles and values in
operation in contemporary Australia and the dominance of economic discourses will be helpful to
support them as they attempt to negotiate the new policy landscapes.
Genealogy looks to ‘inquire into processes, procedures, and techniques through which truth,
knowledge and beliefs are produced’ (Meadmor et al., 2000: 463). A number of techniques – such
as marking where categorisation is applied, mapping narratives, identifying regimes of truth at
work – enabled a systematic genealogical analysis of the document New Directions. In this way, it
was possible to read for what it is possible to say, and what is unsayable, in this document. The
data analysis approaches thus allowed space for new possibilities to arise. It became possible to
consider the implications for practice of a proposed policy that stipulated new requirements for
degree-qualified educators, a change in curriculum emphasis on outcomes and the introduction of
a national curriculum framework.
The document New Directions works as a prescriptive text (Foucault, 1972/1989). In what fol-
lows, we locate two ‘truths’ (Foucault, 1981, in Gordon): first, some of the discursive moves that
enabled the subjects (child and teacher) to be produced in particular ways and, second, how these
discursive constructions were spoken into existence. Our reading in this article illuminates how
children are produced as economic units, and early childhood teachers as brokers. There is no
claim that this analysis captures everything that was occurring at the time. Neither do we propose
any causal relationships with what might have occurred since in the field of early childhood in
Australia. Rather, we have conducted a forensic examination of New Directions, a policy document
that triggered a significant change in the way early childhood in Australia was shaped. It marks a
significant shift in the ways that young children, and those who work with them, were produced in
particular ways.
Gibson et al. 325

New directions – The document as text

In January 2007, amid a federal election campaign in Australia, the topic of early childhood was
catapulted onto the national agenda as part of the federal ALP’s education revolution policy. With
education positioned as ‘the most important economic policy issue for Labor at this year’s election’
(Coorey, 2007), there was a key shift in education policy – early childhood was repositioned as a
key player in the country’s economy and placed firmly in the portfolio of education. One document
that captured the importance of early years education for the economy of the nation was New
Directions (Rudd and Macklin, 2007).
Like many policy documents, New Directions includes a one-page executive summary (p. 2)
that works as ‘a framework for understanding the key ideas’ (Hatcher, 1997: 111). Particular atten-
tion is afforded here to close scrutiny of this section of the document for the ways in which it sets
the tenor for the document – and the discursive shifts that it produces.
A reading of one brief opening paragraph indicates prominence of the words ‘investing/
investment’ (appears three times) and ‘economy’ (appears two times). Other terms in this para-
graph shape the tone for the document: ‘higher rate of return’, ‘future prosperity’ and ‘new world
economy’. Given that the document focuses on the early years, it is worth noting that the words
child/children are not included in the executive summary.
Further forensic examination makes visible a range of other important discourses (McArdle and
McWilliam, 2005; Walkerdine, 1990) that might not be as dominant or powerful but are neverthe-
less in play. The executive summary does include a bulleted list that outlines how the challenges that
face early childhood education would be addressed. With the list prefaced with ‘learning begins, in
the early years’, the tone for the document is further established. The list also attends to broad objec-
tives and election commitments, along with details about how the changes will be actioned.
Furthermore, a peppering of words and phrases through the bulleted list denotes particular approaches
to early childhood education: ‘play-based’, ‘early learning’, ‘education’. Beyond the executive sum-
mary, the body of the text in New Directions draws on discourses of children’s rights and children’s
needs to build an argument that ‘nothing less than an education revolution’ (p. 3) is required.

The work of child care. The opening paragraph of the first section of the actual document marks
an interesting shift in the work of the text. Unlike the executive summary, the word children
is used twice: ‘All Australian children deserve the best start in life’ and ‘If our children are to
enjoy increases in their living standards […]’. The text then rapidly shifts to ‘government
investment’ so that children are able to ‘succeed in life’. The benefits are purported to be for
children as well as ‘the wider community’. In addition, these broader benefits will achieve
‘educational attainment and labour force participation’. In the space of four sentences, the
tone moves from children, and a nod to their rights, to economics, workforce and ‘higher lev-
els of productivity’.
In the first section of New Directions, research from a number of economic institutions is drawn
on (p. 5). For example, research about the United States from the Brookings Institute is used to
argue for investment in the early years: ‘high-quality universal preschool policy would boost the
size of the US economy by US$270 billion by 2050 and by over US$2 trillion by 2080’ (cited in
Rudd and Macklin, 2007: 5). This US-based evidence, held together with the trepidation generated
in the document to be wary of ‘competitors’, invokes fear and a compulsion to invest. The link to
similar benefits for Australia is made by association. It is spoken as a ‘non-choice’. Australia has a
responsible government, and therefore, it must invest – it would be irresponsible not to. The mon-
etary value assigned to children’s early learning and development, and the capacity for this to be
translated in into financial gain, presents a different way of framing early years policy.
326 Global Studies of Childhood 5(3)

