Learning or earning in the 'Smart State' : changing tactics for governing early childhood

Abstract

In this paper I make an analysis of how the discursive regimes of advanced liberalism, knowledge economies and lifelong learning have produced the conditions of possibility for the new preparatory year in Queensland’s government schools. This analysis investigates what new tactics, strategies and practices this year of preparatory schooling enables. The emphasis on advanced liberal knowledge economies, and the changing political rationalities these economies produce, reveals new ways of thinking about workers and selves. Within these shifts, I suggest that for early childhood education, the shape of the adult-to-be impacts upon ways of producing the present child. Furthermore, I suggest that as the work of Queensland’s early childhood educators in the year prior to compulsory schooling is increasingly becoming public, their professional practices are produced and managed in order to create the ‘school ready’ child.