Democracy in Research Circles to Enable New Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Didactics

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine aspects of democracy derived from participation in so-called research circles, and to discuss participatory and democratic ideas arising in those circles as they relate to perspectives on Early Childhood Education. This paper draws its argument mainly from material recorded from two research circles — one on Gender and the other on New subject didactic challenges in preschool. The analysis was based on the separate data from the two research circles and on a comparison between them. It is a theoretically governed approach based on Klafki’s critical constructive didactics and Biesta’s critical discussion on education and democracy in relation to the rise of neoliberalism. Larsson’s three aspects of democracy in relation to study circles have been used: equal participation, horizontal relations and knowledge that informs standpoints. The diversity between the circles resulted in variations concerning form and content that could be discussed as related to democracy aspects.

Keywords

• critical didactics
• democracy
• early childhood education
• preschool
• research circle