New Directions points to other benefits gained from investing in early childhood: to ‘tackle
disadvantage, dependency on welfare, our hospitals and our criminal justice system’ (p. 3) with
early childhood ‘a major part of meeting this challenge’. It seems the education revolution, with
early childhood as key, will provide a way to circumvent economic burden.
The document continues to construct an economic narrative as ‘early learning helps build eco-
nomic prosperity’ (p. 3), signalling yet a further shift for early childhood. The performance of other
countries is raised: ‘more intense competitive forces in the Asia-Pacific region will require more
internationally competitive businesses and a more productive workforce’. A fear of the economies
of competitors produces a sense of urgency that something must be done to counter a threat of these
economies, with this risk being circumvented by a ‘more productive workforce’ – where the educa-
tion of children has a key role to play. For the first time in Australian early childhood policy, chil-
dren are identified for what they will contribute to the economy of the nation – not here and now,
but in the future when they grow up and join the workforce.
A strong case for investing in early childhood is made in the document (p. 7) through measuring
and comparing expenditure with that of other countries. The inclusion of a table from a team of
economists (Cunha et al., 2005: 101, as cited in Rudd and Macklin, 2007) represents the rate of
investment return, showing ‘preschool’ yielding a higher rate of return than investment in school,
and post-school education. The ‘scientificity’ (Lather, 2006) of the graphs strengthens the claims
that Australia’s economic growth and prosperity is tied to increased expenditure on early child-
hood. Australia’s ‘very low level of investment’, apparently ‘weak by International standards’,
does not bode well for the economy of the nation (see p. 7 of New Directions). The stark contrast
is drawn between government investment in ‘pre-primary education’ at $1 and ‘education’ (pre-
sumably primary and secondary), generally at $50. The rhetoric suggests a sense of disbelief at
such a significant difference in expenditure across education contexts, adding further weight to the
need to raise levels of investment in early childhood.
The investment must, it seems, be made urgently – the education revolution must happen now.
The revolution requires investment, and if this investment is made, the potential benefits to chil-
dren and the economy are spoken of as ‘immense’. It goes without saying (almost literally) that
children are among the beneficiaries. An even stronger argument made is that it is the economy of
the country that is set to prosper if these investments are made, through the education revolution.
Such logic produces the child and the early childhood teacher through the intersecting, competing
and colliding discourses of investment, economics and competition.

Producing images of children

Through this genealogical redescribing of the document, New Directions, it becomes possible to
see children in the new ways produced discursively. Later, we suggest how, through these images
of children and childhood, work in early childhood is produced in particular ways, and this calls
for new ways of being an early childhood teacher.
Two discourses – child development and neuroscience – are dominant in New Directions, ena-
bling the production of children as particular ‘subjects’ (Foucault, 1981).

‘Smart productive citizens’

A key argument in New Directions is that if education levels are not high, including in early child-
hood, this will affect the ‘economic prosperity of Australia’. The combination of neuroscience and
economics moves the argument from one of children, and their rights here and now, into a space in
which early childhood policy is developed for the welfare of the ‘economy’.
Gibson et al. 327

