Why nurturing curiosity is an ethical endeavour: exploring practitioners’ reflections on the importance of curiosity

2018

Several authors have argued that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is essentially an ethical practice based on certain values and conceptions about the purpose of education. Is this also th...

Mapping the dilemmatic space of early childhood education and care practitioners when challenged by children’s curiosity

2018

This article explores the notion of curiosity as a gateway to value dilemmas in early childhood education and care practices. The concept of dilemmatic space (Honig) is used to highlight the complexity of educational practices. Through an ethnographic approach based on video-observation and stimulated recall interviews, the reflections of the practitioners in three early childhood education and care institutions in Norway are analysed regarding situations in which curiosity was challenging and in which explorative behaviour was stopped, transferred or adjusted. The analyses allowed the construction of several axes of dilemmatic space, such as Equality versus Supporting the Individual, Socia…

Introduction to the Special Issue

2019

Tracing Curiosity with a Value Perspective

2017

Several have challenged the idea that educating is a neutral endeavour. Following this line of thought, this article intends to examine a common concept often taken for granted: curiosity. The aim of the article is to show how curiosity is constructed as a value-loaded notion by tracing its understandings in an early-childhood-education-and-care (ECEC) context from a value perspective. Four official ECEC documents from different organisational levels will be analysed. Informed by qualitative content analysis with a concept-driven strategy, the document analysis seeks to establish connections between the notion of curiosity and prominent value fields in ECEC, such as competence, democracy an…