Quality in early childhood education and care: a case study of disadvantage

Large numbers of young children spend significant amounts of time in early childhood educational settings. Concerns about the quality of this experience have increased substantially in recent years. Further, as social inequalities in Australia continue to grow the gap between disadvantage and advantage widens despite overall levels of increased economic prosperity. Provision of quality early childhood education may be one important way to address disadvantage as international studies show that high quality early childhood education experience contributes to reducing inequality later in life. This study investigated the relationship between quality and disadvantage in a childcare centre in urban Australia. Employing a case study approach, building on Bronfenbrenner’s theory and previous literature, the study found that four key components affected the quality of childcare in this centre—physical environment, staff–child interaction, curriculum/program and family support. Importantly, staff knowledge and dedication were crucial to achieving quality.     

Financing early childhood education and care services

After exploring how the goals, organization and content of early childhood education and care relate to costs and financing, this chapter addresses three central topics: 1) the level of early childhood education and care spending; 2) the mechanisms used to generate and distribute resources; 3) the financial contributions by governments, business, social organizations, and parents. Special attention is given to the contrasting examples of Sweden, the United States, and Mexico. A final section presents general conclusions and identifies issues for policymakers and academics.     

Who's Got the Power? Rethinking gender equity strategies in early childhood

This article uses a case‐study of boys’ and girls’ block play in 10 Australian early childhood centres to critically appraise current approaches to gender equity in the early childhood curriculum. The case‐study describes how patriarchal gender relations were created and maintained between boys and girls in their block play, how teachers responded to these relationships and how children responded to teacher challenges to their gender relations. The article discusses the ‘failure’ of several strategies used by the teachers to produce changes in children's gender relations and how feminist post‐structuralist reconceptualisations of gender equity work have the potential to produce more effective strategies for teachers wishing to challenge patriarchal gender relations between young children     

Ruminating on love and care in early childhood teaching

This study was conducted in the English Language Teaching Department of a state university in Turkey. The aim of the study was to examine the differences in attitudes of teacher candidates before and after their short-term teaching experience with very young learners (VYL) of English. The study was performed during the first term of the educational year. Within the scope of this study, preservice English teacher candidates were provided the opportunity to practice teaching English to VYL under the supervision of their instructor. This study reports the results of their experiences and their attitudinal changes towards teaching English to VYL. The findings suggest that the attitudes of teacher candidates changed substantially after their practice teaching experiences. Other findings suggest that a colorful atmosphere in the classroom and a variety of activities attract students' interest and help create a more successful learning environment.     

Training of early childhood education and care staff

This chapter examines the training of early childhood education and care workers, taking six countries (Denmark, France, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, and the United States) as cases to explore variations and issues. It is argued that country approaches to staff training need to be understood in relation to the structure, purposes, and underlying values of services in that society, and the dominant constructions of young children and early childhood workers. The chapter identifies subjects meriting further investigation and considers options for future policy development.     

Interpretations of child centred practice in early childhood education and care

The globalisation of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has resulted in increased scrutiny of ECEC services, including pedagogical approaches and how best to prepare the ECEC workforce. Child-centred practice has come to epitomise ECEC pedagogy, but questions remain as to what is child-centred and how a member of the workforce becomes child-centred. Hungary represents a particular reading of child-centred practice, based on a construct of a child-loving adult. Questionnaire data illustrates support amongst Hungarian pedagogues for the importance of love in ECEC in support of a relational approach to working with children. However, observation and interview data from students indicates that the child-loving, child-centred ideal is both a weakly classified construct and that training and assessment practices create contradictory messages as to its meaning amongst students. The study has implications for how ECEC pedagogical ideals area realised in initial training and interpretations of child-centred practice.     

The silencing of the knowledge-base in early childhood education and care professionalism

It is widely accepted that the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce is central to the quality of services. Modernist constructs of quality signal the importance of qualifications for quality, but the preoccupation with qualification levels silences questions about the knowledge required of ECEC professionals. Postmodern perspectives have opened up debates on understandings of professionalism and given voice to those who work in ECEC. However, sociological perspectives of knowledge challenge postmodernism as either creating a dichotomy between modernist technocratic models of professionalism and the ethical models implicated in postmodernism or at worst presenting knowledge as non-existent. Adopting a sociological perspective of knowledge moves away from the dichotomy, enabling a critical consideration of what is the knowledge-base for ECEC, how it is formed, legitimised and applied. Drawing on Bernstein contributes to the debates on professionalism through providing a model for the ECEC knowledge-base that identifies multiple forms of knowledge, representing both theoretical and experiential knowledge. Theoretical knowledge has strong boundaries that provides legitimacy. However, whilst the social origins of experiential knowledge offers legitimacy, it requires greater articulation and scrutiny.     

