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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bakhtin, M. M., & Emerson, C. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bakhtin, M. M., & Holquist, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative parental control on child behavior. Child Development, 37(4), 887–907.
Beck, U. (Ed.). (1994). Riskante Freiheiten: Individualisierung in modernen Gesellschaften [Risky freedoms: Individualization in modern societies]. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp.
Benjamin, J. (2000). The Oedipal riddle. In P. Gay, J. Evans, & P. Redman (Eds.), Identity: A reader (pp. 231–247). London: IDE, Sage Publications Inc.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2013). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Clark, A. (2005). Ways of seeing: Using the Mosaic approach to listen to young children’s perspectives. In A. Clark, A. T. Kjørholt, & P. Moss (Eds.), Beyond listening. Children’s perspectives on early childhood services (pp. 29–49). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
Clark, A., McQuail, S., & Moss, P. (2003). Exploring the field of listening to and consulting with young children. London: DfES.
Clark, A., & Moss, P. (2001). Listening to young children: The Mosaic approach. London: National Children’s Bureau for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Corsaro, W. A. (1997). The sociology of childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.
Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. London: Routledge Falmer.
Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. (2007). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: Languages of evaluation (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Edmiston, B. (2008). Forming ethical identities in early childhood play. London/New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (pp. 109–133). New York: Pantheon Books.
Frazer, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political – Philosophical exchange. London/New York: Verso.
Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed. 30th anniversary edition. New York, London: Continuum. http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/1335344125freire_pedagogy_of_the_oppresed.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2017.
Furedi, F. (2001). Paranoid parenting. London: Allen Lane: Penguin.
Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, A. (2005). Reification: A recognition-theoretical view (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values). http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/h/Honneth_2006.pdf. Accessed 10 Sep 2016.
Horkheimer, M., Fromm, E., & Marcuse, H. (1936). Studien über autorität und familie [Studies on authority and family]. Paris: Dietrich zu Klampen Verlag.
Jenks, C. (2009). Constructing childhood sociologically. In M. J. Kehily (Ed.), An introduction to childhood studies (pp. 93–111). Maidenhead, UK/New York: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill.
Kearney, R. (Ed.). (1996). Paul Ricoeur: The hermeneutics of action. London/Thousand Oaks, CA/New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Kearney, R. (2004). On Paul Ricoeur: The owl of minerva. Aldershot, UK/Burrlington, VT: Ashgate.
Kristjansson, K. (2004). Empathy, sympathy, justice and the child. Journal of Moral Education, 33(3), 291–305.
Kroflič, R. (1997). Avtoriteta v vzgoji [Authority in education]. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Znanstveno in publicistično središče.
Kroflič, R. (2000). Tra l’ubbidienza e la responsibilita [Between obedience and responsibility]. Gorizia, Italy: SLORI.
Kroflič, R. (2003). Ethical basis of education for tolerance and multi-cultural values in pre-school and primary education. Fifth European CICE conference: Europe of many cultures. Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal, 8–10 May 2003 (pp. 165–170). London: CICE publication.
Kroflič, R. (2010). Dialoški model avtoritete kot spopad za vzajemno pripoznanje: feministična kritika lacanovskega pogleda na avtoriteto [A dialogical concept of authority as a struggle for mutual recognition: A feminist critique of the Lacanian view of authority]. Sodobna pedagogika [Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies], 61(3), 134–154.
Kroflič, R. (2011). The role of artistic experiences in the comprehensive inductive educational approach. Pastoral care in education: An International Journal of Personal, Social and Emotional Development, 30(3), 263–280.
Kroflič, R. (2012a). Il riconoscimento del bambino come individuo capace: i fondamenti dellʼ educazione nello spirito dei diritti dei bambini [Recognizing the child as a capable being: Education in the spirit of children’s rights]. In E. Toffano Martini & P. De Stefani, (Eds.), Che vivano liberi e felici …: il diritto all’ educazione a vent’ anni dalla Convenzione di New York [Living free and happy lives…: The rights to education twenty years after the New York Convention], Biblioteca di testi e studi (Vol. 734, pp. 109–123). Roma: Carocci.
Kroflič, R. (2012b). Rousseaujev koncept človečnosti in glavne kontroverze v pedagoških interpretacijah “Emila” [Rousseau’s concept of humanity and the main controversies in the pedagogical interpretations of” “Emile”]. Sodobna pedagogika [Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies], 63/129(4), 16–36.
Kroflič, R. (2013). Strengthening of the responsibility in the school community between concepts of civic and moral education. In Fifteenth annual CiCe network conference: Identities and citizenship education: Controversy, crisis and challenges (Programme and Abstract Book), 13–15 June 2013. Portugal, Europe: University of Lisbon, p. 19.
Kroflič, R. (2015). Hermeneutics of a photographic story. In M. Peljhan (Ed.), Phototherapy: From concepts to practices (pp. 85–103). Kamnik, Slovenia: CIRIUS, Center za izobraževanje, rehabilitacijo in usposabljanje.
Kroflič, R., & Smrtnik Vitulić, H. (2015). The effects of the comprehensive inductive educational approach on the social behaviour of preschool children in kindergarten. CEPS Journal, 5(1), 53–69.
Kroflič, R., Štirn Koren, D., Štirn Janota, P., & Jug, A. (2010). Kulturno žlahtenje najmlajših. Razvoj identitete otrok v prostoru in času preko raznovrstnih umetniških dejavnosti [The cultural enrichment of young children: The development of children’s identity in space and time through a variety of artistic activities]. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Vrtec Vodmat.
Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. New York: Norton.
Levinas, E. (2006). Entre Nous. London/New York: Continuum.
MacNaughton, G. (2005). Doing foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas. London/New York: Routledge.
Matthews, G. B. (1994). The philosophy of childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L., & Brooks, A. (2004). Gifts of the muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the arts. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
Moss, P. (2008). Toward a new public education: Making globalization work for us all. Child Development Perspectives, 2(2), 114–119.
Noddings, N. (1998). Caring. In P. H. Hirst & P. White (Eds.), Philosophy of education. Major themes in the analytic tradition, Problems of educational content and practices (Vol. IV, pp. 40–50). London/New York: Routledge.
Noddings N. (1999). Two concepts of caring (A Response to Slote). Philosophy of Education Archive. http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/view/2024/719. Accessed 20 Sep 2016.
Ranciere, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster (Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (Rev. Edn.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rinaldi, C. (2005). Documentation and assessment: What is the relationship? In A. Clark, A. T. Kjørholt, & P. Moss (Eds.), Beyond listening: Children’s perspectives on early childhood services (pp. 17–28). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
Rousseau, J. J. (2011). Emile. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emile. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5427. Accessed 26 Sep 2011.
Strike, K. A. (2003). Toward a liberal conception of school communities. Community and the autonomy argument. Theory and Research in Education, 1(2), 171–193.
Todd, S. (2001). On not knowing the other, or learning from Levinas. Philosophy of Education Archive (pp. 67–74). http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/view/1871/582. Accessed 1 Sep 2016.
Turiel, E. (2002). The culture of morality: Social development, context, and conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical Tact (Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do). Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press Inc.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75559-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75558-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75559-5
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)