An investigation into how Early Years policy is interpreted and enacted in an infant school in England R E 2022

Gordine, Rebecca Elizabeth (2024) An investigation into how Early Years policy is interpreted and enacted in an infant school in England R E 2022. Doctoral thesis (EdD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis is concerned with issues of EYFS policy and practice in Reception classrooms in an infant school in England. It explores the impact that performativity has upon policy enactments and classroom practice. A theoretical framework influenced by Foucault’s conceptions of power and governmentality is employed to examine the ways in which EYFS policy is interpreted, enacted and understood by Reception class teachers and practitioners. Foucault’s explanations of regimes of truth are useful in examining how policy directives become normalised in schools and Early Years settings. An autoethnographic study, written by myself, of three Reception classrooms and teachers is used to explore the ways in which EYFS policy is enacted and to locate the spaces for resistance and transformative change. The findings from this research study, mainly data from entries in my reflective research diaries, highlight the significant extent to which Reception class practitioners find it difficult to balance the EYFS policy directives with their own values and beliefs about how young children learn and develop. I conclude that Reception class teachers and practitioners agree with the guiding principles of the EYFS statutory framework but find balancing this with the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) and the EYFS Profile (EYFSP), within a strong performative discourse, problematic. In an educational climate where young children are tested and categorised at the ages of four and five based on their attainment in literacy and maths, and teachers and schools are judged on these outcomes, more and more teachers are becoming disillusioned and are leaving the profession.