Abstract:
Early childhood education (ECE) has often been overlooked when researching comparative educational systems. If it is ever included in educational policy documents, it is often added as an addendum, an exception, or an afterthought. Although ECE was finally recognized in 2007 (UNESCO, 2006), it was almost ten years after the Education for All initiative that it was considered part of a global policy agenda. Despite its legitimate 'integration' into educational policy worldwide, educational systems struggle with the integration of ECE within the Basic Education for All initiatives.
Examples of ECE with Basic Education have been critiqued for positioning societal issues rather than centering the education of children to discern issues of quality and equity (Millei & Gallagher, 2020). This criticism adds weight to the near disregard of ECE as a legitimate form of education, but also, in the alignment to primary education. As noted, the ambiguous alignments worldwide suggest fragmented axiological positions upon education quality in ECE in its alignment.
To research axiological alignments, quality research on global and systemic issues in ECE needs to navigate the absence of large-scale data (Rao et al., 2021), gaps between policy and practice (Vandenbroeck, 2020), and a messiness (Guevara, 2022) across diverse ECE sectors worldwide. This paper aims to present a comparative case study analysis of two very different systems, Sweden and Bangladesh to demonstrate how axiological alignments between ECE and Basic Education captures the temporalities of quality education and why it serves an important comparative measure in building better informed educational systems.
Examples of ECE with Basic Education have been critiqued for positioning societal issues rather than centering the education of children to discern issues of quality and equity (Millei & Gallagher, 2020). This criticism adds weight to the near disregard of ECE as a legitimate form of education, but also, in the alignment to primary education. As noted, the ambiguous alignments worldwide suggest fragmented axiological positions upon education quality in ECE in its alignment.
To research axiological alignments, quality research on global and systemic issues in ECE needs to navigate the absence of large-scale data (Rao et al., 2021), gaps between policy and practice (Vandenbroeck, 2020), and a messiness (Guevara, 2022) across diverse ECE sectors worldwide. This paper aims to present a comparative case study analysis of two very different systems, Sweden and Bangladesh to demonstrate how axiological alignments between ECE and Basic Education captures the temporalities of quality education and why it serves an important comparative measure in building better informed educational systems.