Exploring an Ethic of Care as a Way to Enhance Agency in Early Childhood.

In early childhood classrooms, increased pressures to prioritize literacy acquisition skills have shifted learning environments from more open-ended and exploratory to regulatory in nature particularly in the field of literacy. Despite that research suggests the important role of exploratory and agentic literacy practices, the field is experiencing an ever greater resurgence on reading acquisition skills at all costs. In this research, the ethic of care framework (Noddings, 1988) is explored alongside understandings of agency during a year-long study of literacy interactions in a second grade classroom. Specifically, this research explores how incorporating discussions of agency are vital when planning for literacy instruction that embodies an ethic of care, especially in today's highly charged early childhood landscape. Using sociocultural understandings of agency, students and their teacher engaged in discourse rooted in embodied knowledge to carve spaces for agency in their classroom. Analysis focused on the interplay between agency and an ethic of care. This study underlines the complexity of student agency in literacy practices, the considerations in which spaces for agency can occur, and proposes a conceptualization of an ethic of care alongside of agency that can work to support young learners. Findings highlight the role of care as a tangible framework to infuse the literacy curricula with agentic opportunities for young students. Implications for research and practice in early childhood settings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]