‘The vision of a meeting place’ is a fourth type of possible relationship (referred to the ‘meeting place relationship’ hereafter) conceptualised by two Swedish scholars Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi in their seminal report Förskola och skola – om två skilda traditioner och om visionen om en mötesplats [Preschool and school – two different traditions and the vision of a meeting place], prepared for a Swedish government committee in 1994 to inform the debate about whether to extend the length of compulsory education and whether to extend it downward by lowering the starting age of compulsory education from age 7 to 6 (Dahlberg, 2013). While the meeting place relationship was conceptualised within the Swedish context, embedded in Swedish history, traditions, education systems, and so on, it is seen to have a great potential in informing the discussion and analytical methods to approach the relationship in other country contexts (Moss, 2013).
The point of departure for Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi is the inequality of the relationship between early childhood and compulsory education in which the latter dominates the former in terms of status and prestige. Central to the reflection on the relationship also are the traditions in each area, which, in their view, frame the current and future ways of working as well as prospects for changes in the relationship. In their analysis of the pedagogical traditions of each area, the authors emphasise that ‘the child is always a social construction and not the actual child’ (cited in Moss, 2013: 22) and that, as mentioned earlier, preschool and school have distinct constructions of the child – the ‘child as nature’ for the former, and the ‘child as a re-producer of culture and knowledge’ for the latter. With its roots in the philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and child development theories, the ‘child as nature’ conception is in line with the early childhood education tradition that values ‘a holistic view of the child; free play and creativity; giving rise to free and self- confident people, free expression of ideas and feelings; fun; and the here-and-now’ (Moss, 2013: 22). By contrast, the ‘child as reproducer of culture and knowledge’ conception considered to be held by school supports an image of the child ‘as an empty vessel or tabula
rasa… [needing to] to be filled with knowledge, skills and dominant cultural values which are already determined, socially determined and ready to administer – a process of reproduction or transmission’ (Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi, 1994: 44, cited in Moss, 2013: 22-23). The constructions of the child affect the purposes of education, the content to provide, teachers’ roles, and the teaching and learning approaches to employ.
The authors propose an encounter between the two fields in which differences in tradition and power are clearly addressed – a pedagogical meeting place that aims to create shared understandings about each other as well as itself, and to explore what might be considered a common view that can be shared by both sectors. Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi (1994) argue that creating a common view of the child, learning and knowledge is a starting point for realizing a long-term development of the preschool and school’s pedagogical work; and therefore call for a ‘true meeting place’ to explore and shape together a similar view of the ‘learning child’, ‘pedagogy’s role’ and the ‘pedagogical work’ and the ‘value base’ on which these are built.
As with the strong and equal partnership, the vision of the meeting place is not about one dominating the other – no schoolification, nor preschoolification – but equal partners engaged in exchange and learning. What distinguishes the vision of the meeting place from the strong and equal partnership is that the former embraces the idea of co-constructing something new – the co-construction of new, shared understanding as well as pedagogical practices by bringing their own values, perspectives, experiences and practices. Although realizing a ‘true meeting place’ might be difficult, the authors do believe that such a meeting place is possible, taking Sweden as an example of what might point to this potential, for instance, conceptually linked preschool and school curricula with a common view of learning and development, and democracy as a fundamental value underpinning preschool, school and other institutions in the country.
In sum, the section has reviewed the four models of relationship, namely, school readiness, ready school, strong and equal partnership, and the vision of a meeting place. The first two are binary models – readying children and readying schools – and concerned with the child- school equation. In the readying relationship, primary education defines how ECE should prepare children, while in ready school, primary education is defined by children’s experiences in ECE. The school readiness model is more widely applied than the ready school model. The strong and equal partnership and the vision of a meeting place are concerned not only with the child-school equation but also the institutional relationship, including the curriculum and workforce relationship. Unlike the first two models, they embrace a two-way equal relationship, i.e. ECE and primary education interacting as an equal partnership and learning from each other. What distinguishes the two models is that the vision of a meeting place seeks to create something new through ECE and primary school engaged
in co-construction. Such a concern is absent in the conceptualisation of the strong and equal partnership: its focus is learning from and taking on the strengths of the other. There are potential overlaps between the four models – the concerns for readying children for school and for making school ready for children can shape the interactions and outcomes of the strong and equal partnership as well as the vision of a meeting place.