Browsing by Subject "equality of educational possibilities"

The aim of this master thesis was to study, how the children’s need of support appears in the context of early childhood education and what kind of governance is related to it. The aim of this thesis was to study these phenomena as a part of wider inequality development in the so-ciety. The theoretical framework of this thesis takes the concepts of normalization and gov-ernance with Foucauldian power theorizing as somewhat loose background. Former research has shown that the performed need of support is related to multiple characteristics and skills of the individual, neglecting the wicked problems like ostracism, racism and poverty having their influences on the individual as well, and thus legitimating many forms of governance. This kind of research is not done so much in the context of early childhood education and the aim of this thesis is to shed light to how these phenomena operate there. For this thesis I interviewed seven employees working in the early childhood education and made a discourse analysis of the in -depth interviews. My aim was to shed light to the way of speech, which is used when describing and defining the need of support, as well as the forms of governance, which are legitimated by the need of support. The results of my thesis revealed a very individual approach, where the need of support was almost without exceptions reduced to the traits, lack of skills or neurochemical processes of the children. Further, there was a clear differentiation produced between the ”normal” children and those of in need of support. A paradoxical perception is, that even though the personnel in many cases acknowledge there is flagrant injustice beneath the need of support, the back-ground is blurred in the name of equality. Thus, it is possible, that the burden of the environ-mental and even societal problems is leaved to individual children and the interventions can even be harmful as directed perhaps in the wrong place.