Early Childhood Services in Ireland

This paper gives background information on early childhood services in Ireland and presents the results of a survey of the preschool experiences of 1065 children. The results of the survey suggest that the majority of children experienced some form of early childhood service before starting school. The most common service was a playgroup although a significant proportion of the children had experienced home‐based care with a relative or family day care provider. The implications of the findings for the development of a policy on early childhood services are discussed.     

Reconstructing Early Childhood Development Services in South Africa: From apartheid to democracy

A miracle has occurred in South Africa. A country bent on self‐destruction changed course over the past 5 years and achieved an extraordinary reconcilliation amongst its diverse people. The process of democratization and liberation has brought freedom to millions of South Africans previously governed by racial separation. The reconstruction and development of the nation is led by President Nelson Mandela.

Our youngest children have not been untouched by this. For the first time in our history there is a political commitment to serve young children and to provide resources for this.

Supported by intense research and investigation, and a sector deeply committed to improving conditions for young children, their families and communities, a comprehensive national policy and training framework for early childhood education and care has been developed.

This article begins by setting the context for early childhood education and care in South Africa. The article focuses on the principles which direct programme and service delivery, the development of a training framework, the role of lobbying and advocacy networks, strategies for improving the quality and increasing quantity of provision, and the role of non‐governmental organisations in service delivery.     

Collaboration of Child Protective Services and Early Childhood Educators: Enhancing the Well-Being of Children in Need

This paper examines the role of interprofessional collaboration in the identification and reporting of a child in need. Such collaboration is especially important in the context of the global pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus disease of 2019, known as COVID-19. The child protection system must have the capacity and resources to respond to increased demands during this time, and early childhood educators serve as an essential link for child protective services in identifying and reporting a child in need. As an effective system to accomplish these two aims requires a working collaboration among its participants, Bronstein’s interdisciplinary collaboration model was used as a framework to interpret this practice. A small-scale qualitative study was conducted that included principals of nursery schools and child protection workers from one region in Estonia. Findings indicate that effective collaboration was believed to require communication and ongoing systematic relationship building. Collaboration in practice varied, as principals reported a high turnover rate for the child protection workers, which hindered the development of a working relationship and support for the process of noticing and thereby identifying a child in need. In contrast, child protection workers assessed collaboration more positively, recognizing the need to have a supportive system in place for nursery schools. Both groups of collaborators acknowledged the need to train teachers, particularly to conduct joint training exercises to foster a common understanding of the child in need and of the intervention process itself.

     

托幼服务治理模式国际比较及中国路径选择

在后工业化、老龄化、全球化等背景下,增加托幼服务供给成为全球性的政策选择。经过几十年的发展,西方发达国家的托幼服务治理模式存在显著的制度差异,形成了三种典型的托幼服务治理模式:托幼整合模式(以瑞典为例)、托幼分离的双轨模式(以法国为例)和托幼关系复杂的多元模式(以美国为例)。不同治理模式的形成和变革受制于其所处的社会、经济和制度环境,在发展中也面临着不同的挑战。新时期我国建构托幼服务治理体系应该采用分阶段策略,建立合理的成本分担机制,鼓励地方实践的多元化,并最终完成托幼服务的整合。     

Parental Expectations of Early Childhood Services for Preschool Children: The case of policy change in Greece

This study aimed to investigate parental expectations of early childhood education and care services for young children. A total of 582 parents participated in the research and answered a range of questions relating to their expectations of the social and educational role of early childhood education services in Greece. The findings of the research confirmed that the administrative division between the types of preschool establishments are related with parental expectations for care provision (p < 0.001) and support for their needs (p < 0.05) during their absence from home to work. Also there was strong evidence that parents had high expectations for their collaboration with teachers of early childhood education about (a) solving their personal problems with their child at home (p < 0.001) (b) ensuring the best care provision for their child (p< 0.001) in the early childhood setting and (c) keeping their child happy at the preschool institution with fun activities when they have to go to work (p <0.001).     

也谈幼儿教育义务化——《幼儿教育能否义务化》读后感

分析当下沸沸扬扬的幼儿教育义务化讨论中的正反两方主要观点,研究者发现双方各有理据,但都有失之偏颇之嫌.深入探讨这一现象,研究者认为逐步开展幼教学券制试验,可能更符合当前幼教体制改革的实际需要.     

