The socio-emotional experiences of infants during transitions to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and across their first year in these out-of-home contexts are not well known. In an international project across five countries (New Zealand, Finland, Australia, Scotland and the United States), observational data, video of key moments, plus…

Written by two leading international experts, "Early Childhood in the Anglosphere" offers a unique comparison of early childhood education and care services, and parenting leave, across seven high-income Anglophone countries. Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell explore what these systems have in common, including the dominance of 'childcare'…

In April 2020, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, New Zealand media reports revealed competing discourses of care in education. Specifically, the media narrated an apparent resistance to care evident in a primary and secondary teacher resistance to a return to school. While the resistance was clearly and explicitly concerned with care for teachers and…

Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Maori after years of a right-wing government. With the 'refresh' of New Zealand's national early childhood curriculum, "Te Whariki" under…

The early learning action plan 2019-2029, "He Taonga te Tamaiti"/"Every Child a Taonga", ushers in a new era of thinking about the governance of early childhood education (ECE). The policy language has changed, with a shift from "early childhood education" to the "early learning system". This article starts…

Adult learners globally face a multitude of challenges in learning and obtaining educational degrees. This can be due to a variety of reasons including academic stress, as well as additional responsibilities with managing families, childcare, household duties, careers, and jobs. Different cultures may face unique barriers in education; however,…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

The aim of this study was to examine the participation of adults in OECD countries in formal education and lifelong learning activities according to OECD Education at a Glance 2017 data. In the study, descriptive screening model was used as it was intended to enlighten and evaluate a situation. Document review was used to collect the data of the…

The current study provides a systematic examination of child care quality around the globe, using the Environment Rating Scales (ERS). Additional goals of this study are to examine associations between ERS process quality and structural features (group size, caregiver-child ratio) that underpin quality and between ERS and more proximal aspects of…

This book provides significant information regarding the policies and provisions for early childhood teacher education programs in universities in fourteen different countries. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is expanding rapidly across the globe with unprecedented numbers of children attending EC centres, requiring the investment in…

Recent policy reports have raised concerns about quality education and care for under 2-year-olds attending home-based early childhood and care (HBEC) services, an issue that has received minimal research attention in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article explores what is meant by "quality" in HBEC for children under two using an ecological…

Infants are increasingly cared for by adults other than their parents. Here we describe non-parental infant care within a diverse cohort; and investigate the relationship between parents' antenatal intentions and actual infant care. 6822 New Zealand women were recruited during pregnancy and asked about their intentions for childcare. Non-parental…

Since the 1990s, neo-liberal economics has profoundly altered the nature and delivery of early childhood education and care in both Australia and New Zealand through the creation of childcare markets. Accompanying the rise of the market has been a discourse of childcare as a commodity -- a commodity marketed and sold to its consumers (read…

In Aotearoa New Zealand the importance of life story books is outlined in the policy of our statutory care and protection agency Child, Youth and Family. Many children in care do not have access to such a resource, however, suggesting that social workers view this as an optional extra or "nice to have" rather than integral to good…

Teachers' pedagogical knowledge is often evident in mantra-like phrases that act as shortcut explanations for professional actions, or as principles of practice. Five key mantras for good practice in infant and toddler settings, accumulated from theory and research, are discussed to unpack pedagogical imperatives in "Te Whariki 2017" and…