Early childhood education and care has been a political priority in England since 1997, when government finally turned its attention to this long-neglected area. Public funding has increased, policy initiatives have proliferated and at each general election political parties aim to outbid each other in their offer to families. Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a Democratic Education argues that, despite this attention, the system of early childhood services remains flawed and dysfunctional. National discourse is dominated by the cost and availability of childcare at the expense of holistic education, while a hotchpotch of fragmented provision staffed by a devalued workforce struggles with a culture of targets and measurement. With such deep-rooted problems, early childhood education and care in England is beyond minor improvements. In the context of austerity measures affecting many young families, transformative change is urgent.

For 50 years, researchers at UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit have been undertaking ground-breaking policy-relevant social research. Their main focus has been social issues affecting children, young people and families, and the services provided for them. Social Research for our Times brings together different generations of researchers from the Unit to share some of the most important results of their studies. Two sections focus on the main findings and conclusions from research into children and children services, and on family life, minoritised groups and gender. A third is then devoted to the innovative methods that have been developed and used to undertake research in these complex areas. Running through the book is a key strategic question: what should be the relationship between research and policy? Or put another way, what does ‘policy relevant research’ mean? This perennial question has gained new importance in the post-Covid, post-Brexit world that we have entered, making this text a timely intervention for sharing decades of experience. Taking a unique opportunity to reflect on research context as well as research findings, this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students and those involved in policy making both in and beyond dedicated research units, and can be read as a whole or sampled for individual standalone chapters.

This exciting new book celebrates, interrogates and re-imagines the complex and demanding role of the Early Childhood Practitioner. Exploring the many different facets of the Early Childhood Practitioner’s (ECP) role, it challenges normative constructions of practitioners and how they have been shaped by assumptions of history, culture and policy. Drawing on a range of theoretical presumptions and debates, the chapters champion the multidimensional power and potentiality of the ECP, arguing for greater respect and recognition for a role that supports and enables at a crucial time in a child’s life. With opportunities for reflection, key topics include: The specialist pedagogical expertise of the ECP The key role that ECPs play in the child’s holistic wellbeing The ECP as diplomat across many professional contexts, effectively communicating with families and professionals The creative ECP, pushing traditional, normative boundaries of practice The ECP as so much more than they are customarily perceived as being. This latest addition to the TACTYC series will be valuable reading for Early Years students – particularly on Masters level courses – as well as those working and researching in the Early Years sector.

This book challenges the idea of a universal (Anglo American and Western European) view of early childhood education and highlights the importance of understanding contextual historical and cultural heritage, alongside the impact of various global challenges and tensions so the reader gains exclusive insights into children’s daily experiences and the reality of early learning in different / other countries. With expert contributors drawn from across the world, this book is essential reading for those interested in global perspectives on children’s early learning.

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 book introduces the use of facilitation to support children’s agency in the classroom as authors of knowledge. The authors draw on research undertaken in two Year Three classrooms, in which children were invited to share photographs in a workshop to facilitate the sharing and creation of narratives. Motivated by the idea that elevating children’s status to constructors of knowledge is essential for a pedagogy of authentic listening, understandings of childhood are challenged in relation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the tension between self-determination and the protection of children. The book will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners in the areas of education, early childhood studies, sociology of childhood, social work, children’s rights and educational management.

This open access book addresses the growing trend in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) research named collaborative knowledge building in which researchers and ECEC personnel collaborate. This kind of research encompasses a number of approaches, such as design studies, action studies, Learning Studies, Lesson Studies, and combined research and development studies. There are important differences between these approaches, but they also share some features, which makes it possible to see them as examples of a particular tradition of knowledge building. Collaborative knowledge building constitutes close ties between developing practices of early childhood education and care, and generating empirically grounded theoretical knowledge. This book contributes to the methodology of practices-developing research by mapping this movement through exemplifying themes actualised in such studies, and through conceptualizing important and recurring gains and challenges. It also describes how the latter can be taken on.

The only textbook you′ll need to support you through your entire Early Childhood Studies degree. This updated edition is comprehensive and current, with student voices in every chapter.

This guide to the Early Childhood Graduate Competencies, developed by the Early Childhood Studies Degrees Network to strengthen students′ knowledge and skills for practice, in addition to boosting employability. Embedded into Early Childhood Studies and Early Years degrees, the nine competencies ensure that students are both academically and practically ready to work with young children and take the lead in any early childhood setting. With a focus on essential topics such as advocating for children’s rights, inclusion, safeguarding, observation this book will help students to build a solid foundation on which to build their practice. Written in collaboration with students, this text offers a range of case studies and examples, activities, further readings and more to support students on their learning journey.

This essential textbook explores inclusive pedagogies by presenting theoretical viewpoints and research on everyday practices in early childhood education that affirm diversity in relation to learning, disability and culture. The authors consider the pedagogical practices involved in supporting educational inclusion for young children. The book focuses on key issues in relation to inclusive pedagogy including young children’s learning subjectivities, socio-material realities of learning in early childhood contexts, and perspective-taking of children and adults in relation to learning and difference. The book draws together findings from experts who are employing innovative methods for research in early childhood education, including conversation analysis, phenomenological enquiry and participant ethnography, in order to create new knowledge and understanding about how young children are and feel themselves to be included. This textbook will be essential reading for students and practitioners alike. The book is particularly pertinent for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying early years as well as courses which focus on education or teaching or inclusion.