Issues in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper raises some of the key issues affecting the educational opportunities of children from birth to seven. These include: services for children under five, four‐year‐olds in primary school classes, equal opportunities, training and status of early years professionals. The paper emphasises the influence of concepts of early childhood and the need for UK policy makers to recognise babies and very young children as people, and to acknowledge their capabilities.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.     

Avoiding sexism in early childhood education

Conclusion Television, other media, and adults in their daily interactions give children cues about what's appropriate for girls and for boys. It is the daily, continual combination of these events, occurring without thought of the hidden messages they convey to children, which creates an environment organized around sex roles. The message to all of us who work with young children is clear: Provide equal access of space and materials to every child; expect children to engage in all kinds of activities regardless of sex; expect children to exhibit a full range of behavior and reinforce them without regard to sex; and, finally, “liberate” the teacher's role by providing equal access and choices to adults and expecting a full range of responses from men and women alike. Above all, we must recognize that the maintenance of sexist environments and practices prevents every one of us from realizing his or her fullest potential.     

The limitations of multiculturalism in Norwegian early childhood education

In Norway, 9 out of 10 children between the ages of one and five participate in an educational formation programme which, despite around half of the kindergartens being privately owned, is regulated by a common law and relatively detailed regulations describing what the content of kindergartens should be. Norwegian kindergartens therefore represent a central institution for integration and transfer of values and morals in today's multicultural Norwegian society. The relatively new situation of multicultural diversity is challenging earlier cultural hegemonies where Christian heritage and tradition combined with a strong social democratic movement were important components. The issue discussed in this paper is how this cultural diversity is dealt with in the early childhood education documents, with emphasis on understanding where the limits of multiculturalism are set. I argue, in dialogue with three standpoints of multiculturalism, that while Norwegian early childhood education embraces cultural diversity, it is unclear about the limits to its political implications.     

The matter of silence in early childhood bilingual education

The relationship between silence as non-speech and bilingualism in early childhood education is intricate. This article maps this relationship with the help of diverse theoretical entrances to a video-recorded everyday episode from a bilingual (Spanish–Swedish) preschool in Sweden. Though this, three alternative readings of silence are produced. Thinking with Deleuzian philosophy, the aim is to consider how the different readings of silence require different understandings of both time and language and allow different bilingual child subjectivities. The different readings present silence as development, strategy and intensity. Thinking with different dimensions of language as well as Chronos and Aion as different notions of time, the article shows that silence as development and silence as strategy are individually, chronologically and linguistically oriented readings. These allow viewing the bilingual child as more or less competent, active and powerful in relation to adults. Furthermore, silence as intensity is collectively produced as well as temporally unbounded, and produces the bilingual child, as involved in several material–semiotic relations capable of amazement. It is discussed whether, due to the evasive and inconsistent nature of silence, all three readings are equally (im)possible. Nevertheless, they produce different effects and raise different questions concerning bilingual educational practice in the early years.     

The economics of early childhood education and day-care

This article discusses the economic rationale of providing educational and day-care facilities to young children, using an expanded social cost-benefit frame-work. The benefits side, in particular, includes the direct lifetime productive gains by working mothers and the indirect earnings increments of the recipients of these social services via the boosting of early abilities and eventual higher scholastic achievement. Recently compiled statistics in OECD Member Countries are used to support the argument that we know very little about the socio-economic effects of providing kindergarten and nursery facilities. An interdisciplinary research agenda is proposed to increase our understanding in this elusive area of social policy.

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Zusammenfassung Im Rahmen einer ausgeweiteten Kosten/Nutzen-Untersuchung befaßt sich dieser Artikel mit der wirtschaftlichen Begründung für die Unterhaltung von Erziehungs- und Tagesstätten für Kleinkinder. Die Nutzenseite schließt insbesondere die direkten Arbeitserträge beruflich tätiger Mütter ein sowie die indirekten Einkommenserhöhungen der Empfänger dieser Sozialdienste durch die Förderung früher Fähigkeiten und späterer besserer Schulleistungen. Neuere Statistiken von OECD-Mitgliedsstaaten werden zur Unterstützung des Arguments herangezogen, daß wir noch sehr wenig über die sozio-ökonomischen Auswirkungen der Errichtung von Kindergärten und Kinderhorten wissen. Der Verfasser schlägt ein interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm vor, um unser Verständnis dieses schwer zu erfassenden Gebiets der Sozialpolitik zu erweitern.

