The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Policy

Linda Miller, Claire Cameron, Carmen Dalli, Nancy Barbour, Linda Miller, Claire Cameron, Carmen Dalli, Nancy Barbour, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473926578
• eBook ISBN: 9781526415677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Recent authoritative evidence suggests that an estimated 200 million children under five fail to achieve their developmental potential due to factors including poor health and nutrition and the lack of stable high quality care. A significant number of the world's children today lack the basic rights to health, development and protection.

In light of such statistics, early childhood services for young children have expanded around the world. The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Policy draws critical attention to policy in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) its relationship to service provision and its impact on the lives of children and families. The perspectives of leading academics and researchers from Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Australasia and Asia have been arranged around five key themes:

Part 1: The Relationship Between Research, Policy And Practice: Country Case Studies

Part 2: Equitable Early Childhood Services: Intervention to Improve Children's Life Chances

Part 3: Extending Practice: The Role of Early Childhood Services In Family Support

Part 4: Participation, Rights and Diversity

Part 5: Future Directions for Early Childhood Policy

This handbook is essential reading for practitioners, stakeholders and others committed to working within early years services to achieve an awareness of policy and its implications for services and practice.

Part I The Relationship Between Research, Policy and Practice: Regional and Country Case Studies

1 Scientific Advice, Policy Formation and Early Childhood Education and Care in the EU: The Intersection of Research, Policy and Practice1

Nora Milotay

The Theory of Science Advice2

The field in which research, policy and practice intersect makes a very important contribution to policy design. It is a field that everyone, in particular policymakers, enthusiastically refer to as an essential element of efficient policymaking. However, it remains a rather uncharted territory as it is shaped by very complex institutional and legal frameworks. Moreover, the wider cultural context, the institutions, the individuals involved, all strongly influence how the dialogue between these three fields develops.

This chapter will give insight into this ‘uncharted territory’ by looking into European-level early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy formation in the context of education policy and in the wider context of the current scientific advice mechanism in the EU.

The ideas of evidence-based policy-making and scientific advice are attempts to explain and arrange structures around the interactions between research, policy and practice. The concept of evidence-based policymaking has been (re)invigorated since the beginning of the second millennium. The concept maintains that the decision-making element of the policy process should be based, at least in part, on sound and transparent evidence (Sutton, 1999). This concept of evidence-based policy attempts to reduce uncertainty and risk in policy decisions by basing them on ‘hard data’ about whether the proposed course of action will bring about a desired effect (Bulmer, Coates & Dominian, 2007). Evidence-based policy has become a mantra ever since, seen as an attempt to reclaim policies and strategies from the impact of prejudice. However, an evidence-based approach to policymaking is never straightforward. Narrow interpretations which rely on a strictly linear relationship between evidence and policy have in turn been criticised. More nuanced understandings of evidence-based policy, such as ‘evidence-aware', ‘evidence-informed’ or even ‘evidence-inspired’ policymaking, argue that in cases where the scientific base is uncertain or contested, there may be no clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ path to follow (Holmes & Clark, 2008; Nutley, 2003; Owens, Petts & Bulkeley, 2006).

The concept of science advice goes a step further and delves more into the practice of evidence-based policymaking. It covers all processes and structures aimed at providing scientific knowledge and information to the attention of policy- and decision-makers (EPRS, 2016). Scientific advice in itself is a field of academic study, generating new theories and conceptual models to explain the complex relationship between science and policymaking in different situations and contexts. (OECD, 2015/1, p. 42).

Bridging the gap between researchers and policymakers to improve the decision-making process is a widely recognised challenge (for example, Nutley, Davies & Tilley, 2000). This is particularly the case when there is no clear and unambiguous evidence accepted by all actors. ‘The boundaries between science and policy or politics are constantly being renegotiated as part of the political process’ (Sarewitz, 2004, p. 386). The policy-making process is not linear and ‘it must be understood as a political process as much as an analytical or problem solving one’ (Sutton, 1999, p. 32). In these situations it is particularly important to know who produces knowledge, and how, and why they do so and, subsequently, how that knowledge interacts with the policy process. Knowledge means assimilated information and the understanding of how to use it. It also involves negotiation.

The complex relationship between research and policy is a two-way street: research feeds into policy but policy in turn shapes research agendas. Research is used to varying degrees in policymaking in different countries, dependent on different organisational dynamics, such as the quality and timeliness of the research, the background and attitudes of researchers and research users, the existing formal and informal links between researchers and research users, and the organisational culture (Fazekas & Burns, 2012, p. 13). The attempt to de-politicise, whereby important decisions are delegated to expert committees and thus removed from the political negotiation table, can prove problematic (p. 14). Policymakers have a huge role in both defining the policy questions and putting them onto the political agenda. However, they remain individuals who are ‘limited’ by their own beliefs, world-views and the parameters of their specific organisation. Therefore, the human and broader cultural factors are hugely important in the interaction between research and policy, and the political negotiation is an organic part of the process. Consequently, the ways in which policy learning and policy development happen, and the role of knowledge in this process varies across different systems (Burns, Köster & Fuster, 2016; Fazekas, 2010; Fazekas & Burns, 2012).

Expert knowledge is increasingly important in the agenda-setting process. Therefore, in certain contexts expertise moves over time beyond policy ‘informing’ and leads to policy ‘forming’ (Neuman, 2012, p. 612). This fusion puts organisations and experts responsible for knowledge production in a far more powerful position. Here, certain organisations, such as the OECD, can gain the upper hand by both defining problems and suggesting solutions. In the field of education, for example, the international arena is becoming more influential in this respect, all the more so as international players now have access to cross-national data and have more room for experimentation.