The ‘innovation-based economies’ (Rudd and Macklin, 2007) that Australia is part of call for
‘smart productive citizens’ (p. 3). A smart child is produced through neuroscience, according to the
document. A productive child contributes to the economy through their future labour force partici-
pation. Constructed as an object ‘the citizen’, a child is produced as a potential future functioning
member of society who has avoided the dire consequences of ‘dependency on welfare, our hospi-
tals, and our criminal justice system’ (p. 3). The work of the teacher is to produce ‘smart, produc-
tive citizens’ (p. 3). The discursive conditions insist, through New Directions, that the teacher is
capable of harnessing the economic potential of children. And this work begins before kindergarten
and preschool. Degree-qualified teachers must be employed in child care.
Work in child care is now also part of the production of smart children who will contribute to
the economy because it is the ‘quality of the learning, not where it takes place’ (p. 2). This new
economically focussed and neuroscience-driven childcare work is no longer ‘just’ care but forms
part of children’s learning, which will produce ‘smart, productive citizens’.
Discourses of child development and neuroscience/brain research are also frequently called on
in the document, adding what Lather refers to as ‘scientificity’ (Lather, 2006). The regime of truth
that constitutes the developmental continuum in which ‘early learning’ is gridded and categorised
into ages/stages produces a particular teacher – one who works to ensure that key milestones are
met. Neuroscience/brain research is assigned particular validity in New Directions through ‘inter-
national research’ that adds further weight to the importance of children’s developmental stages
and the critical periods of development in the early childhood years. This adds to the weight of
‘evidence’ that the early years are important for learning and teaching.

Child as economic unit

A first reading of New Directions will satisfy those who look for the accepted and taken-for-
granted traditional constructions of children’s development and learning as central to the orienta-
tion and purpose of early childhood programmes (Langford, 2007; Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2006; Penn, 2011). The additional feature of New
Directions is ‘the strong relationship between early learning and development – before formal
education begins – and improved economic prosperity’ (Rudd and Macklin, 2007: 4). It is the claim
of this policy initiative that ‘learning and development’ lead to ‘improved economic prosperity’.
This is a new orientation for early childhood and its workforce.
The insistence that learning and development are bound to economics produces a new way of
thinking about early childhood, including child care. Learning and development are acknowledged
as important, although there is something else. Children are valued for what they are potentially
able to contribute to the economy in the future, under the right conditions. With the weight of the
nation resting on their shoulders, children are produced, through New Directions, as economic
units. Through participation in early childhood programmes, children will become ‘productive
units’, ‘products’ of the investment.
It follows that the early childhood teacher becomes custodian and broker of these products/
children, vested with responsibility to ensure that investment pays off through becoming a ‘more pro-
ductive workforce’. Early childhood investment has been examined over the last decade through finan-
cial institutions (see OECD, 2006; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO), 2006; World Bank, 2002). New Directions marked this distinct shift for early childhood
policy in Australia. One quote, attributed to James Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences,
is used in New Directions to construct an argument for investment in early childhood:

The real question is how to use the available funds wisely. The best evidence supports the policy
prescription: Invest in the very young. (Cited in Rudd and Macklin, 2007: 4)
328 Global Studies of Childhood 5(3)

As a result of this new talk of the economics of child care and early childhood, children and
early childhood teachers’ work are now clearly shaped, at least in part, through economic dis-
courses. Through a simple word count function, it is possible to see the presence of the eco-
nomic discourse at play in the document: invest (used 39 times), investment (40 times),
investing (7 times), economic (64 times) and economics (7 times). In comparison, the word
‘child’ is used twice in the executive summary. It is difficult to argue with such compelling
arguments made by international organisations and a Nobel Laureate. The need to invest is
spoken as a taken-for-granted assumption; to question it would be unsayable (Foucault,
1972/1989) under the discursive conditions in New Directions. The regime of truth here is that
the early years matter, and what’s more, the earlier the investment, and the younger the child,
the greater the benefit.
The benefits of investing are, apparently, multiple. It seems that everyone will have something
to gain through funding early childhood. This moves the case for investment into a new discursive
space, where it is not just the domain of children and their families, but now also for ‘the wider
community’. The ‘wider community’ becomes a stakeholder in the early years, making a case for
the level of investment to be higher. It follows then that the benefits from this investment create
broader community benefits.
New Directions was released after a period of economic growth and prosperity for Australia. It
also came at a time when the global financial crisis was imminent. Sandwiched between high and
low economic times, it draws on these to consolidate the case for investment to secure the future of
the economy. For early childhood teachers, their work now includes responsibility to ensure that
the investment made in early childhood reaps the benefits promised through the economic
modelling.
The truth (Foucault, 1981) produced through New Directions is of education, including early
childhood, as essential and integral for the country’s prosperity. This logic produces the child as a
commodity, an economic unit, for which the return on investment (ROI) is measurable for the
country’s economic outcomes. Where once the benefit of children’s participation in child care was
the enabling of parents to participate in the labour market, this construction of the child as eco-
nomic unit marks a distinct shift for all involved.
A child in an early learning programme is produced as a commodity that will provide economic
benefits in the future. This commodification is a new way of seeing children in early childhood.
Work in early childhood is weighted with new responsibility: that of the economy of the nation. For
early childhood teachers, their work is produced as part of this. Where children are ‘economic
commodities’, their teachers are constituted as ‘economic custodians’. They are now called upon
to nurture the child as economic commodity, although more importantly to ensure that the invest-
ment is warranted – and pays off.
New Directions argues that teachers will be key to these changes, and not just any teacher.
A university degree is now essential. Having established the importance of early childhood
and early years education, it is the teachers who are ‘the answer’ to positioning Australia com-
petitively against other countries, particularly our closest ‘competitors’. Such logic produces
different teachers from those who have previously nurtured and looked after the natural,
developing child.
Under the discursive conditions produced in New Directions, teachers are now charged with
‘growing’ investments, not flowers in the garden (kindergarten). They must look after ‘economic
units’. Teachers have the responsibility to increase the value of children as economic units and aid
them to develop into productive units that are now part of the broader economy and society. The
intersections of these discourses – economics/investment/developing child – produce a new and
different type of childhood and produce teachers in new and particular ways.
Gibson et al. 329

