Toddlers as both more and less competent social actors in Finnish day care centres

In recent decades, the notion of the competent child has, in the field of Early Childhood Education, become a powerful discourse. In this paradigm, inspired by the sociology of childhood, the child is seen as a competent social actor having agency in his or her life. However, critical comments have been made at both the micro- and macro-level about how this conceptual construction is interpreted and put into practice. In this article, children are made visible through a close and systematic observation resulting in hearing ‘children’s voices’ that are much more nuanced than those of the ‘new resilient competent’ child. The observation data challenges the overgeneralizations of the current discourse of the competent child. Instead of finding ‘old fragile novice’ or ‘new resilient competent’ children, we seem to find both characterizations in the same children, who are eager to learn, are competent and strong, but also vulnerable, immature and needy in different respects. The differences between individual children are also remarkable. What the children communicate in their behaviour challenges the adults who work with them to reflect on their espoused theories and theories-in use.