How do practitioners in early years provision promote Fundamental British Values?

In 2015 the United Kingdom government harnessed early childhood education and care (ECEC) providers to its anti-terrorism strategy by placing them within the scope of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Great Britain Parliament, 2015). They became subject to the ‘Prevent Duty’ which requires them to have due regard to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. However, the promotion of Fundamental British Values (FBV), as a specific measure to prevent young children being drawn into terrorism, has raised questions about the role of the ECEC sector as an instrument of counter terrorism policy. This paper analyses the ways in which early childhood practitioners mediated the requirement to promote FBV through their pedagogical practice. Although practitioners are commissioned to mediate specific values formulated in the political arena (Eirnarsdottir et al, 2015) their response was complex and multi layered. Whilst a public display of compliance to FBV was performative (Butler, 1997) values education was an everyday pedagogical practice unconstrained by the instituted definitions of FBV. Practitioners deployed a contextual moral pedagogy (Basourakos, 1999) where children construct understandings of moral values and practices characterised by rich democratic dialogues.