How are Early childhood teachers educated for the present

This presentation examines how early childhood educators are educated and argues that empirical research into education inevitably is interwoven with notions of the purpose of education. Any answer on the empirical question of how ECE are educated raises the question if this education fulfills the conditions of good education, and hence the question what should be considered as good education. The question of good education -the normative values of pedagogy itself- has become relevant again in a time when common ideas about possible and desirable futures are challenged.

So normative values of pedagogy itself must be made explicit as the horizon within which empirical analyses operate. This horizon of normative values of pedagogy itself can also inform what kind of empirical questions are relevant to pose. In every research-project both kind of inquiries -empirical research and the inquiry in the normative foundations of pedagogy itself- should be considered, and they can, in their interactive relationship, fertilize each other.

In this presentation I will primarily deal with a timely understanding of the purpose of education. Drawing on Schleiermacher’s account of pedagogy at the threshold between tradition and modernity, and informed by Gadamer and Rosa, I will draw a sketch of a pedagogical framework that resists reduction to method or technique, stresses the purpose of being-in-the world and emphasizes openness to Bildung, self-activity, participation, and resonance.

The task and purpose og pedagogy is still and once again that children and students can make themselves at home (Gadamer: sich einhausen) in the world, so they also can develop agency and courage to defend and make fallible attempts to develop their world. The argument applies both to early childhood teacher education and to everyday early childhood education and care. In order to live up to this purpose, good education can be based on an epistemology of practice. Becoming at home in a pedagogical practice requires both participation, normative orientation, the ability to apply different perspectives and self-respect in the role of educator. The danish word "kundskab" could be revitalised in this context (I will also make some comments on the use of kunnskap i Norway and kunskap in Sweden). Empirical research could ask if the present education fulfills the task of making the students at home in pedagogical practice.