Pixel International Conferences

The paper addresses issues of complex relationships among policies, communities, and children’s rights to participate in and contribute to educational matters while reiterating on the importance of implementing dialogic pedagogy. Through the scope of critical thinking the paper tackles the questions regarding power-knowledge relationships and leadership in a community. To unveil the issues related to both educational and social constructs the paper utilizes the three stages of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Specifically, it provides the text-as-discourse analysis to better the understandings of government-developed educational policies e.i., Early Learning Framework. This is followed by the discourse-as-discursive practice analysis to provide a critical insight to how communities interpret the effects of policy-documents on their day-to-day practice. At its final stage the paper employs the discourse-as-social practice analysis and provides an empirical evidence on how educators and children work together to improve on community living as well as to inform local educational policies. While the first two levels of CDA are mainly built on theoretical premises and document analysis, the third level of CDA demonstrates an evidence from the field of practice and therefore it utilizes methods of the community-based research approach. The study concludes that the policy-making process should be viewed as a two-way road that allows two actions happen in synchronicity – policy informs practice and practice informs policy. In such a view, it should be pointed out that all parties involved, including children, are engaged in dialogic relationships that allow all voices to be heard, considered and respected for the purposes of generating a common meaning for the future purposes of early childhood education.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Community-based Research, Dialogic Pedagogy, Policies, Communities, Young Children;