Abstract

With places at nursery school promised for every child above the age of four, this book raises the stakes by looking at the quality of what is provided, and how that compares to what should be provided. Beyond Quality In Early Childhood Education and Care challenges received wisdom and the tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical issues of measurement and management. In its place, it offers alternative ways of understanding early childhood, early childhood institutions and pedagogical work. The book places issues of early childhood into a global context and relates them to writers from many fields. Drawing on work with aboriginal peoples in Canada, on the experience of Reggio-Emilia in Italy and on a project in Stockholm inspired by Reggio, the book considers the implications of these alternative ways of understanding, for practice and a reconceptualization of early childhood education and care.