How the discourses work

The regime of truth that is spoken through New Directions is that economics is important for early
childhood, and early childhood is important for economics. While this link between early child-
hood and economics is not necessarily new, the shift here is that the economic discourse in early
childhood is now mainstream. Not so long ago, in Australia, the idea of profits made by corporate
childcare provider ABC Learning Centres Limited (2006) affronted the early childhood field
(Brennan, 2007). Making money and focusing on profits and economic forecasts were not part of
the historical orientation of early childhood (Osgood, 2012; Press, 2006; Wong, 2007). The highly
feminised workforce has, to date, been identified strongly with middle-class values (Osgood,
2012), and this does not include female investment brokers. The intersection of economics with
traditional early childhood discourses is not an easy fit with everyone. The power/knowledge
(Foucault, 1981) that reside in economic and investment discourses makes the claims in the
document compelling. The ‘scientific’ evidence provides legitimacy for funding reform in early
childhood. But the collision of these discourses creates points of resistance, as well as marking a
new space in which the early childhood teacher is now called forth to work within the discourse of
economics. To ignore this discourse is to surrender power.
The discourses of economics, investment and productivity have not erased older and more tra-
ditional positionings. Rather, they compete in new ways with the other discourses that prevail in
early childhood. The rhetoric of early childhood curriculum puts children ‘at the centre’ (see Berk,
2009; Malaguzzi, 1998; Rinaldi, 2006). New Directions necessitates an economically savvy
teacher, who at the same time is child-focused.

Normalisation and reversals. Economics is, for the most part, absent in much of the academic and
practitioner commentary about early childhood. This point was key to why New Directions was
read by the authors of this article as a ‘moment of arising’. Images of children as free/natural/inno-
cent/developing can be seen to sit reasonably comfortably alongside images of children as preco-
cious and perhaps in need of instruction/training, even ‘civilising’. Perhaps not as permissible in
the academic and practitioner community, though, are images of children as ‘productive citizens’
and productive units, whose worth is linked to the economy of the nation. Here, children are valued
for who they will become through the guidance of a quality early childhood education with a
4-year degree-qualified teacher. This qualified teacher will enable the children to not only enter the
workforce but to contribute optimally to the economy. Discursive shifts are always occurring, and
it will be important to continue discursive analysis of policy and more broadly the early childhood
field and to map and locate the ways in which economic discourses intersect with other discourses
and come into wider circulation as childhood and work with children is produced:

… discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a
point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power;
it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.
(Foucault, 1990: 100–101)

Power always creates points of resistance at the same time as producing dominant discourses
that produce discursive rules. When these rules, as taken-for-granted assumptions, are brought into
question, resistance becomes possible. When these rules are transgressed, possibilities are opened
for breaking the rules, and as a result, spaces for new, different and other images of childhood and
of being an early childhood teacher are created. But, in order to resist, it is necessary to be able to
engage with the discourses available.
330 Global Studies of Childhood 5(3)

