The Decommodification Of Early Childhood Education And Care

The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism explores how processes of marketisation and privatisation of ECEC have impacted understandings of children, childcare, parents, and the workforce, providing concrete examples of resistance to commodification from diverse contexts. Through processes of marketisation and privatisation, neoliberal discourses have turned ECEC into a commodity whereby economic principles of competition and choice have replaced the purpose of education. The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism offers new and alternative understandings of policy and practice. Written with co-authors from diverse countries, case studies vividly portray resistance to children as human capital, to the "consumentality" of parents, and to the alienation of the early childhood workforce. Ending with messages of hope, the authors discuss the demise of neoliberalism and offer new ways forward. As an international book with global messages contributing to theory, policy, and practice regarding alternatives to a neoliberal and commodified vision of ECEC, this book offers inspiration for policy makers and practitioners to develop local resistance solutions. It will also be of interest to post-graduate students, researchers, educators, and pre-service educators with an interest in critical pedagogy, ECEC policy, and ECEC practice.

"The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism explores how processes of marketisation and privatisation of ECEC have impacted understandings of children, childcare, parents, and the workforce, providing concrete examples of resistance to commodification from diverse contexts. Through processes of marketisation and privatisation, neoliberal discourses have turned ECEC into a commodity whereby economic principles of competition and choice have replaced the purpose of education. The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism offers new and alternative understandings of policy and practice. Written with co-authors from diverse countries, case studies vividly portray resistance to children as human capital, to the 'consumentality' of parents, and to the alienation of the early childhood workforce. Ending with messages of hope, the authors discuss the demise of neoliberalism and offer new ways forward. As an international book with global messages contributing to theory, policy, and practice regarding alternatives to a neoliberal and commodified vision of ECEC, this book offers inspiration for policy makers and practitioners to develop local resistance solutions. It will also be of interest to post-graduate students, researchers, educators, and pre-service educators with an interest in critical pedagogy, ECEC policy, and ECEC practice"--

Written by two leading international experts, Early Childhood in the Anglosphere offers a unique comparison of early childhood education and care services, and parenting leave, across seven high-income Anglophone countries. Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell explore what these systems have in common, including the dominance of ‘childcare’ services, widespread privatisation and marketisation, and weak parenting leave. They highlight the substantial failings of these systems, and the causes and consequences of these failings. But this book is ultimately about hope, about how these failings might be made good through major changes. In other words, it is about transformation: why transformation is both necessary and possible at this particular time, what transformation might look like, and how it might happen. Part of that transformation concerns the need for new policies and structures, but even more it is about how the Anglosphere thinks about early childhood. The authors call for turning away from conceptualising early childhood services as `childcare' and marketised businesses selling commodities to parent-consumers; and for reconceptualising them as education imbued with an ethics of care, a public good available as a right to all children and families, and complemented by well-paid, individual entitlements to parenting leave. Using examples from the Anglosphere and beyond, and in a context of converging crises, the book argues that transformation of thinking, policies and structures is desirable and doable.

This research-based text gives readers an overview of early childhood education and care, as well as a new awareness of the strengths, challenges, and concerns facing the system. Highly respected expert contributors give readers clear and concise historical background, illuminating data and findings on the current state of the field, and reflections and insights on future directions. Key areas covered include access to education and care programs, curriculum and program content, staff roles and compensation, specific initiatives, regulatory policy, and funding issues. Equally useful for preservice and in-service professionals, this essential text leaves readers with a thorough understanding of early childhood education and care in the United States.

The third volume in the Early Childhood Education in the 21st Century: International Teaching, Family and Policy Perspectives miniseries focuses on research highlights and policy aspects of early childhood education and care from 22 different countries around the world. This volume provides a platform for authors to discuss and debate the implications of research findings on current practices that reflect policies of each country. The research presented spans from challenges in teacher training to case studies of family practices around early child development to problematise the key components of teacher education and family practices that impact young children’s education and care. By problematising the key issues, chapter authors discuss the shifting paradigm of early childhood education and the importance of future research in informing these changes. Offering key policy and practice insights across 19 different countries, this book is a must-read for early childhood educators, researchers, early childhood organisations, policy makers and those interested to know more about early childhood within an international perspective.

