What matters in early childhood education and care? The contribution of ethnographic research

Abstract

This special issue aims at provoking discussion on the systematic contribution that ethnographic studies in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) can make to enquire into the question: What matters in early childhood education and care? In so doing we examine ‘what’ matters and ‘how’ ECEC matters to children, parents and educators, which challenges simplistic notions about ‘what works’ for all children, families and educators, for all time, and in all contexts. The papers in this special issue focus on ECEC, which is a period of pre-compulsory education, and our emphasis is on education and care provided as group-care in public institutions as opposed to that provided at home. The period ‘early childhood’ is not uniform and varies according to the age a nation or region sees fit for young children to enter compulsory schooling. More complex than school provision, ECEC is an amalgam of education and childcare and the relationship between these two parts is not always easy (Huf 2017; Moss 2013), not least as childcare provision is often driven by a desire on the part of governments to encourage more parents (mothers in the main) into the workplace alongside the need for provision for the child itself. Increasingly, ECEC is being recognised as of educational importance as well as being a panacea for an ever-widening array of societal ‘ills’ (Gulløv 2012), albeit that childcare struggles against a counter-discourse that the ‘proper’ place for young children is the home (James 2012). As a consequence of its perceived benefits, ECEC provision has become subject to widening interest from politicians and organisations such as the OECD and the World Bank (Penn 2002) as it is championed as supporting the needs of working families (mostly mothers), ameliorating the ‘deficit’ upbringings of disadvantaged (working-class) children and as contributing to the future development of a workforce able to compete successfully in a global economy (Albon and Rosen 2014). The intensification of focus on ‘school readiness’, and comparisons of ‘attainment’ between young children, within and between settings and increasingly between countries have emerged from such imperatives (Urban 2017). Driving such thinking are studies framed within a discourse of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘quality’. Against this discourse, the title of the special issue: ‘What matters in early childhood education’? is deliberately provocative: While studies on ‘effectiveness’ and ‘quality’ seek to identify universal, generalisable standards which are presented as ensuring optimal teaching and a transformation of children’s future lives through realising their ‘full potential’, this special issue draws attention to the complexity and messiness of children’s and educators’ daily practices and experiences. The question what matters in early childhood education and care? indicates a move away from essentialised notions of the child, the desire to optimise children’s and their educators’ relations towards increasing child-outcomes and the rationale of