On Childhood and the Good Will. Thoughts on Ethics and Early Childhood Education.

The purpose of this study is to examine how ethical principles are understood and used in a pedagogical context. In particular, focus is on daycare facilities and sustainable development. The researcher wishes to discuss the link between ethical principles and individual actions, and how these links can be viewed as a framework for understanding and using ethics in specific pedagogical situations. Moreover, the author wishes to problematise the conditions for how ethics are understood and used by examining empirical examples of disruptions in the relationship between ethical principles and the individualisation of these principles.

The study shows that the “Grön Flagg” pedagogical tool is an example of how, within a normative framework such as human rights, limitations are set. These limitations consist of the child being simplified into an abstract subject with no regard for the differences between the children. As a consequence, the child is not assessed on the basis of its historical and geographical context. There are different ways in which a child can be a child according to time and place; thus universal rights do not include these differences.

The dissertation consists of four articles. Article 1 and article 4 are relevant in this mapping of daycare facilities. In the first article, the researchers analyse examples of documents from the Swedish pedagogical tool “Grön Flagg” (Green Flag) that promotes sustainable development in daycare facilities and schools. In the fourth article, the researcher draws a number of pedagogical conclusions from a philosophical debate concerning the conditions for learning based on two different ontological positions.

Dahlbeck, J. (2012). On Childhood and the Good Will. Thoughts on Ethics and Early Childhood Education. Malmö: Malmö Studies in Educational Sciences No. 65, Dissertation in the National Research School of Childhood, Learning and Didactics No. 2