Early childhood education research in Europe : Contexts, policies, and ideas

From the very north to the south of Europe, the national examples of early childhood education research reported here address remarkably similar issues around the definition of core values in early childhood education, and their impact on pedagogical work in preschools. Policy histories and frameworks matter, since they define the parameters within which these definitions take place and they determine resources given to preschool provision. Our collection demonstrates the significance of ideas and cultural frames as factors that often act independently to develop professional practice in different directions (see also, Löfdahl Hultman & Margrain, 2019; White, 2002). Education policy and policy reforms are formed often without the participation of professional educators, but they are mediated by practitioners who exercise significant discretion in how they implement them in their everyday work. Since education policy reforms are the result of a social negotiation process, the reforms reflect ideal, but also traditional and normative views on ECE. In this respect, the approaches in the European countries presented here do not show great divergence. Where we do observe stronger differences, is in the ideas of educators around professional autonomy, practice, as well as certain social values. We find that, the success or failure of reforms in early childhood education depends on the extent to which the policy process accounts for not just administrative new requirements, but also the features of the institutional contexts of ECE, their historical evolution in different national contexts, and the role of ideas around the goals and purposes of the sector. Second, no new policy can be effectively applied, with positive transformative effects for young children’s lives, without the active participation of preschool educators in the process. As all the cases in this special issue illustrate, education change aimed to achieve any preschool policy goal (new assessment, inclusive classrooms, gender equality, children’s agency) is a social process that requires professional engagement and learning, and in some cases a transformation of the attitudes of the educators themselves