scholarly journals Future Directions: Shaping Early Childhood Education Policy for the 21st Century – A Personal Perspective

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Wells
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Education Project ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Early Childhood Education Policy ◽  
High Quality Education ◽  
Policy Direction ◽  
The Impact

The report of the Early Childhood Education Project Future Directions: Early Childhood Education in New Zealand was launched in September, 1996. The report “focuses on the structures and funding required to deliver high quality education services for young children” (Early Childhood Education Project, 1996a, p. 2). This article briefly describes the context within which the project was initiated. It outlines the aims of the project, the process undertaken to develop the report and highlights its key findings, goals and recommendations. This article sets out NZEI Te Riu Roa’s strategy in promoting the report and concludes with a broad overview of the impact of the report in shaping government policy direction.

scholarly journals The Impact of COVID-19 on Eating Environments and Activity in Early Childhood Education and Care in Alberta, Canada: A Cross-Sectional Study

Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 4247
Author(s):  
Lynne M. Z. Lafave ◽  
Alexis D. Webster ◽  
Ceilidh McConnell ◽  
Nadine Van Wyk ◽  
Mark R. Lafave
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
The Impact

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments influence children’s early development and habits that track across a lifespan. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19 government-mandated guidelines on physical activity (PA) and eating environments in ECEC settings. This cross-sectional study involved the recruitment of 19 ECEC centers pre-COVID (2019) and 15 ECEC centers during COVID (2020) in Alberta, Canada (n = 34 ECEC centers; n = 83 educators; n = 361 preschoolers). Educators completed the CHEERS (Creating Healthy Eating and activity Environments Survey) and MEQ (Mindful Eating Questionnaire) self-audit tools while GT3X+ ActiGraph accelerometers measured preschooler PA. The CHEERS healthy eating environment subscale was greater during COVID-19 (5.97 ± 0.52; 5.80 ± 0.62; p = 0.02) and the overall score positively correlated with the MEQ score (r = 0.20; p = 0.002). Preschoolers exhibited greater hourly step counts (800 ± 189; 649 ± 185), moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) (9.3 ± 3.0 min/h; 7.9 ± 3.2 min/h) and lower sedentary times (42.4 ± 3.9 min/h; 44.1 ± 4.9 min/h) during COVID-19 compared to pre-COVID, respectively (p < 0.05). These findings suggest the eating environment and indices of child physical activity were better in 2020, which could possibly be attributed to a change in government-mandated COVID-19 guideline policy.

Mapping the Policy Landscape of Australian Early Childhood Education Policy through Document Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Hard ◽  
Paige Lee ◽  
Sue Dockett
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Early Childhood Education Policy ◽  
Early Childhood Policy ◽  
Early School ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Large Corpus

WHILE MUCH HAS BEEN written about recent reforms in Australian early childhood education (birth to five) policy, less attention has been directed towards the changes across the whole early childhood period (birth to eight) and potential links between policy covering the prior-to-school and early school years. The near-concurrent introduction of two national curriculum documents covering these sectors has provided opportunities to explore such links. Recognising that such national approaches do not emerge from a vacuum, we identified a wide range of additional documents that contributed to the history, development, implementation and evaluation of the national curriculum documents, with the aim of exploring the links across these and the policy imperatives guiding these. Qualitative Document Analysis was used to manage the overwhelming number of related documents that were identified. In this paper, we share the processes used in the descriptive coding of a large corpus of documents, and reflect on the advantages and challenges encountered. We share these reflections not only as a means of contributing to discussions about the nature and impact of early childhood policy, but also to provide a transparent basis for future analyses.

scholarly journals How neoliberal globalization is shaping early childhood education policies in India, China, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Maldives

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amita Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
The Impact

In rapidly globalizing systems of schooling around the world, economic considerations have led to a push to impose neoliberal reforms in the field of education. Under this influence early childhood education and teacher education in Asia have increasingly become positioned as regulated markets governed by neoliberal policies, leading to peak activities in privatization, consumerism, standardization and high-stakes testing. This article, based on a series of qualitative inquiries, presents a review of recent early childhood policies in India, China, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The impact of the policies on pedagogy is discussed within the frameworks of neoliberal globalization and postcolonial theory, emphasizing the growing need to recognize the third space of pedagogical hybridity in classrooms that are becoming increasingly multicultural and global.

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