By contrast, when discursive constructions are ‘invisible’, or go unquestioned and are taken for
granted, they can become regimes of truth and work to normalise (Foucault, 1990). With these
normalisations come inherent assumptions about ways of understanding and being an early child-
hood teacher. If economics are the overriding consideration, what are the other possibilities that go
unspoken? Normalisations as regimes of truth propose particular ways to be and to perform work
in early childhood. Historically, ‘certain cultural configurations of professional identity have seized
a hegemonic hold’ (Osgood, 2006: 5). The image of the early childhood educator as a female, car-
ing nurturer, for example, excludes a number of other possibilities, including males.
In this new iteration of the constitution of children and the workforce in early childhood rede-
scribed in this article, the mapping of the intersections of discourses of economics, productivity
and neuroscience, along with traces of more traditional discourses of ‘play’ and ‘love/care’, present
a complex challenge for educators. At the same time as they are being acted on by discourses,
reversals and undermining, it is also possible for individuals, through their agency, to render this
newly established truth fragile. At the points of intersection where power and knowledge reside,
there are always possibilities for resistance.

Concluding thoughts
This article has mapped some of the discourses located in a key political document New Directions,
read as a ‘moment of arising’ (Foucault, 1984: 83) and marking a shift in the discursive field of
early childhood. A genealogical approach has examined the discursive conditions of possibility for
thinking about the constitution of childhoods and early childhood teachers at this moment in time.
Through the analysis, a number of discourses were identified in the document.
New Directions makes the claim that the ‘economic prosperity’ (p. 3) of Australia relies on
investment in early childhood. The arguments to invest are made compelling and draw on dis-
courses of neuroscience/brain research, child development and economic/investment discourses.
The rhetoric demands that early childhood funding is increased. These discourses are brought
together to produce children as a necessary part of the country’s economy and early childhood
teachers worthy of high status. Young children and their early childhood teachers are key to the
economy of the nation. Children as ‘economic units’ will become ‘smart productive citizens’ and
are seen as future economic contributors.
The policy document under scrutiny in this article, New Directions, was released in 2007, and
we make no claim that this is the ‘new way’ to see the field of early childhood. Our purpose in this
article was to show, through a close examination of this document, the ways in which our images
of children and early childhood teachers can be shaped.
As a field, early childhood is continually being constituted through the discourses that are in
play. Indeed, while one of the shifts in New Directions was to place the field of early childhood
firmly in the portfolio of education, more recent political developments have seen early childhood
being moved from the responsibility of the Assistant Minister for Education to the Minister for
Social Services and the Minister for Human Services. The slippery position reflects the complex-
ity in the education/care issue that governments and those working in the field grapple with
(Watson, 2006). It also highlights the fragility and reversals that can occur in the way discursive
formations operate.
This article has focussed on the discourse of economics and its current work in the field of early
childhood. Whether early childhood educators agree or disagree with the priorities afforded to
economic arguments, it is apparent that the discursive work cannot be ignored. We conclude this
article by asking some new questions that have emerged for us, based on our reflections on the
Gibson et al. 331

current developments in the field. (1) If economics is in circulation as a discourse that shapes child-
hood and work in early childhood, what attention is being afforded to these discourses in teacher
preparation? (2) How will the values and processes of neoliberalism with its emphasis on the
‘enterprising citizen’ and focus on economics and ‘value’ translate into preservice teacher educa-
tion? And, (3) how will the field more broadly take up, resist and connect with discourses – eco-
nomics included?

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit
sectors.

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Author biographies
Megan Gibson is a lecturer in the School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology. Key
areas of interest include teacher professionalism, leadership and management, policy and sustainability.
Megan has worked across a range of diverse early childhood contexts, most notably in child care. Her doctoral
research examined early childhood teachers’ professional identities.
Felicity McArdle is Associate Professor with Charles Sturt University and Adjunct A/Prof with Queensland
University of Technology. She was a member of the consortium that wrote the first national framework for
the Early Years in Australia (EYLF, 2009) and was co-leader of one of three programmes in the Excellence
in Research in Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network (CRN).
Caroline Hatcher is Emeritus Professor at the QUT Business School. She is a former MBA Director and
Director of Executive Award Programs at the Graduate School for Business, Queensland University of
Technology. Her research focus and publications, using Foucauldian methodology, draw together diverse
fields of business, education and identity.