In this regard, another aspect of policymaking that deserves greater attention is implementation and its associated dynamics. Taking greater account of the human factor, such as behavioural insights, in decision-making can help in this. Identifying psychological and social influences on behaviour, and accordingly constructing policies that work with them, require a more empirical and experimental approach to policy design (WDR, 2015, p. 5). The World Development Report distinguishes three principles of human decision-making: thinking automatically; thinking socially; and thinking with mental models (culture). ‘Achieving social change in a situation where mental models have been internalised may require influencing not only the cognitive decision making of particular individuals but also social practices and institutions’ (WDR, 2015, p. 12). For example, building trust between disruptive children and non-disruptive ones changes the mental model and produces better outcomes for the disruptive ones, than the results of the disruptive ones who were in the control group (Algan, Beasley, Vitaro & Tremblay, 2013).

While there is increasing interest in using behavioural findings for policy design, there are still many shortcomings to the method, such as bias in projection to the future or the influence of the social environments in which people take decisions (Wilsdon & Doubleday, 2015, p. 154). We do not know much about the unintended consequences of ‘nudges’ (i.e. choice architectures, designs of the environments in which people make choices) with which behavioural governance works. Whilst we can experiment with them in isolated settings, we might miss elements that could, however, prove influential in real settings (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).

Science Advice in the European Union

The scientific advice mechanism within the EU is rather complex because it serves a very diverse community of 28 Member States, plus the EFTA countries (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland) and it addresses very specific needs ranging from ‘providing strong scientific advice in an accessible format; informing the development of long-term policies as well as providing advice during emergencies and crises; and providing advice proactively through foresight activities and reactively at the request of policy makers’ (EPRS, 2015, p. 1).

The European scientific advisory mechanism has worked over the years with a broad range of institutions: external (e.g. individual researchers, academic bodies), mandated permanently or temporarily (e.g. national or European agencies, or ad hoc expert groups) or internal (e.g. internal research centres, or internal expert bodies that analyse evidence). The latter often works through informal channels. During his second term of office (2009–14), José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, appointed a Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Ann Glover (2011–14). She was a member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA), an in-house think tank of the European Commission that was supposed to advise the President and the European Commission on political, societal and economic issues. The Chief Scientific Adviser was to provide scientific advice and foresight on the future concerning science, technology and innovation as well as to create networks with other scientific advisory bodies in Europe and beyond. This was an important attempt to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on the Editors and Contributors
• Introduction: Exploring the Landscape of Early Childhood Policy
• Part I The Relationship Between Research, Policy and Practice: Regional and Country Case Studies
• 1 Scientific Advice, Policy Formation and Early Childhood Education and Care in the EU: The Intersection of Research, Policy and Practice1
• 2 Early Childhood Policies in India: A Historical Analysis
• 3 An Incomplete Revolution? Changes and Challenges within German Early Childhood Education and Care Policy
• 4 A Danish Perspective on Issues in Early Childhood Education and Care Policy
• 5 The Relationship between Early Childhood and Primary Education in France and Sweden: A Policy Focus
• 6 Early Childhood Policy in East Asia and the Asia Pacific Region, with Reference to Myanmar
• 7 Implementing Free Early Childhood Education in a Completely Privatised Market: A Case Study of Hong Kong
• 8 US Early Childhood Policy: Towards a More Coherent Early Childhood Policy in the US
• 9 Documenting Early Childhood Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand: Political and Personal Stories
• 10 Early Childhood Policy in China
• 11 Highlights and Shadows in ECEC Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean1
• Part II Equitable Early Childhood Services: Intervention to Improve Children's Life Chances
• 12 Equitable Early Childhood Services: Intervention to Improve Children's Life Chances in South Africa
• 13 Scaling-up Early Learning as a Sustainable Development Priority: A Case Study of Ethiopia1
• 14 Doing More with Less: Innovations in Early Childhood Development from Low-resource Contexts
• 15 What Place for ‘Care’ in Early Childhood Policy?
• 16 Early Childhood Education and Care: Poverty and Access – Perspectives from England
• 17 School Readiness
• 18 Educare: A Model for US Early Childhood Services
• Part III Extending Practice: The Role of Early Childhood Services in Family Support
• 19 A Childcare Social Enterprise: The London Early Years Foundation Model
• 20 Supporting Young HIV-AIDS Survivors and Disabled Children in Family Households in Rural South Africa: The Isibindi Model
• 21 Children in Care in Early Childhood
• 22 Community-based Family Support: Lessons from Sure Start
• 23 The Role of the Health Sector in Promoting Well-being in Early Childhood
• Part IV Participation, Rights and Diversity
• 24 Supporting (Super)Diversity in Early Childhood Settings
• 25 Challenges of Practicing Democracy in Polish Preschools
• 26 Te Kōhanga Reo: Early Childhood Education and the Politics of Language and Cultural Maintenance in Aotearoa, New Zealand – A Personal–political Story
• 27 Children's Rights and Early Childhood Education
• 28 The Lives of Refugee Children: A Korean Example
• Part V Future Directions for Early Childhood Policy
• 29 Costs and Benefits of Early Childhood Education and Care
• 30 Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care for Children under Three: Sound Foundations
• 31 The Competent System at the Intersection of Research, Policymaking and Practice
• 32 The Privatisation/Marketisation of ECEC Debate: Social versus Neoliberal Models
• 33 ISSA's Quality Framework: An Invitation to Policy Dialogue for Building Integration and Alignment in ECEC Systems
• 34 Creating a New Era of Usable Knowledge: Enhancing Early Childhood Development through Systems Research
• 35 The Development of a United ECEC Workforce in New Zealand and England: A Long, Slow and Fitful Journey
• 36 Closing Comments: Future Directions for Early Childhood Policy
• Index