Ingela Naumann, University of Fribourg
The expansion of ECEC services across OECD countries in recent decades has been accompanied by a strong focus on the educational value of these services. On the one hand, the emphasis on “education” has countered instrumental conceptions of early years services as mere “care depositories” where children are being looked after while their mothers are at work. Instead, early years services should be understood as educational spaces where children learn and thrive, and that expand children’s social rights – hence the term Early Childhood Education and Care. In addition, the advance of “brain science” and the social investment paradigm since the late 20th century put a focus on the role of ECEC services to further young children’s cognitive skills and their “school readiness”, particularly for children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. There have also been efforts to boost the status of the early years workforce by pointing to their role as educators rather than mere “carers”.
However, there are also voices in research, policy and practice that question an overemphasis of (certain forms of) education in early childhood at the expense of wider care aspects: child development scholars point to the importance of caring activities that support children in their development of secure attachments to other human beings, and the development of motor, emotional and social skills as prerequisites for cognitive development; ECEC providers point to the challenges of financial pressures, staff shortages and large children groups for creating caring environments; educators in ECEC settings and primary schools point to barriers to teaching and learning in the face of basic care needs, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, with increasing numbers of children going hungry or lacking social or basic self-care skills (such as being able to use the toilet independently). And policy makers are experimenting with new forms of care policy, such as breakfast clubs, and reconceptualizations of early years services as family and community centres. With other words, a strict distinction between “education” and “care”, and the posing of a hierarchical relationship between the two, may neither be theoretically warranted nor societally beneficial.
This Thematic Panel invites contributions that put “care” back into the focus of ECEC research, policy and practice. We welcome theoretical contributions (e.g. about the links between concepts such as “education”, “learning”, “care”, “wellbeing”, “social justice” and so forth) as well as empirical papers discussing new trends and initiatives (locally, nationally or internationally) of creating caring environments for children, or examining social outcomes of caring, or less caring, policy and practice developments in ECEC.