Attitude and passion: becoming a teacher in early childhood education and care

By focusing on a collective aesthetics based on sensation and affect, researchers, especially in Stockholm, Sweden, are exploring a pedagogy that opens up space for assemblages of desire, acknowledging the expressions of children who transform themselves and their milieus into a weave of bodies, spaces, signs and media. By analysing this pedagogy, against the background of the theories of Henri Wallon and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I wish to investigate the concept of a ‘thinner skin mentality’. This willingness to transgress one’s own stabilising attitude, to move towards a greater sensitivity to relational and situational affectivity when accompanying the learning of children, may provide a point of reference for a preschool teacher qualification.     

Stability and patterns of classroom quality in German early childhood education and care

Many education systems worldwide have dedicated a significant amount of resources to improve quality levels in early childhood education and care. Research can contribute to this goal by providing information about conditions of high-quality education and care and reasons for changes in the quality provided to children. This study therefore analyzes the stability of educational quality and patterns of dependency of process quality on possibly determining context factors over a period of 3 consecutive school years to detect mechanisms of change and patterns of quality. Longitudinal data of a field study with annual assessments in 97 German classrooms were analyzed via growth curve analyses using Bayesian estimation. The analyses revealed an increase in process quality provided in the classrooms. Classroom composition characteristics showed strongest relations to status and change of process quality; allocated resources and characteristics of the professional staff were less strongly related.     

Towards mentoring as feminist praxis in early childhood education and care in England

Following our contribution to a study of mentoring in seven European countries, we explored epistemological and ontological inconsistencies within mainstream mentoring systems and their regulated practice in England. We considered how feminist mentoring praxis can unsettle conceptualisations of mentoring relationships and challenge inequity in the early education systems and the practice of teaching young children. Predominantly female, early childhood educators suffer from low status in England, and their working lives may be controlled and policed through inequitable systems. On entering the workforce, trainees encounter a reductionist policy milieu where mentoring structures and normative assessment arrangements contribute to inequity. Mentors play pivotal roles in inducting trainees into their worlds of work with young children. Mentoring relationships can determine whether trainees accept the status quo. Principles derived from feminist praxis enable mentors to practise an ‘engaged pedagogy’, co-constructing knowledge, subverting hierarchies and contesting taken-for-granted aspects of policy and practice.     

Governance of early childhood education and care: recent developments in OECD countries

Since the 1990s, many OECD countries have expanded their early childhood services and developed more coherent and coordinated policies. Through this process, countries have adopted very different approaches to governing their early childhood systems. Drawing from findings of a 12‐country comparative study, this article explores cross‐national approaches to the governance of early childhood systems, as well as some possible implications for future policy development. The article discusses the roles of the national government, the local authorities, the private sector and other stakeholders, such as teachers and parents, in making key decisions about how the system operates in different countries. The article calls for empirical research on the effects of governance on the nature of policies and programmes for young children and their families in different nations.     

Building social capital in early childhood education and care: an Australian study

Mounting research evidence demonstrates that effective ‘early childhood education and care’ (ECEC) has short‐term and longer‐term social and educational benefits for children and families. An allied body of evidence attests to the contribution of social capital (i.e. social networks and relationships based on trust) to such benefits. The research reported in this article bridges these two bodies of evidence by researching the social capital of children, their families and community members in the context of a state‐wide initiative (in Queensland, Australia) of integrated early childhood and family hubs. Drawn conceptually from the sociology of childhood, a methodological feature of the research is a broadened focus on children, not just adults, as reliable informants of their own everyday experience in ECEC. Some 138 children (aged 4–8 years) in urban and rural/remote localities in Queensland participated in research conversations about their social experience in and beyond ECEC. Children's social capital was found to be higher in the urban community than in the rural community, highlighting the potential of child and family hubs to strengthen children's social capital in those communities with few social facilities.     