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Résumé L'auteur de cet article s'interroge sur l'éventuel intérêt économique que présentent les services éducatifs et les garderies pour jeunes enfants dans le cadre élargi de l'analyse coûts sociaux-avantages sociaux. Au rang des avantages sociaux on compte le gain direct de toute l'existence productive de la mère qui travaille au dehors et le gain indirect provenant ultérieurement de la capacité productive des bénéficiaires de ces services dont les perspectives de progression scolaire sont améliorées par un démarrage précoce. Les statistiques établies récemment par les Pays Membres de l'OCDE montrent que les notions que nous avons des effets socio-économiques des jardins d'enfants et des services de garderie sont minimes. Un programme de recherche interdisciplinaire a été proposé afin de développer nos connaissances dans ce domaine encore nébuleux de la politique sociale.

     

Defining professional needs in early childhood education

This article describes a research project, ‘Improving Learning: The Pupils' Agenda’ (supported by the Nuffield Foundation) in which a team of researchers from Homerton College, Cambridge and the University of Keele, investigated how schools were listening and responding to pupils' perspectives on effective teaching and learning. An account of the project is presented, outlining how the team carried out the investigation and the three themes on which was based. The article goes on to look at the strategies being developed in primary schools, using extracts from the data to illustrate the impact of these strategies in schools. In conclusion it is suggested that the answer to the question posed in the title — can listening and responding to pupils' views give new directions for school improvement — is clearly ‘yes’ and that the advantage of taking this approach lies principally in its potential for improving pupils' attitudes to learning.     

Situating ICT in early childhood teacher education

Education and Information Technologies - Preparing the next generation of preschool teachers who can integrate and make use of ICT to capitalise on and develop young children’s digital...     

Teachable-moment-oriented curriculum practice in early childhood education

This study explores aspects of teachable-moment-oriented curriculum practice by questioning whether a teacher's teachable moment is relevant to the learner's 'learnable moment'. For teachable-moment-oriented curriculum practice to result in developmentally and culturally appropriate meaningful learning, transforming the identity between learner and teacher seems imperative. Data collected from naturalistic settings in various teacher education contexts over the last few years are used. Both prospective and in-service teachers' images of teachable-moment-oriented curriculum practices are presented     

Constructing relational space in early childhood education

This paper examines early childhood education (ECE) by applying and developing relational-spatial perspectives on everyday life in educational institutions for young children. The aim is to investigate the dynamic process of construction of space and to illustrate with selected empirical episodes how this process occurs in ECE. Drawing on authors such as Soja and Bourdieu, the starting point for the analysis is that space is socially produced in everyday interactions in a process that intertwines the physical environment and concrete objects, personal interpretations of physical and cultural space, and cultural and collective views about space in ECE. We illustrate this process with ethnographic data from two day care centers. The analysis shows how children and educators engage in the process of constructing space from diverse positions and how the institutional context is embedded within this process.     

Challenging partnerships in Australian early childhood education

Partnerships that form to advance early childhood education are influenced by history and purpose. They are enacted in diverse social, cultural, economic, geographic and educational contexts. Using the theme of ‘strong and equal partnership’ between family and school, and taking a theoretical standpoint that values social cohesion and the agency of the child, this paper investigates ways in which partnership developed in three different Australian contexts. Particular early childhood programs in Queensland and Western Australia, and a literacy support program in New South Wales fostered education partnerships between parents and teachers, and among professionals, as a key component of effective curriculum. The prevailing management approaches and conceptions of power in the contexts enabled partnerships to be enacted in different ways. Reflection on the program management of curriculum work may be valuable in settings where players are working to achieve a cohesive approach to early education, especially an approach that foregrounds the agency of the child.