presented at the TACTYC conference 'Ready for School? Research, Reflection and Debate', York, November 2011

1. Reconceptualising the relationship between
ECE and CSE
The perspective of educational continuity
York, 12 November 2011

2. Early Childhood and Compulsory Education:
Reconceptualising the Relationship
• Contesting Early Childhood Series, November 2012
(London: Routledge) Editor: Peter Moss
• Contributors: John Bennett, Margaret Carr, Gunilla Dahlberg,
Hildegard Gobeyn, Peder Haug, Sharon Lynn Kagan, Peter Moss,
Nadine De Stercke and Michel Vandenbroeck
• Arianna Lazzari and Lucia Balduzzi (University of Bologna)
- Exploring the approach of educational continuity (continuità
educativa) as an alternative to the ‘school readiness’ approach
- Analysis framed by an historical and socio-cultural perspective
with a specific pedagogical focus
- Sources: policy documents, pedagogical literature, curricular
guidelines and documentary sources

3. Radical roots
Political premises of educational continuity:
- Pedagogical activism of the Sixties that gave origin to Municipal
ECE institutions (Ciari, 1972; Malaguzzi, 1971)
- Civil movements reclaiming social justice
- Progressive teachers movements
inspired by active education
(Dewey, 1949) and popular
pedagogy (Freinet, 1969)
 Traditional teaching methods
are contested as they
reproduce social inequalities
(Scuola di Barbiana, 1967;
Barbagli & Dei, 1969)

4. ‘Engaging with children from low social classes
and engaging in politics are part of the same
commitment. It is not possible to be
committed to children who are affected by
unfair laws and not to advocate for better
laws.’ (Scuola di Barbiana, 1967; p. 93)

5. Local experimentalism
The full-day school (tempo pieno) experimentation in
Bologna (Ciari, 1968-69):
- education as emancipatory experience
- image of the child: competent human
being and citizen subject of rights
- holistic approach to children
development
- learning understood as a co-constructed
process that takes place in social interaction
- school understood as democratic
community (gestione sociale)

6. ECE as driving force shaping a new
paradigm
• Fully educational day VS traditional divide between
schooling and after-school-care
• Diversification of learning opportunities through project
work (collective, small-group and individual moments) VS
teaching instruction
 knowledge co-construction VS transmission of de-
contextualised knowledge
• Collegiality VS isolation of teachers’ work
• School as places for cultural transformation that welcome
diversity in society VS school as normative institutions
reproducing power hierarchies

7. ‘Such a project is based upon a new concept of education that
overcome the closure in its temples, its [elitarian] selection and
its inner divisions producing false culture. [The concept of
education] is reformulated, reinvented within the dynamic
relationship between a comprehensive time and a
comprehensive space: in this way the process of learning and
the process of educating […] become at the same time
responsibility of each individual and of all individuals collectively
– overcoming the rigidity of roles, the separation of institutions
and the classification of individual destinies that has caused so
much damage to school and education’
(Malaguzzi, 1971; p. 140).

8. The pedagogical debate on
educational continuity
The approach of educational continuity took up a more
specific pedagogical connotation following the findings of
psychological studies:
- children actively engage in interaction since birth and through
these interactions their cognitive structures develop (Shaffer, 1977;
Bruner, 1981)
- importance of social and cultural environment (Bateson, 1972;
Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Rogoff, 1984)
- children’s development characterised by inter-personal and
intrapersonal variations (Nelson, 1978; Gardner, 1983)
 children development should be sustained along a
continuum that encompass individual variations

9. ‘It is therefore unfair to demand
psychology to draw a well defined
picture of children’s development
articulated in […] chronologically
precise phases so that schooling could
be appropriately organised: it is
precisely the notion of
“appropriateness” to be misleading […].
Perhaps what is wished to be found in
scientific knowledge is the
legitimisation of political and
educational choices that are de facto
the result of historical and social
processes.’
(Pontecorvo, 1986; p. 49)

10. Educational continuity:
underlying principles
• When children enter school they already use competently many
symbolic languages that are an expression of many forms of
intelligence > holistic approach to learning and trans-disciplinary
approach to knowledge
• Children competent use of symbolic languages is rooted in socio-
cultural interaction (peers, adults, surrounding environment, cultural
artefacts)
• Teaching understood as a practice that actively promote children’s
acquisitions by organising learning environments and sustaining
children’s interaction
• The goals of CSE are set starting from the knowledge and
competence that children have already developed through previous
experiences in ECE
Contestation of school readiness approaches in which the
goals of ECE are functional to CSE learning requirements

11. Consolidation of institutional practices
• Equal dignity of educational action carried out at
each school level
• Elaboration of coherent formative pathways centred
on the developmental needs of each child
• Valuing the competence previously acquired by
children
• Documentation (discussion on children competences
and confrontation of educational methodologies)
• Parents’ involvement
• Collegial work of teachers operating at different
school levels (continuity project)

12. Recent policy developments
under neoliberal influences
• From educational values to economic
necessity > from a pedagogical vision to
instrumental purposes
• Lack of consultation on educational reforms
hindering experimentation
• Schoolification of ECE:
‘Recent studies highlight that scuola dell’infanzia promotes
the learning of fundamental behaviours and of initial
knowledge which are useful for acquiring further
competences and for relating with society’. [Atto di Indirizzo,
2009; p.9]

13. Whose knowledge and whose
voices are not being heard?

14. Arianna Lazzari
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione
arianna.lazzari2@unibo.it
www.unibo.it