Increasing educational attainment in Egypt: The impact of early childhood care and education

This paper investigates the impact of early childhood care and education on subsequent educational attainment in Egypt. Comparisons between siblings are used to control for selection and duration analysis methods are used to account for the presence of current students in the data. These methods are compared to OLS to demonstrate the importance of accounting for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity and for students who have not yet completed their schooling. Early childhood care and education significantly reduces the probability of dropping out, specifically during basic education. The change in educational attainment from early childhood care and education is approximately one additional year of schooling. Key pathways for this effect include improved school performance, such as increases in test scores and decreases in repetition, during basic education. Results indicate expanding early childhood care and education would be an important and effective policy for improving educational outcomes.     

Remove ‘care’ and stir: modernizing early childhood teacher education in Norway

ABSTRACT

There is growing concern within the field of education regarding how the implementation of national frameworks based on the European Qualifications Framework displaces tacit and less traditionally formalized knowledge from policy. This issue is particularly salient concerning national frameworks that regulate early childhood teacher education, in which knowledge and competencies about caring are crucial, though under-articulated. The proportion of under three-year olds who participate in government subsidized early childhood education and care programs in Norway has risen from 37% in 2000 to over 82% in 2016. Amidst this historic rise, the word ‘care’ was removed from Norway’s most recent National Framework for Early Childhood Teacher Education. Whilst policy analyses generally focus on the content of policy texts, in this article, I examine the circumstances surrounding the curious disappearance of text, namely the key concept of care. Combining a Foucauldian concern with discourse with Malabou’s concept of plasticity, this article reports on a plastic discourse analysis of the removal of care from the newest framework for early childhood teacher education in Norway.     

Quality and Equity in Early Childhood Care in Peru

The present study examines educational policy documents and programs on early childhood development and education in Peru. The author provides an evaluation of early childhood learning programs and their outcomes in different education centers in Peru. Health, nutrition, development, and participation are identified as key areas of concern. The study concludes with a reference to the importance of monitoring quality and equity in early childhood care.

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Zusammenfassung QUALIT?T UND CHANCENGLEICHHEIT IN DER FRüHKINDLICHEN PFLEGE IN PERU – Die vorliegende Studie untersucht Dokumente zur Bildungspolitik sowie Programme zur frühkindlichen Entwicklung und Erziehung in Peru. Die Autorin bietet eine Auswertung von Programmen zum frühkindlichen Lernen sowie deren Ergebnisse in verschiedenen Bildungszentren in Peru. Gesundheit, Ern?hrung, Entwicklung und Teilhabe werden als Schlüsselthemen identifiziert. Die Studie schlie?t mit einem Verweis auf die wichtige Bedeutung der überprüfung von Qualit?t und Chancengleichheit in der frühkindlichen Pflege.

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Resumen CALIDAD E IGUALDAD DE OPORTUNIDADES EN LA ATENCIóN DE LA PRIMERA INFANCIA EN PERú – Este trabajo examina documentos y programas educativos sobre el desarrollo y la educación de la primera infancia en Perú. La autora proporciona una evaluación de los programas de aprendizaje para la primera infancia y de sus resultados en diferentes centros de ense?anza de Perú. La salud, la nutrición, el desarrollo y la participación se han identificado como áreas de importancia central. El estudio termina indicando cuán importante es controlar la calidad y la igualdad de oportunidades en la atención de la primera infancia.

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Résumé QUALITé ET éQUITé DANS L’ASSISTANCE à LA PRIME ENFANCE AU PéROU – La présente étude examine les documents et les programmes de la politique éducative pour l’éducation et le développement de la prime enfance au Pérou : L’auteur fournit une évaluation des programmes d’apprentissage de la prime enfance et de leurs résultats dans différents centres d’éducation au Pérou. Santé, nutrition, développement et participation sont identifiés comme des domaines clefs de préoccupation. L’étude conclut sur une référence à l’importance de la qualité et de l’équité de l’encadrement dans l’assistance à la prime enfance.

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The author: Regina Moromizato Izu holds a Masters in Social Management from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru and is pursuing doctoral studies in childhood, youth, and social sciences at the Universidad Manizales – CINDE (Colombia). She is currently teaching in alternative early childhood programs at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru. She has conducted various research projects and consulting work for government agencies concerning programs bearing on early childhood, the family, and the community. Contact address: Facultad de Educación, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Peru, Lima, Peru. E-mail: rmoromi@pucp.edu.pe