The ‘Work’ of Community in Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia

Abstract

This article articulates the appeal of different conceptualisations of community to the curriculum writers of Belonging, Being and Becoming: the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia and to the Council of Australian Governments that commissioned the Framework, and the tensions within and between those respective conceptualisations. It then traces shifts in conceptualisations of community and the work done by community across the first publicly released draft and the final version of the Framework. Attributing these shifts, at least in part, to the Rudd government's risk averseness, it concludes that despite the severely contained nature of community in the final version of the Framework, there remains space for what Rose terms ‘radical ethico-politics' and for working towards a more socially just society.