Segregation in Early Childhood Education and Care in Germany: Insights on Regional Distribution Patterns Using National Educational Studies

Author(s):  
Nina Hogrebe ◽  
Anna Pomykaj ◽  
Stefan Schulder

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is believed to contribute to educational equality and to serve social inclusion and democracy. Segregation in day-care centres counteracts these aims but has hardly been researched in Germany so far. We describe ethnic/linguistic and social segregation at different regional levels (federal states as well as East and West Germany more generally) using data from the Early Childhood Education and Care Quality Study in the Socio-Economic Panel (K2ID-SOEP) and the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). We find pronounced differences in distribution patterns of ECEC settings’ composition especially between West and East Germany and discuss the research implications of our findings.

Author(s):  
Frances Press ◽  
Mandy Cooke ◽  
Leanne Gibbs ◽  
Robbie Warren

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) – as with education more generally – should be a central plank of a suite of social policies designed to support more socially just societies. However, universal access to ECEC in itself, will not redress inequalities. This paper draws upon reports from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), and data from three doctoral studies nested within the Australian Exemplary Early Childhood Educators at Work research project, to argue for attention to the quality of the early childhood system and to consider the contribution that a deeply embedded socially just purpose makes to quality.


Author(s):  
Margarita León

The chapter first examines at a conceptual level the links between theories of social investment and childcare expansion. Although ‘the perfect match’ between the two is often taken for granted in the specialized literature as well as in policy papers, it is here argued that a more nuance approach that ‘unpacks’ this relationship is needed. The chapter will then look for elements of variation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) expansion. Despite an increase in spending over the last two decades in many European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, wide variation still exists in the way in which ECEC develops. A trade-off is often observed between coverage and quality of provision. A crucial dividing line that determines, to a large extent, the quality of provision in ECEC is the increasing differentiation between preschool education for children aged 3 and above and childcare for younger children.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146394912110101
Author(s):  
Geraldine Mooney Simmie ◽  
Dawn Murphy

The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners in Ireland, with a focus on dilemmatic contradictions between the policy reform ensemble and practitioners’ reported working conditions in a doctoral study. The critique draws from the politics of power and education, and gendered and classed subjectivities, and allows the authors to theorise early childhood education and care professionalisation in alternative emancipatory ways for democratic pedagogy rather than a limited performativity. The findings reveal the state (re)configured as a central command centre with an over-reliance on surveillance, alongside deficits of responsibility for public interest values in relation to the working conditions of early childhood education and care workers, who are mostly part-time ‘pink-collar’ women workers in precarious roles. The study has implications that go beyond Ireland for the professionalisation of early childhood education and care workers and meeting the early developmental needs of young children.


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