Nationalism in Early Childhood Education

In the study by Millei (2019), nationalism is referred to the ideology which seeks to inform the primacy of the national community in the thinking, feelings and beings of the children that are learned through curricula as well as official rituals of the school. In contrast, the study by Robson (2019) mentioned that the promotion of fundamental British values among young children through proper pedagogic intervention allows proper promotion of nationalism. It is also mentioned that for some teaching practitioners the families, children, monarchy and the Union Flag acts as the symbol of nationalism. This informs that the first study relied on the development of nationalism through school curriculum whereas the later focussed on effective pedagogic intervention to promote nationalism in children. Millei (2019) addresses the understanding of nationalism in early childhood through affective practices, reading and organising social gathering or events. However, Robson (2019) develops an understanding of nationalism among the children in early childhood through symbolisation and value education done through everyday pedagogic practices. The perspective regarding nationalism proposed in Millei (2019) is that ensuring visibility of everyday nationalism as well as its effective dimensions is able to reveal multiple, dynamic and conceptual ways according to which children can be motivated, invited as well as seduced to perform and feel national values to be shared in social life. In contrast, the Robson (2019) mentioned that nationalism is able to be promoted through education of fundamental British values among the children. This indicates that the first study relied on affective practices whereas the second study relied on social value practices to promote nationalism in children. In addition, Millei (2019) mentioned that for many years the discussion of everyday nationalism is ignored and nationalism as an ideological practice is mostly promoted. However, no such perspective was mentioned by mentioned in the study.

The bias of the differences in the knowledge source from both the studies that is Millei (2019) and Robson (2019) is acknowledged properly. This is evident as the study of Millei is seen to draw resources regarding nationalism development among children by analysing curriculum of the school whereas the Robson’s study is seen to examine participants to reflect nationalism by understanding the influence of pedagogic intervention. The evidence provided in both the sources is credible which is evident from the execution of the CRAAP test. This is because each of the sources is found to be written recently, has proper relevance to the topic of interest which is nationalism influence among the children in early years, expresses effective authority, provide proper information and relates with the purpose of the study topic. The CRAAP test is referred to a set of criteria for assessment which can be applied to the articles or other sources to assist in determining their reliability (McNiel and McArthur, 2016). The use of both mentioned resources indicates that they show different perspectives as while one focussed on affective aspects another focussed on promoting social values for inspiring nationalism in the minds of the individuals. The sources are selected from the recommended readings and they are credible academic resources as they are properly published and approved by academic authorities.

The study by Millei (2019) mentioned that in preschools there exists compulsory curriculum where teachers are to form small group of children for teaching them about important places and surrounding of the nation. During the process, the teachers ask the children if they have visited the place and share emotional stories regarding it. This act of spatialising as well as making the children emotionally relate to the nation's places makes them develop connectivity with the country’s culture, identity, territory, history and language. This fact is also supported by the study of Åkerblom and Harju (2019) where it is mentioned that individual’s understanding of geographical locations leads them to consider national landscapes as national identity and culture. In contrast, the study by Robson (2019) considered the use of resources that involves symbols of the monarchy and Union Flag of the nation to educate the children regarding nationalistic and patriotic practices. This is because the national symbols are fundamentally related to the unity and divisions of the nation. The study by (Millei, Z., 2019) informs that nationalism in the children is educated through reading stories such as the Possum Magic. This is because the story encourages nationalism in three ways through food, body language and the landscape. The fact is supported by the study Millei (2019) where it is mentioned that the way people consume foods and acts in relationship with the landscape leads individuals to develop proper reminder regarding who they are and their personal beliefs making the individuals develop understanding of nationalistic perspectives.

In comparison, the study by Robson (2019) mentioned that with the help of pedagogical practices such as Children’s Planning Meetings where the children along with adults and communities are involved it leads to raise fundamental values of the nation among them. This is because through the development of dialogues among the children in planning the meeting by the practitioner it helped to explore various relationships between the children, communities and families with the help of act of kindness. The study by Robson (2019) further informed that Fundamental British Values (FBV) are implicit to the pedagogic approach where the children are made to learn regarding appreciation and empathy in the community. This is because the study mentioned that when the students under the pedagogic approach developed small gifts to be provided to individuals as a token of kindness to all the attendees in the Friday Prayers they were able to understand through the activity about the mutual respect and tolerance towards other believes and faiths of liberty. Moreover, when the children under the pedagogic approach were instructed to care for plants and animals it leads them to develop empathetic relationship between human life and the plant and insect life.

