Abstract
In the last decades, two important ideas have triggered substantial changes in the approaches to early childhood education in the Western world, including values education. First, according to Malaguzzi, the child is a rich person from the very beginning, using several communication tools (languages) and searching for the meaning of life. And second, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is from the beginning a person with human rights, including not only ‘special’ rights to ensure their protection but also rights to provision (of rich educational support) and participation. Since these ideas have been widely accepted, values education (and not only care and discipline practices) has become a sensible activity even in very early childhood. In the same period, many qualitative research studies, including ethnographic field notes and audio and video recordings, encouraging children to present their views on life in preschool etc., have shown that children can be extremely prosocially oriented and willing to consider several value possibilities. Especially in educational environments that are sensitive to proper recognition perspectives, the importance of care relations where children can also inhabit the role of the subject of care and the importance of the sense of belonging to a community of children and adults, children’s value sensitivity and value reasoning can develop very fast. In this chapter, we present a meta-analysis of contemporary reflections on fundamental values and research findings on value development in early childhood. Drawing on these theoretical and methodological ideas, we conclude with an example from practice. We present a comprehensive inductive educational approach to prosocial and moral development, which also highlights the use of artistic experiences as an important tool for values education. We developed and tested this model in the last decade at the Vodmat Preschool in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
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Kroflič, R., Turnšek, N. (2018). Values Education in Early Childhood Settings: Concepts, Approaches and Practices. In: Johansson, E., Emilson, A., Puroila, AM. (eds) Values Education in Early Childhood Settings. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75559-5_6
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