全人发展的幼儿教育——世界幼儿教育的发展趋势之一

全人教育是20世纪70年代从北关兴起的一种以促进人的整体发展为主要目的的教育思潮,对20世纪80年代中期以来的幼儿教育产生了重要影响,主要表现在幼儿教育的目的、目标、内容、过程、方法和途径等诸多方面。     

Conceptions of the Self in Early Childhood: Territorializing identities

This article draws upon the Deleuzian/Guattarian idea of territorializing movements to trouble the notion of the identity of the learning pre‐school child, produced by developmental psychology, as an individual, natural and developing child as well as the more recent image of the child characterised by autonomy and flexible behaviour. Accordingly, a child's apprenticeship of walking is associated here with the movements of a surfer. This association disturbs the orthodox thought of recognition and representation that makes us define, include and exclude children who do not fit into pre‐established schemes of development and learning. What is created with the image of the walking child as surfer is a line of flight out of a territory marked by resemblance and error. This line of flight challenges the assumption of a theorist of good will, who with the best intentions knows what is best for children.     

Goodness-of-Fit in Early Childhood Settings

Practitioners in early childhood settings meet diverse families and children on a regular basis. Their relationships with these families vary in strength and quality. This article reports a research study using the theoretical concept of goodness-of-fit to examine teacher–child and teacher–parent relationships and their impact on child outcomes within a Head Start population. The child's goodness-of-fit with his or her teacher on temperament characteristics was positively correlated with child cognitive and social outcomes. Also, teachers' and parents' goodness-of-fit on parenting and child characteristics was positively correlated with child social competence. The results and theoretical background are discussed within the context of early childhood education settings.     

Early Childhood Education and Care in the Time of COVID-19: Introduction to a Special Issue of Early Childhood Education Journal

Early Childhood Education Journal -     

Early Childhood Education as Development: Critique of the Metaphor

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the recent call for developmentally appropriate practices from the perspective of the sociology of the curriculum. A brief examination of this orientation toward curriculum studies is presented in the first section of this paper. Next, a discussion of curriculum theory as metaphor is presented and used to evaluate early childhood education as development on the basis of ethics, as well as disclosure value. Finally, two alternative metaphors are suggested as possible lenses for viewing the content of the early childhood curriculum: early childhood education as caring and early childhood education as schooling for democracy. Early childhood educators are urged to consider the potential of these two metaphors as ways of orientating discourse about what should be taught in early childhood and primary school classrooms.     

在传承民族传统优秀文化中促进少数民族幼儿全面发展

每个少数民族都有自己独特的物质文化与精神文化.少数民族幼儿教育应继承和发扬本民族的传统优秀文化,才能促进本民族幼儿的全面健康和谐发展.然而当前无论是少数民族幼儿园还是少数民族年轻一代的家长都盲目遵从城市主流汉文化,在教育内容与方式上没有体现本民族的文化特色.为促进少数民族幼儿民族认同感与民族自豪感的形成,促进少数民族幼儿社会性的积极健康发展,少数民族幼儿园与家长应积极创设富有民族特色的教育环境,带领幼儿感受传统民族节日与风情,为幼儿提供丰富多彩的具有民族文化内涵的教育活动,并在言传身教中培养幼儿具备本民族的传统美德.     

Quality in Early Childhood Education: An Anthropologist's Perspective

I use examples from my ethnographic work on early childhood education and care settings in Japan and France to demonstrate that quality standards are cultural constructs and to question the universality of such core U.S. standards of quality in ECEC as low student-teacher ratios and multicultural curricula. My argument is that quality standards should reflect local values and concerns and not be imposed across cultural divides. In a heterogeneous society such as the U.S., notions of quality should arise out of conversations in local communities among early childhood educators and parents.     

加拿大幼儿教育主要特色及其启示

作为发达国家之一的加拿大,其教育体系之完备、教育理念之先进、教育环境之公平,在幼儿教育领域有着充分的体现。文章对加拿大幼儿教育的主要特色进行综述,对其办学形式、办学理念、制度保障、合作运行及师资培训等几方面进行探讨,结合我国幼儿教育的发展,提出一些建议以供参考。