A table for one?: Notes on democracy and early childhood education

Abstract in English

This dissertation is a philosophical exploration of the democratic mission of contemporary early childhood education [ECE], where democracy is approached as a form of living together in our shared world, a way of gathering us, while enabling us to be unique individuals, separate and free. I approach this view with Hannah Arendt’s metaphor of the table, a space that gathers us and separates us. Drawing on political theory and educational philosophy, I explore the democratic mission of contemporary ECE through four independent studies with perspectives on citizenship (Study I), love (Study II), technology (Study III) and surging democracy (Study IV).

By engaging with thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Joan Tronto, Byung-Chul Han and Adriana Cavarero, the dissertation offers theoretical perspectives through which an alternative vocabulary for ECE practice and policy is proposed. The notions of love and surging democracy are suggested as ways of understanding and speaking of democratic ECE, enabling new imaginaries. The notion of love invites the reader to consider the political aspects of care and vulnerability as a fundamental human condition. The notion of surging democracy highlights the emotional, embodied, and spatial dimensions of political action, and suggest that democratic ECE may thrive when being approached as a pre-democratic sphere, where the promise of democracy is constantly present, while not being fully democratic in itself. While a table for one is theoretically a contradiction, it seems to be a curricular ideal within contemporary ECE. However, the educational vision of a table for one fails to recognize that democracy demands togetherness and spaces where it can surge. It demands that we view our own vulnerability as intertwined with the vulnerability of the world. What is also lost in the vision of a table for one is that we are homines curans – caring beings. We are caring because we are vulnerable. A place by the table is therefore meaningless if no one else is sitting there.

The dissertation illuminates how a transdisciplinary approach, where plurality has been sought in terms of theory, method, and structure offers a “thoughtful friction” for ECE theory, policy and practice, enabling something new to emerge.