Pedagogies of self in American and Japanese early childhood education: A critical conceptual analysis

Recognizing that early childhood education in the United States has been in fluenced deeply by notions of developmentally appropriate practice, this cr itical conceptual analysis of early education discourse in the United State s and Japan contrasts the cultural assumptions and views of self that infor m early childhood education discourse in each context. Although early child hood education in Japan can be characterized as highly progressive and chil d centered, at the same time it is not developmentalist and it envisions th e self principally in terms of culturally valued qualities of personhood. I n contrast, discourses on the self in the United States emphasize a constru ct of the individual child defined with an emphasis on differences across d iscrete developmental domains, in which the "whole child" is essentially lo st. The critique also considers how child development expertise contributes to emotional impoverishment in teachers' relations with children as well a s to inaccuracies of educators' self-perception in work with children.