The Prevent Duty in Education by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030455590
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Values Education in Early Childhood and Fundamental British Values

Values education is a complex concept in early childhood; it can be understood as an education practice through which children are assumed to learn values as well as the norms and skills reflected in those values (Halstead & Taylor, 2000). Values are ‘guiding principles in life’ (Schwartz, 2012, p. 17) and they are ideals that enable the ‘evaluation of beliefs and actions’ (Halstead, 1996, p. 5). In this way, they form the basis of moral judgements in determining what is legitimate or unjustifiable and appropriate or inappropriate. Within research, policy and practice the focus on values in ECE pre-dates the introduction of the Prevent Duty and the requirement to promote FBVs.

Supra-national organisations advocating for the development of national policy and practice frameworks in ECE have emphasised the centrality of values. UNESCO (2000) claims that the ‘value orientations of children are largely determined by the time they reach the age of formal schooling’ (p. 2) and therefore state governments need to create a ‘value-based environment’ (p. 4) in early childhood provision together with a child-centred values education programme that is free from political, social or religious abuse. Osler (2015) and UNESCO (2015) emphasise the centrality of values, for example fairness, empathy and respect, in developing understandings of citizenship and a sense of belonging to a community. Elsewhere (Robson, 2019a) I have raised the question as to whether the policy of promoting FBVs in ECE can be separated from the political context of measures to address counter-terrorism or indeed whether the promotion of FBVs is considered by the UK government as a values education programme.

The ECE practitioners in this study were subject to the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage (DFE, 2017); however, this framework for curriculum and pedagogy omits any mention of FBVs or clarification of how FBVs relates to both the ‘areas for learning and development’ and the ‘early learning goals’ (p. 10). The framework states that registered providers of ECE are subject to the Prevent Duty. This layering of counter-terrorism policy over the statutory framework for ECE creates ambiguity, tension and complexity for ECE practitioners as they enact policy in practice (Robson & Martin, 2019) and more explicitly the pedagogical relationships that exist in ECE between practitioners and children and between children (Robson, 2019b).

This problem can be situated in broader debates about the nature of values education, which often revolve around the central question as to whether values should be ‘instilled’ in children or whether children should be taught ‘to explore and develop their own values’ (Halstead, 1996, p. 9). In practice, such values can be explicit, where it is directed by the state through the curriculum or other policy texts, or implicit within the practices of ECE (Thornberg, 2016). Einarsdottir et al. (2015), researching in a Nordic context, argue that practitioners are commissioned by state governments to mediate values that are formulated in the political arena; however, values are also embedded within the pedagogy of ECE (Emilson & Johansson, 2009).

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