Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care

Working with postmodern ideas, this book questions the search to define and measure quality in the early childhood field and its tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical and managerial issues of expert knowledge and measurement. The book argues that there are ways other than the "discourse of quality" for understanding and evaluating early childhood pedagogical work, and relates these to alternative ways of understanding early childhood itself and the purposes of early childhood institutions, resulting in a reconceptualization of early childhood education and care. Taking a broad perspective, the book relates issues of early childhood to the sociology of childhood, philosophy, ethics, political science, and other fields. The book maintains that the concept and language of quality cannot accommodate issues such as diversity and multiple perspectives, contextual specificity, and subjectivity and asserts that a new concept is required, called "meaning making." The book places these issues in a global context and draws on work from Canada, Sweden, and Italy, including the nurseries in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Contains approximately 200 references. (KB)