Reference no: EM133717066

Question: Child development has been constructed based on enlightenment and modernist notions of human progress that are linear, Universalist, deterministic, and that establish advancing as a standard for "normalcy." Those who do not fit are abnormal. Developmental psychology has legitimized the surveillance, measurement, and social control of children and other marginalized groups in the name of normal growth and human change. Child development theories have fostered dominant ideologies and created privilege for those in power. Examples include the establishment of hierarchical stages and the privileging of logical thought. Child development is an imperialist notion that justifies categorizing children and diverse cultures as backward, needing help from those who are more advanced. Child development places younger human beings in the less powerful position, always at the lowest level of the hierarchy, the most inferior. The construction of child (and human) development assumes human deficiency. The child is always becoming, always attempting to learn something new, to advance, to become an adult. (Even adults can never be satisfied because they must always be developing.) It is important to reflect on Canella's concerns with respect to ECEC policy-in particular the ways in which we construct and normalize behaviour and development, notions of progress, how power, privilege, surveillance, and difference are enacted (both covertly and overtly), and the ways in which children are placed in less powerful positions.