Early childhood education and care is a major policy issue for national governments and international organisations. This book contests two stories, both infused by neoliberal thinking, that dominate early childhood policy making today - ‘the story of quality and high returns’ and ‘the story of markets’, stories that promise high returns on investment if only the right technologies are applied to children and the perfection of a system based on competition and individual choice.But...

More than ever before, children are apparently being recognised as social actors and citizens. Yet public policy often involves increased control and surveillance of children. This book explores the contradiction. It shows how different ways of thinking about children produce different childhoods, different public provisions for children (including schools) and different ways of working with children. It argues that how we understand children and make public provision for them involves pol...

Striving only for material wealth is incompatible with our latent personal longing for love and recognition. Simons discourse identifies a remedy available to all of us, that of adopting an attitude of love, and then putting that love into action in whatever way is open to each of us. We admire and appreciate those among us who overcome the natural impulse toward individual comfort. Currently, the organization of Doctors Without Borders, people who have eschewed financial gain and devoted ...

Challenging dominant discourses in the field of early childhood education, this book provides an accessible introduction to some of the alternative narratives and diverse perspectives that are increasingly to be heard in this field, as well as discussing the importance of paradigm, politics and ethics.Peter Moss draws on material published in the groundbreaking Contesting Early Childhood series to introduce readers to thinking that questions the mainstream approach to earl...

What should be the relationship between early childhood and compulsory education? What can they learn from one another and by working together?The rapid expansion of early childhood education and care means that most children in affluent countries now have several years at pre-school before compulsory education. This raises an important question about the relationship between the two. Whilst it’s widely assumed that the former should prepare children for the latter, there ...

Care Work in Europe provides a cross-national and cross-sectoral study of care work in Europe today, covering policy, provision and practice, as well as exploring how care work is conceptualized and understood. Drawing on a study which looks at care work across the life course in a number of European countries, this book:explores the context and emerging policy agendasprovides an analysis of how different countries and sectors understand and structure care ...

First published in 1991, Managing Mothers (now with a new preface by the authors) provides a detailed, authoritative inside story of the lives of parents, and particularly mothers, who return to work after the birth of a first child. It is based on a study of couples who have combined the transition to parenthood with two full-time jobs in the labour market. The authors provide extensive personal accounts from interviews and statistical data that shed light on the experience and s...

Viewing children as 'experts in their own lives', the Mosaic approach offers a creative framework for understanding young children's perspectives through talking, walking, making and reviewing material with an adult. This book demonstrates how children's views and experiences can stay in focus in early childhood provision. The multi-method approach brings together digital tools with interviewing and observation to enable adults to review current practice and implement change with children....

The early childhood services of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy has gained worldwide interest and admiration. Drawing on the ‘Reggio approach’, and others, this book explores the ethical and political dimensions of early childhood services and argues the importance of these dimensions at a time when they are often reduced to technical and managerial projects, without informed consideration for what is best for the child.Extending and developing the ideas raised in Beyond Qualit...

What is education, what is it for and what are its fundamental values? How do we understand knowledge and learning? What is our image of the child and the school? How does the ever more pressing need to develop a more just, creative and sustainable democratic society affect our responses to these questions?Addressing these fundamental issues, Fielding and Moss contest the current mainstream dominated by markets and competition, instrumentality and standardisation, managerialism and...

Neoliberalism, with its worldview of competition, choice and calculation, its economisation of everything, and its will to govern has ‘sunk its roots deep’ into Early Childhood Education and Care. This book considers its deeply detrimental impacts upon young children, families, settings and the workforce. Through an exploration of possibilities for resistance and refusal, and reflection on the significance of the coronavirus pandemic, Roberts-Holmes and Moss provide hope that neoliberalism...

Care Work considers the current situation of care work and care workers, from childcare to eldercare, and from family carers to paid carers. It examines the composition of the current workforce (more than a million in the UK alone), the knowledge and education needed for care work, and the significance of where care work is undertaken (in the home, in institutions).Considering potential challenges and scenarios, the book poses big questions about the future of care work – ...