In the study by Millei (2019), it is mentioned that making visible nationalism as well as its affective dimension is able to reveal dynamic, contextual and multiple social life in which the children are able to feel inspired, invited and seduced to perform and feel national values to be shared in their social life. However, the study by Joseph (2017) argued the fact that presence of outdated, racist, colonial, and well as classist national stereotypes are seen in the everyday life within the institutions of the children irrespective of the progress for promoting increased inclusionary nationalism which has led towards the development of discriminatory nationalism. This is evident from the fact presented in the curriculum of executing barbeque where the men are allowed to cook as well as drink together in shared way whereas the females are seen to be excluded. Thus, this leads the children to develop the attitude of colloquialism where the males are allowed to share a social life around the barbeque invoking the development of sacrificial male homosexuality in the minds of the children.

In the study by Robson (2019), the adults and the children are regarded to have high status towards the risk assessment activity. It made the pedagogic practitioners feel the risk assessment practice to be an opportunity for the students or children towards exploring FBV through their involvement in governance. This is because the suggestions of the children in the risk assessment regarding the way to mitigate the risk lead to reflect their active exploration of various values of joy, care and respect. In contrast, in the study by Millei (2019) the researcher mentioned that when the teacher maintained an erect position of the body that expressed pride during explanation of the affection of the national animals of the country it led the educator to radiate the national tradition to the children. This is because the body posture and the exciting feelings during the explanation reflected her proud feeling for the nations making the children learn regarding the aspects of the nationalism through education.

The study by Millei (2019) is found use ethnographic study design as the nature of the research method. The use of ethnography study is beneficial as it helped the researcher to determine effective information regarding people as well as their cultures. This is evident as the knowledge regarding the way nationalism is built through affective practices among the Australian children is able to be known with the implementation of the research design. The benefit of ethnography study is that it assists the researcher to determine the behaviour of the human who is focussed in the study (Millei and Lappalainen, 2020). However, the limitation to the faced by the study on using ethnographic study is that it makes it hard for the researcher to select the specific nature of participants and the study requires increased amount of time for its execution (Browne et al. 2016). In the study of Robson (2019), it is mentioned interpretivist approach is used. The benefit of using interpretivist approach in the study is that it provided opportunity to the researcher to develop a rapport with the participants in deriving in-depth information required in enriched execution of the study (Blitz et al. 2018). However, the limitation that may have been faced by the study with the use of interpretivist approach is that lower reliability of the data may be maintained due to personal influence of perception of the researcher in analysing the data (Rosenberg, 2017).

References

Åkerblom, A. and Harju, A., 2019. The becoming of a Swedish preschool child? Migrant children and everyday nationalism. Children's Geographies, pp.1-12.

Blitz, J., De Villiers, M. and Van Schalkwyk, S., 2018. Implications for faculty development for emerging clinical teachers at distributed sites: a qualitative interpretivist study. Rural & Remote Health, 18(2).

Browne, A.J., Varcoe, C., Lavoie, J., Smye, V., Wong, S.T., Krause, M., Tu, D., Godwin, O., Khan, K. and Fridkin, A., 2016. Enhancing health care equity with Indigenous populations: evidence-based strategies from an ethnographic study. BMC Health Services Research, 16(1), p.544.

Joseph, C. ed., 2017. Policies and politics in Malaysian education: Education reforms, Nationalism and neoliberalism. London: Routledge.

McNiel, P. and McArthur, E.C., 2016. Evaluating health mobile apps: information literacy in undergraduate and graduate nursing courses. Journal of Nursing Education, 55(8), pp.480-480.

Millei, Z., 2019. Affective practices of everyday nationalism in an Australian preschool. Children's Geographies, pp.1-13.

Millei, Z., 2019. Pedagogy of nation: A concept and method to research nationalism in young children’s institutional lives. Childhood, 26(1), pp.83-97.

Millei, Z. and Lappalainen, S., 2020. Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education: Multi-Sited Comparison between Pedagogies of Nation in Australia and Hungary. European Education, 52(1), pp.33-47.

Robson, J.V.K., 2019. How do practitioners in early years provision promote Fundamental British Values?. International Journal of Early Years Education, 27(1), pp.95-110.

Rosenberg, G.N., 2017. Positivism, interpretivism, and the study of law. In Law and Social Movements (pp. 33-53). Routledge.