Supporting Early Childhood Practice Through Difficult Times encourages early childhood students and practitioners to take stock of current practices and pedagogies in light of challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, ecological concerns, and regulatory pressures. The contributions from various scholars and practitioners present a range of theoretical concepts as well as innovative practice examples, inviting deep reflection on your own beliefs and attitudes. They examine and envisage different ways of working with and for young children, their families and communities for a better future. Chapters in this timely book include experts from around the globe examining key issues in early childhood education. The first section questions the increasing digitalisation in nurseries and pre-schools and its impact on staff members, parents and children. The second section focuses on workforce development, management systems and the role of parents in policymaking. The third section showcases innovative pedagogical approaches looking beyond widely accepted early learning goals, assessments and curricula to develop inclusive environments that foster all children’s development and learning. Lastly, the fourth section steps back from day-to-day practice and considers what concern for the environment, social justice and posthumanism means for early childhood education and pedagogy. This book will be a key resource for early childhood education and care practitioners, graduate students, policymakers and researchers facilitating the step from the here-and-now to revised future practice and policy that will enable all children to flourish.

Returning to the origins of education, Becoming Pedagogue explores its role in today’s society by reuniting philosophy with pedagogy. It investigates the aesthetics, ethics and politics of childhood, education and what a teacher really does, enabling educators to define and perform their profession as per its historical and intellectual roots. Reflecting on the practice, science and knowledge tradition of pedagogy as well as abstract and formalist discourse at all levels, Olsson’s work evokes real, becoming and free aspects of educational experiences and events. Through a close reading of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s major works, historical and contemporary pedagogical resources as well as the pedagogy developed in the early childhood centres in Reggio Emilia, Italy, it develops a critical-cum-creative methodology that both analyses the present educational situation as well as creates new pedagogical alternatives. Using brand new perspectives as well as practical examples of what teachers do, Becoming Pedagogue will provide students, educators and researchers tools for critiquing simplified ideas of what a teacher is as well as giving them inspiration to experiment with alternative ways of teaching.

In Constructing Policy Change, Linda A. White examines the expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies and programs in liberal welfare states, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. In the first part of the book, the author investigates the sources of policy ideas that triggered ECEC changes in various national contexts. This is followed by a close analysis of cross-national variation in the implementation of ECEC policy in Canada and the USA. White argues that the primary mechanisms for policy change are grounded in policy investment logics as well as cultural logics: that is, shifts in public sentiments and government beliefs about the value of ECEC policies and programs are rooted in both evidence-based arguments and in principled beliefs about the policy. A rich, nuanced examination of the reasons motivating ECEC policy expansion and adoption in different countries, Constructing Policy Change is a corrective to the comparative welfare state literature that focuses on political interest alone.

In this topical book, leading experts from eight countries examine how early education and care is organised, funded and regulated in their countries.

The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and sustains an enduring educational experience, for the common good. Emerging from a collaborative research project with Reggio Children and the Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, this book features in-depth observations of pedagogistas, teachers, and atelieristas, as well as interviews with key figures in Reggio Emilia. Children’s learning is thoughtfully emphasised, as the authors render the inextricable connection between theory-practice-research, framing documentation and progettazione as artful collective experimentation. The authors illuminate how Reggio Emilia’s system sustains reciprocal professional formation through progettazione, contesting dominant marketplace discourses of early childhood education as a commodity and re-imagining settings driven by values of reciprocity, artistry, culture, and the common good. By troubling conventional views on education and care, professionalism of teachers, and educational leadership, this book will appeal to all those who long for something different and hope to shift the field of possibility for early childhood education culturally, socially, pedagogically, and politically. It will be a key resource for teachers, leaders, policy makers, and scholars in the whole field of education.