Peer-reviewed article
Capabilities and ableism in early childhood education
Rahel More, Michelle Proyer ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This peer-reviewed article examines how the capabilities approach and ableism-critical perspectives can together improve inclusive early childhood education. The authors review literature and analyze Austrian early childhood education policies to show how these two frameworks offer complementary ways to understand both enabling and excluding dimensions in early childhood settings. The study reveals that early childhood education often has narrow ability expectations and suggests that combining these approaches can help uncover these limitations while exploring opportunities for developing children's capabilities.
Key points
- The capabilities approach and ableism offer different but complementary analytical perspectives for inclusive early childhood education
- Early childhood education policies often contain narrow ability expectations that limit children's development
- Both enabling and excluding dimensions exist in how competences are conceptualized for children and early childhood educators
- A combined 'cap/abilities continuum' framework can help identify restrictive ability norms while highlighting opportunities for capability development
- Ableism-critical perspectives expose oppressive structures while the capabilities approach frames opportunities for a good life
Limitations
This is a theoretical and policy analysis rather than an empirical study of children's outcomes or interventions, so it cannot demonstrate whether applying these frameworks in practice actually improves children's well-being or educational experiences. The analysis focuses on Austrian policy documents and may not reflect practices or policies in other countries.
Abstract
In this article, the authors discuss capabilities and ableism in early childhood education by drawing from the capabilities approach and ableism-critical perspectives. Both capabilities and ableism are relevant concepts for inclusive early childhood education but hold different analytical potentials as they differ in their genealogy and conceptualisation. While the exposure of ableism is a mode of criticism against ableist structures and oppression, the capabilities approach serves as a framework for a good life and opportunities for enablement. So far, these approaches have rarely been brought together. Based on a review of the literature and an exploratory analysis of selected early childhood education policy in Austria, the authors show that the capabilities approach and ableism offer complementary perspectives to the field. They first introduce the capabilities approach and ableism, highlighting their conceptual differences and parallels. Second, they focus on inclusive early childhood education as part of the broader field of inclusive education. Based on the existing literature, they illustrate how the capabilities approach and ableism offer analytical perspectives for early childhood education. Third, the authors contextualise early childhood education in an Austrian context and then present their analysis of cap/abilities in pivotal early childhood education policy documents. The findings are then clustered around the aspects of competences through early childhood education and the competences of early childhood educators , highlighting both enabling and excluding dimensions of cap/abilities. They conclude that by considering the capabilities approach and ableism together in the form of a cap/abilities continuum, it becomes possible to uncover the narrow ability expectations inherent in early childhood education and simultaneously explore the potentials of early childhood education for the development of capabilities from an ableism-critical perspective.