Common Good: New openings for thinking about Care in ECEC

The concept and phenomenon of care and caring, has received only little attention in cultural-historical theory (Winther-Lindqvist 2020). Meanwhile, many other theoretical perspectives have as of late further developed the concept, among others (eco-)feminism, posthumanism, and other new materialisms. For example, feminist and moral philosopher Tronto (1993) argues that care is culturally diverse and is both a political practice and a disposition. Others like Langford and colleagues (2017) suggest that care is an ethical activity that encompasses a democratic discussion that is central to care giving and receiving (Duhn & Quinones 2018). Situating the discussion around care in the ECEC setting, and basing it in cultural-historical theory and some of these new approaches to caring for children, this symposium explores and discusses caring well in broader terms, as also a question of caring with the world and the more than human (Chimirri, 2019). Extending the idea of care as a broader concept, from a cultural-historical position we raise critical, ethical and educational discussions of the concept’s relation to axiological ideals of the ‘good life’. Hedegaard’s (2019) wholeness approach places attention to how societies provide conditions and form ideas about their expectations of a good life for all their citizens. In particular, parents have an important role in identifying what a good life and future of children means in terms of their values for shaping their life. Such cultural values for a good life for children are important when understanding the child’s social situation including their emotional well-being. In the symposium, we empirically depart from educators’ and parents’ perspectives of ‘common good’ as central values inhabited in CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) communities in Australia, alongside young children’s multisensory and intergenerational learning in Danish ECEC forest projects. On these grounds, we discuss the question: what does it mean to care well for the common good of others?, as a new opening for thinking about care in ECEC and cultural-historical theorizing.