The experience of children under age 3 with early childhood education and care (ECEC) is crucial for their learning, development and well-being and for parents’ return to work. Despite increasing recognition of the importance of ECEC for the youngest children, little is known about this sector.
The work of early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals is the major driver of the quality of an ECEC system. As evidence accumulates on the strong benefits of investing in early education, countries need effective policies to attract, maintain and retain a highly skilled workforce in the sector.
The OECD Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS Starting Strong) is the first international survey that focuses on the ECEC workforce. It offers an opportunity to learn about the characteristics of the workforce, the practices they use with children, their beliefs about children’s development and their views on the profession and on the sector. This first volume of findings, Providing Quality Early Childhood Education and Care, examines multiple factors that can affect the quality of ECEC and thereby can influence children’s learning, development and well-being.
Digitalisation is transforming education as well as social and economic life, with implications for childhood. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with its immense potential to shape children’s early development, learning and well-being, can play a major role in addressing the opportunities and risks that digitalisation brings to young children.
In supporting children’s development, countries invest in the future successes of economies and societies. Awareness of the critical role early childhood education and care (ECEC) plays in setting a strong foundation for children’s learning, development and well-being has grown among policy makers worldwide.
Children’s learning, development and well-being are directly influenced by their daily interactions with other children, adults, their families and the environment. This interactive process is known as “process quality”, and leads to a key question – which policies set the best conditions for children to experience high-quality interactions in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings?
The key aims of early childhood education and care (ECEC) are to offer children from all social backgrounds a good start in their lives, to support parenting as well as families’ workforce participation, and, thereby, to sustainably strengthen the national economy over current and future generations. High-quality ECEC has been shown to improve child outcomes and be a buffer against developmental risk factors. For these reasons, governments, ECEC providers, and researchers are placing an increasing focus on the frameworks and systems that underpin quality as well as the measures that assess quality. At the same time, however, research on ECEC as a multidisciplinary endeavor has shown that the aims and benefits of high-quality ECEC can only be reached when all stakeholders’ needs are acknowledged and sufficiently met. For example, recent evidence suggests that the acceptability and social validity of quality assessment and improvement methods are contested among some stakeholders, and thus, the sustainability of these quality efforts may be in doubt. New challenges also include the ever-changing nature and circumstances affecting ECEC stakeholders, for example, the greater flows of refugee families and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This Frontiers Research Topic will contribute to an updated knowledge base in order to inform governments, providers, and the scientific community about best practices and new solutions for conceptualizing, measuring, and improving ECEC quality. The aim of the proposed Research Topic is to generate a worldwide kaleidoscope of research studies that explore and discuss models for gathering the perspectives of multiple stakeholders and considering the meaningfulness of stakeholder views for conceptualizing, assessing, and improving quality in ECEC. We believe that greater attention needs to be given to the diversity of stakeholders who are invested in ECEC, including government regulatory authorities, service providers, educators, families, communities, and children. We also believe that wide-ranging stakeholder input will generate innovative methods for assessing and improving quality that keep pace with our rapidly changing information society. Two further foci are set on ECEC practices: (1.) that support participation, diversity, and inclusion of all children and families and (2.) that are suitable for developing countries and diverse populations within countries. In this, the focus is not only on best practices but also on the limitations of practices. In soliciting research articles on ECEC stakeholder perspectives, we describe stakeholders as inclusive of government/non-government regulatory agencies, service providers, teachers and caregivers, families, communities, and children. Themes of interest include but are not limited to: • Assessment of quality in ECEC, including self-assessment approaches; • The design of and use of quality frameworks in ECEC; • Effects of quality and of quality improvement on children and families; • Drivers and indicators of quality improvement; • Acceptance and sustainability of quality efforts among ECEC stakeholders; • Policy expectations of quality rating and improvement systems (e.g., funding policy); • The role of teacher and caregiver professionalization; • All types of center-based and home-based ECEC. We are interested both in quantitative and qualitative research designs as well as in mixed-methods research. Cross-sectional, longitudinal, (quasi-)experimental and case study designs are welcome. The following article types are welcome: original research, empirical studies, systematic reviews, community case studies, policy briefs articles, and brief research reports.
Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD, accession and partner countries. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication – as well as links to much more available on the educational database – provide key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools. The 2024 edition focuses on equity, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status, country of birth and regional location. A specific chapter is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, providing an assessment of where OECD, accession and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels.
In supporting children’s development, countries invest in the future successes of economies and societies. Awareness of the critical role early childhood education and care (ECEC) plays in setting a strong foundation for children’s learning, development and well-being has grown among policy makers worldwide.
This fifth edition of Society at a Glance: Asia/Pacific provides an overview of social indicators for the region. Quantitative evidence on social indicators such as poverty, social expenditures, and demographic trends across countries in Asia and the Pacific helps economies identify where they can learn from the experience of other countries.
