Act for Better Child Care (ABC)

The Act for Better Child Care (the ABC bill) was introduced to Congress in November 1987 as the result of efforts by the Alliance for Better Child Care, a coalition that eventually included over 130 national groups. The goal of the bill was to improve the availability, affordability, and quality of child care by providing new federal funds to states. This bill was eventually revised and renamed, culminating in the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The history of the ABC bill describes a critical period in the history of early childhood education in the United States and the influence of coordinated advocacy efforts.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon had vetoed comprehensive child-care legislation that had passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support, thereby putting a chill on the child-care debate at the federal level for almost 15 years. The issue began to regain currency in 1984 when Representative George Miller (Democrat from California) selected child care as the first priority issue for his new Select Committee on Children and Youth. The Committee held a series of hearings and issued a report on child care. During the late 1980s, interest in child care skyrocketed. Mothers had gone to work in record numbers but childcare

policy lagged behind. By 1986, the huge gap between women’s labor force participation and public investments in child care had generated significant and continuous press attention, which helped to finally force the issue to the top of the Congressional agenda. That year, the Children’s Defense Fund and a host of
national organizations representing children, child-care providers, labor unions, religious groups, educators, women, and others joined together to begin a process that resulted in the Act for Better Child Care.

These efforts were fueled by the belief that if a child-care bill was moving in Congress prior to the 1988 presidential election, child care could become a top issue in the presidential campaign debate. The coalition sought to draw enough attention to the issue to ensure that a bill would be enacted during the first year
of a new president’s term.

In the summer of 1986, a steering committee began a year-long process of working with representatives of national organizations and early childhood advocates across the country to develop a child-care bill. The original bill provided child-care assistance to families earning up to 115 percent of their state’s median income. Funds were also targeted to improve the quality and expand the supply of child care. The bill authorized $2.5 billion annually to be sent to states based on a formula that factored in the number of young children, state per capita income and number of children receiving free and reduced-price lunch. States could use the funds to offer parents certificates to purchase child care or for contracts with providers. In addition, a percentage of funds was reserved to help part-day preschool programs provide full-day, full-year services. Providers receiving funds were required to meet federal standards that would be developed by an advisory
committee.

On November 19, 1987, a joint House Senate press conference was held to introduce the ABC bill, which had 126 Representatives and 22 Senators as cosponsors. The lead cosponsors of the Senate bill were Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Senator John Chafee (R-RI). The House version was cosponsored by Representative Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Representative Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Congress  debated the bill during 1988 and child care indeed became a prominent issue in the presidential election campaign with both candidates supporting an expanded Federal role in child care. In January 1989, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asked to replace Senator John Chafee as the Senate bill’s chief Republican cosponsor and became a strong advocate for the bill’s passage.

As debates over the bill proceeded, President George Bush supported using tax credits as opposed to providing direct child-care subsidies to families. The Democrats who controlled both the Senate and House took advantage of the Administration’s willingness to extend tax credits for low-income families and added an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to the ABC bill before it was brought to the Senate floor for a vote.


The ABC bill passed the Senate in June 1989. It passed the House in October 1989 but because of budget technicalities, had to pass the House again in March 1990. Congress was scheduled to adjourn in October 1990. That fall, an unusual conference took place. The Senate worked out a compromise bill with the White House. These discussions did not include the House because of jurisdictional conflicts between various House committees. The Senate and White House announced their agreement on a compromise bill during a press conference that included Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME) and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), as well as the key Senate sponsors of the bill, Senators Dodd, Kennedy, and Hatch. The Senate then met with the House to reconcile any remaining differences. On November 5, President Bush signed a Budget Reconciliation bill that included the ABC bill, renamed the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and authorized $750 million in fiscal year 1991, $825 million in fiscal year 1992, $925 million in fiscal year 1993, and such sums as necessary for fiscal years 1994 and 1995 for child-care assistance to low-income working families and to improve the quality and expand the supply of child care.

It also included a small additional program, the “At-Risk Child Care Program.” This program guaranteed states $1.5 billion over five years to help low-income working families, who were at risk of being on welfare, pay for child care. In addition, the bill provided for $12.4 billion over five years to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for working families with children under age 19, as well as a very small Supplemental Credit for Infants costing $700 million over five years.

Federal standards were extremely controversial, and were eliminated early in the process. When the bill went to the Senate floor for a vote in June 1989, the standards were replaced by state standards because Senate leaders believed that federal standards would have led to a filibuster on the Senate floor and that they would not have the 60 votes necessary for cloture to end the filibuster. The final standards that were the product of negotiation with the Senate and the Bush White House required that programs had to meet applicable state child-care licensing or registration requirements. Providers that were not required to be regulated by the state had to meet very minimal health and safety standards, with the exception of certain relatives. The bulk of funds were reserved for child-care assistance. Families earning up to 75 percent of their state’s median income were eligible for help. States had to offer parents the choice of a certificate or contract to purchase child care. Twenty-five percent of total funding was reserved for quality improvements and initiatives targeted to early childhood development and before-and after-school child care.

While many compromises were made along the way, advocates were heartened by the results as the process led to the first comprehensive federal child-care program and also a major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. This not only helped low-income parents but also countless child-care providers whose incomes were low enough to qualify them for the EITC.

The battle for a federal child-care program was successful in large part because of a strong grassroots campaign that was driven by the child-care community with support from labor, children’s organizations, women’s groups, religious organizations, state and local elected officials and many others. It happened without the assistance of e-mail and fax machines and involved countless mailings and phone calls. The campaign was kicked off by meetings in almost 40 states that brought together a coalition of groups that were spearheading their state’s efforts to win passage of the bill. The next several years were focused on ongoing communications with these state coalitions urging them to contact their members of Congress both through letters and phone calls and visits, write letters to the editors and op-eds, visit their editorial boards, and participate in various events and projects to build support for the bill. Governors, state legislators, mayors,

religious, and business leaders also supported the legislation and appeared at a series of events. In addition there were targeted media efforts involving editorial memorandum, briefings for reporters in Washington, radio actualities, radio public service announcements, op-eds, letters to the editor, a significant number of press conferences, and paid media.

Advocates strongly believed that if a child-care bill was not enacted into law by the time the Congress adjourned in the fall of 1990, it would be almost impossible to sustain momentum on this issue through another session of Congress. They planned a series of activities to be staged in September. Findings from a Children’s
Defense Fund report about shortcomings in state child-care licensing provisions and other gaps in quality were released right after Labor Day. The report generated hundreds of stories. Miles of paper chains were put together by the grassroots network across the country and were sent to Washington. Staff working for members of the alliance stretched the chains from the Capitol steps to the White House in mid-September. Members of Congress then attached the chains to their doors. Mothers whose children died or were injured in child care also held a September press conference in the Capitol and fanned out to visit their members
of Congress to urge them to finish work on the ABC bill.

The extraordinary efforts of thousands of child-care advocates, parents, and public officials made child care a must win issue for the Congress and the Bush Administration. The Act for Better Child Care remains as a source of inspiration for child-care advocates and early childhood education professionals. Further Readings: Cohen, Sally S. (2001). Championing child care. New York: Columbia University Press.
Helen Blank
Read More : Act for Better Child Care (ABC)

Accreditation of Early Childhood Programs

Accreditation systems provide an organized process for self-study and improvement, and for program recognition. Accreditation systems exist for a wide range of professional activity, including health care services, museums, adventure clubs, colleges and universities, public school systems, and many other kinds of programs and services. Program accreditation became a visible resource to the early childhood field when the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) launched its center-based early childhood program accreditation system in 1985.

Within the United States, participation in early childhood program accreditation systems is voluntary. Early childhood program accreditation systems are different from regulatory systems such as state licensing standards for child care. States establish regulatory systems to monitor the minimum health and safety of
early childhood programs. These public governmental regulations establish the requirements by which early childhood programs may operate in a particular state and are monitored by government officials for on-going compliance. In contrast, early childhood program accreditation systems in the United States provide a voluntary mechanism by which a profession sets and monitors the standards for its own professional practice.

Limited research exists on the impact of early childhood program accreditation systems on program quality. As the most mature of the early childhood field’s early childhood program accreditation systems, NAEYC’s accreditation system has been the focus of most of the research. Often, research on accreditation’s impact
is embedded within larger studies. Because the criteria presently associated with NAEYC’s early childhood program accreditation system are also tied to research, it is assumed that participation in NAEYC’s early childhood program accreditation system will be beneficial. This confidence appears to be warranted; available evidence suggests that NAEYC-accredited programs provide higher levels of program quality than nonaccredited programs.

Structure and Intent of Early Childhood Program Accreditation Systems NAEYC accreditation is the field’s largest early childhood program accreditation system. An inclusive program accreditation system, NAEYC’s accreditation system serves the full array of center- and school-based early childhood programs: not-for-profit; for-profit; faith-based; public, and private. In 2005, over 10,000 US center-based programs had been accredited. Even so, fewer than 10 percent of center-based early childhood programs are NAEYC-accredited. Considerable opportunity exists, therefore, for increasing the number of early childhood programs
engaged in a systematic and comprehensive process of self-examination and quality improvement.

After fifteen very successful years of operation, dramatic growth in demand for its accreditation services led NAEYC to launch the Project to Reinvent NAEYC Accreditation in late 1999. This five-year project has resulted in a reinvented accreditation system with a new mission and design, new performance expectations,
and newly developed accreditation assessment instruments; the new accreditation system is scheduled to be fully operational in 2006.

NAEYC’s center- and school-based early childhood program accreditation system is not the only one available for early childhood programs. The early childhood field also has specialized early childhood program accreditation systems for family child care, school age care, Montessori programs, and for faith-based and for-profit programs, many of which offerWeb sites with helpful information. While varying in their sponsorship, cost, focus, performance expectations, and the age range encompassed by the programs being accredited, these accreditation systems share in common their desire to help early childhood programs improve the quality of programs so young children will have better early learning and development experiences.

