A tale of disturbance and unsettlement: incorporating and enacting deconstruction with the purpose of challenging aspects of pedagogy in the nursery classroom

Jones, Liz and Brown, Tony (1999) A tale of disturbance and unsettlement: incorporating and enacting deconstruction with the purpose of challenging aspects of pedagogy in the nursery classroom. Teachers and teaching, 5 (2). pp. 187-202. ISSN 1470-1278

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Abstract

This paper illustrates some of the repercussions, particularly the advantages, in adopting deconstructive approaches to those meanings that are brought to an account of young children's play within a teacher research enquiry. In describing and interpreting an example offered here, the objective is not to fix a definitive or accurate explanation to it. Instead, the ambition is to disperse rather than capture meanings, to offer multiple and open-ended interpretations and, in so doing, disturb the equilibrium of the reported perspective that gave rise to the account. Through such an approach, it is suggested, we can challenge ingrained ways of knowing and doing that inhibit opportunities to question 'authoritarian fictions' present in the way we often describe the learning of young children, which because they are habitual and collective have come to be regarded as 'natural' and 'truths'.