Chapter 5
Play as ethical pedagogy
Ethical pedagogy Play as an ethical pedagogy creates spaces in early childcare settings for child–adult co-authoring of ethical selves and identities. The practice of an ethical pedagogy requires a ‘pedagogy of listening and radical dialogue’ (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005, p. 98) that is fundamental to the approaches in the preprimary schools and infant-toddler centres within the Italian city of Reggio Emilia (Edwards et al., 1994; Rinaldi, 2005). The Reggio philosophy is discussed in detail by Dahlberg and Moss (2005) in a companion volume in this series. Pedagogy that develops from such philosophical assumptions ‘encompasses learning and caring within a broad concern with all aspects of life’ (ibid., p. 91). In using the term pedagogy I reject false dichotomous beliefs that would attempt to separate the social constructivist processes of learning from teaching, conceptualize them as divided between adult and child, or view caring relationships as optional in classrooms. In doing so, early childhood care can be conceptualized as creating ‘spaces in civil society where children and adults can engage together in a potentially wide range of possibilities’ around ‘the locus of the ethics of an encounter’ where children and adults might collaboratively examine ‘the question of being together’ (ibid., pp. 91, 95). Reggio Emilia classrooms are physically, emotionally, socially, culturally, and intellectually like extended families and communities where children mostly learn alongside adults about matters of mutual interest (Katz, 1994, p. 31). Learning in Reggio classrooms revolves around collaborative longterm inquiry projects, as well as short-term activities, all of which involve ‘joint exploration among children and adults who together open topics to speculation and discussion’ (Edwards, Gandini, and Forman, 1994, p. 5). Long-term projects are ‘open-ended spirals’ that revolve around the core socio-cultural and ethical question of what it means to be together in the changing physical and social environment of the preschool (ibid., p. 7). Access
