Book Review: Beyond Listening: Children’s Perspectives on Early Childhood Services

Underlying the character of early childhood services is children’s social status, in their childhoods now; thus, whilst wealthy countries that provide extensively for children do so mainly to encourage mothers to engage in paid work, some have aimed towards ensuring that provision for children is, as far as possible, respectful of children as young citizens. A very few, highly ‘developed’ countries, notably the Nordic countries, have invested heavily in training of staff and in resources for these services. In some parts of Italy (best known being the city Reggio Emilia), particularly careful thought has been given over many years to ensuring democratic practices in their centres. Policy-makers and practitioners in New Zealand have learned from Maori values of equality, reciprocity and respect, to engage in radical reform of its early years services. Papers in this book are based on research and practice in Denmark, Norway, Italy, New Zealand and also England and Scotland, relating to practices and issues for staff. The papers provide a thorough and convincing account of the meanings and importance of listening to children. From the perspective of a country (England) where children have low social status, we can see that poor training and conditions of work for staff, low levels of material and social resources, and learning and socialization targets set by governments, lead to poor social environments for both children and staff. It is tantalizing to consider how far staff and children can and do engage in such productive relations as the book proposes. Many years ago, Tizard and Hughes (1984), in a study comparing children’s conversations with nursery staff and with mothers, noted the huge advantages that mothers have, when listening to and discussing with children, for mothers have experiential knowledge – they share the social context and history of the topics children propose, whereas staff may fail to understand what it is that children are concerned about, to what they refer, and the meanings of the words they use. Varieties of ethnic and cultural experience are important considerations here. Papers in this book indicate how staff can address this problem, through multi-methods of working with children, including non-verbal methods, in order to include children’s knowledge and ideas into structures of decision-making in early years settings. This book will be of interest to varying groups of people. Four of the chapters explain and discuss how best to listen to children, what methods are useful and what issues, including ethical issues, arise. Two further chapters deal with listening as a value structuring the work of a local authority (Stirling in Scotland) and of national policy (New Zealand). Practitioners and policy-makers will find plenty to interest and stimulate them here. These chapters are surrounded by editorial discussion chapters. The introduction argues for the complexity of ideas inherent in the concept of ‘listening’ and indicates some pitfalls, to do mainly with how adults’ power over children shapes child-adult relations. Such arguments are taken up in a later chapter, where Anne Trine Kjørholt considers the Foucauldian argument that people are disciplined towards certain behaviours and identities by powerful institutions. So to propose the value of ‘the free child’ (as emphasized in Denmark) is to underplay how early years centres subtly but powerfully shape a certain sort of disciplined child. In the final chapter the editors consider whether children’s rights agendas falsely propose the competent child in opposition to the vulnerable child. They argue for the importance of sensitive relations between people, based on reciprocity and responsibility. As the authors acknowledge, underlying the points made in the individual chapters are assumptions and ideologies about childhood. Of particular interest perhaps, to readers of this international journal, are the theoretical discussions about these. The authors are well aware that they and their policy-makers study childhood through specific lenses, and they provide critical, reflexive commentaries on their own theoretical positions. In particular, Kjørholt notes the provinciality of key Northern or ‘Anglo-American’ goals for children – the drive towards promoting children’s autonomy, individuality and rights. In the world at large, the USA has 5% of the population but power to influence people’s lives far beyond its borders. The power of the B O O K R E V I E W S