Essentially, on their own? Learnings from the 'essential/non-essential' pandemic discourse as it applied to Australia early childhood education and care policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5281630 |
|---|---|
| Authors | E Hunkin (0000-0001-6390-8233, La Trobe University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-13 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01596306.2025.2567667 |
| OpenAlex | W4414924020 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a lasting impact on every facet of our world and with these impacts have come new discursive shifts and constructions of post-pandemic reality. This paper problematises the pandemic-induced policy discourse of ‘essential/non-essential’ as it applied to Australian early childhood policy and legislation from 2020, with a focus on the state of Victoria. The introduction of an ‘essential/non-essential’ discourse was an important discursive event across the Anglophone countries, and its relationship to early childhood services is of particular interest since early childhood has always sat at the margins of education and family welfare portfolios, with varying degrees of socio-political support. A Foucauldian governmentality theoretical framework is applied to Federal and State policies, legislation and associated knowledge production (such as, press releases, media addresses) to show how the divergent treatment of early education and early care reflected and exacerbated the existing inequities and vulnerabilities of the latter
Child care · Discourse analysis · Early childhood · Early childhood education · Education policy · Pandemic · Policy analysis · Public policy · Child and Adolescent Health · Children's Rights and Participation · Early Childhood Education and Development
Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Social Investment or Private Profit? Diverging Notions of ‘Investment’ in Early Childhood Education and Care
A crisis in search of a narrative
Crisis and policy imaginaries
The Politics of Australian Child Care
Michel Foucault
Foucault and Education
Covid-19 and the discursive practices of political leadership
The negation of babysitting
Early childhood educators’ psychological distress and wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic
Devastating impacts? Investigating ‘edu-quality’ discourse in early childhood policy and its implications
Lifelong learning and the sultans of spin
Business as (un)usual
Orders of discourse
What Is Policy? Texts, Trajectories and Toolboxes
From 'special but shadowed' to beloved but expendable
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |