Straus Center for Young Children & Families
 
Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care and Education with Equity at the Center

Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care and Education with Equity at the Center

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Description

Issue 51 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series is a response to Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, and Alan Pence’s 25-year interrogation of the concept of quality in early childhood education (ECE) (Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2013, 2023). Their groundbreaking work has called early childhood educators to question deeply held assumptions about the universality of childhood and how these shape the standardization of practices in early childhood settings around the world. They have argued that the homogenization of ECE practices is a factoryization of early childhood that undermines cultural pluralism and the field’s equity aspirations. This raises an imperative to explore ideas and practices that go “beyond quality,” particularly through what Dahlberg and colleagues have called the “ethics of an encounter.” In essence these ethical encounters are instances where early childhood educators practice democracy, including navigating conflicts, thereby creating equity-centered change through their small, day-to-day interactions and meaning-making with others (Dahlberg et al., 2013).

Publication Date

Spring 5-9-2024

Publisher

Bank Street College of Education

City

New York City

Keywords

early childhood education, equity, quality

Disciplines

Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Disability and Equity in Education | Early Childhood Education

Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care and Education with Equity at the Center

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