This chapter reviews historical and current images of childhood and perspectives on child development in order to bring us to an understanding of the multiple ways of conceptualizing childhood and being a child. Culture and society have a significant impact on the ways in which children develop and learn. Unfortunately, Western child development theory has been the dominant, foundational source of knowledge, curriculum, and pedagogy in the field of early childhood. Reconceptualist scholars have challenged this view and the images of childhood associated with it.
Some of the key ideas in this chapter include:
Early childhood policy has been informed by the idea that even very young children are capable of learning and that early experience has a significant influence on later development. This has led to a disproportionate emphasis on particular knowledges of child development. Moreover, teachers’ own philosophies of education---rooted in their own experiences---influence the ways they understand teaching and learning. We ask the question “who is the child?” as a starting point to exploration of these broad ideas.
The chapter outlines Cleverley and Phillips’ (1986) seven different perspectives on the idea of a child and childhood: the free/constrained child (children are innately good or innately evil), the environmentalist (the child is seen as a sponge waiting to soak up experiences), the conditioned child (a behaviourist view of the child as incomplete and needing to be trained or conditioned), the child and the species, the loss of innocence (a psychodynamic view of the child focusing on loss of innocence), the ages of man view (an ages and stages or developmental view of the child), and an upbringing fit for society (the child is seen is preparing for citizenship). Each perspective suggests different theoretical and historical influences on our ways of viewing the child.
The chapter then describes two additional views: the agentic child and the child from non-Western perspectives. The agentic child is a rights-based view in which children’s rights of participation and right to be heard are met. The child from non-western perspectives challenges the ethnocentric bias in other images and advances diverse ways of viewing children.
These images of childhood are important as they tend to serve as frameworks for practice. Reconceptualist thinkers such as Loris Malaguzzi are inspired by listening to the voices of young children. They challenge the dominance of Western child development theory in framing the field of early childhood.
