Between Universal Standards and Local Communities: Using the Cloakroom as a Prism to Understanding Kindergarten as a Contested Space

Drawing on theories of critical pedagogy and spatiality, this article explores tensions between understandings of kindergarten as a place of universalized pedagogical expertise and of kindergarten as a local institution and place for building relationships. We do so by focusing on the kindergarten cloakroom: As a material and social passage between the external world and institutional life, the cloakroom is an interesting space for studying the contested relations between kindergarten and families in the local community.
Our analysis demonstrates that the cloakroom reflects dominant discourses that impose explicit expectations on parents, who are judged by their compliance, leading to an understanding of the parents as incompetent, incomprehensible, and in need of guidance. At the same time, the cloakroom is also a space for relationship building, shaped by the engagements of parents, pedagogues,1 and children, relating to life in the local community in a much broader sense. Using the cloakroom as a prism for understanding kindergarten as a contradictory space, we argue that it is important to learn from the cloakroom to consider how kindergarten can become a shared space.