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Abstract
The arrival of digital media in early education appears to have been both the cause and effect of an idea of a universal experience of rapidly changing time. In this article, the role and purpose of the phrase ‘we live in rapidly changing times’ is of critical concern. The phrase is questioned in order to avoid taking its meaning for granted, arguing for an openness to the ways in which such a phrase might impact on teaching and learning, adulthood and childhood, education and school. The article engages with time as a universalising and colonising experience, and looks at how the times and time are talked about in particular ways and for particular purposes. The analysis in this article theorises time in relation to technology, economics, development and the broader politics of progress. These ideas are situated as critical to how the times are seen as rapidly changing. In exploring a range of texts and contexts, the article makes apparent the politics of the phrase. The article argues for questioning and resisting claims regarding the times on the grounds that studying and teaching childhood and technology will be more open to the ways in which their educational subjectivities are constructed. The article concludes with a turn to resistance to ideas about the inevitability of the times in which the teacher finds herself. Looking briefly at the writing of Albert Camus, strategies for resistance are offered that promote to teachers the idea of playing with time.
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Author biography
Andrew Gibbons is an early childhood teacher educator at Auckland University of Technology. He has published widely on topics including the role of technology in education, New Zealand early childhood education policy directions in the past two decades, the educational implications of the work of Albert Camus, the philosophy of education, and approaches to the early childhood curriculum.