They also share in common a system design that (1) engages programs in a process of self-study against a set of professional standards; (2) provides review by an externally assigned group of individuals; (3) includes a process for deciding whether a program has achieved accreditation; and (4) provides a process for programs to maintain and renew their accreditation status. Early childhood accreditation systems vary considerably, however, in their program standards and in how they make these four common structural elements operational. They also vary in their emphasis on continuous program improvement versus a set level of

program quality as the desired outcome for the accreditation process. Each early childhood program accreditation system includes unique features, processes, and terminology.

By definition, early childhood program accreditation systems are designed to support program improvement and almost all accreditation systems seek to make the process of program improvement an on-going characteristic of the programs they accredit. This desired result is usually achieved through three features of
accreditation systems:
(1) A set of consensually derived professional standards that programs use to examine and assess their program’s performance; these program standards usually address, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the relationship between children and teaching staff; the management of the program; facilities; curriculum and teaching; health performance expectations, and relationships with families,
(2) A process by which programs systematically engage in assessing their performance against the system’s program standards, and
(3) An external review process that provides programs with feedback about the extent to which their self-assessment coincides with what a neutral reviewer would say about the program’s performance. Usually this occurs via a site visit, but accreditation systems vary in how they review a program’s self-study of its performance against the system’s program standards.

Despite these similarities, accreditation systems can vary in their purpose. While all accreditation systems invoke a process of self-study and quality improvement, continuous improvement is the only possible intent of an accreditation process. Three possible functions of program accreditation systems are of particular relevance to early childhood program accreditation:
(1) Granting a seal of approval;
(2) Providing a report to users; and
(3) Conferring assurance. Clarity regarding the purpose of an early childhood program accreditation system is important because it shapes the way in which the accreditation system is designed and managed.

When the accreditation system grants a seal of approval, it validates the claims made by an early childhood program. Programs assess their own performance relative to the profession’s performance standards, and outside reviewers confirm the validity of the program’s self-assessment. The accreditation system testifies
through its validation and accreditation decision-making processes that the program is delivering what it promises. If a program achieves accreditation from a system with this intent, the program is deemed to be doing what it says it does.

When the accreditation system focuses on the users of early childhood programs by providing them with an assessment of a program’s performance, it is recognizing families and other purchasers of early childhood programs as consumers—and as the primary customer of accreditation results. Consumers, in this instance, refer to those individuals who choose and/or pay for an accredited program on behalf of an individual child or children. When the intent of the accreditation system is to provide assessment results to users of early childhood programs (in contrast to the providers of the program), the focus is on evaluating the extent to which an early childhood program’s practices coincide with established standards, recognizing their success in conforming to the program standards, and making the program’s accreditation status known to families and

others so they will use this information in selecting an early childhood program for children.While the stakes of user-focused program assessment are higher for early childhood programs, so are the potential benefits, since achieving accreditation status under these circumstances differentiates high-performing programs from others and elevates their visibility with critical stakeholders, including families.

These two functions might sound similar, but they are conceptually and practically different. When an accreditation process focuses on recognizing programs that comply with its professional program standards, the early childhood program is being evaluated, not just validated, against a set of criteria. The focus is on the
program’s level of performance. The process of continuous improvement, therefore, is the means to a higher level of performance; it is not, however, the source of accreditation status.

The third function of accreditation is “conferring assurance.” The concept is borrowed from industry. Accreditation systems that emphasize this function evaluate programs in terms of their potential to cause damage or harm. Accreditation status provides assurance that the program is safe to use. Achievement of accreditation in this instance affirms that the basic health and safety of children in the program will be protected. In the absence in the United States of consistent public and private regulations that ensure that children are in healthy and safe early childhood programs, this can be an important function for an accreditation system to perform.

No one of these functions is necessarily more important than another. Most early childhood program accreditation systems perform some measure of each function. But the leaders of strong accreditation systems prioritize their functions. They know very clearly what they want their accreditation systems to achieve and organize their work in ways that correspond to their priorities.
Read More : Accreditation of Early Childhood Programs

The Nature of Childhood Education

When a child has exhausted the possibilities of the home environment and begins to show a marked interest in cooperative play with other children, he is thought to be ready for a formal education. Knowing very little of his true inward state of mind, we are inclined to regard him as a “mere child” who has now come along to a stage of development where we can hold him to account for his actions, and force upon him the routine of adult life.

Accordingly, we send him to school where he must behave himself and “do what the teacher says.” “What the teacher says” is presumably what he should know for his future good—including a great deal that it would never occur to him to find out for himself. The mysteries of the three R’s in particular are not so much revealed and clarified, as they are forced upon him and drilled into him, the assumption being that somehow prac-tice in these black arts will in time bring mastery and comprehension in its wake.

Yet how little we understand child-life if we permit such a view to guide our educational methods! Instead of starting his education when he enters school, the child has already achieved in the first six years of his life far more than he will, or ever can, achieve thereafter in any similar period of time, or even in the entire remainder of his career.

Instead of the assumption that an infant is a groping aimless creature, stumbling here and there upon an appropriate mode of behavior which his environment selects for him, a true insight will show the creative efforts and achievements of infancy to be more tremendous in their effects and more far-reaching in their consequences than anything which later life can accomplish.

To many readers this statement will seem dogmatic; for a contrary view that education is essentially a matter of habit-formation is widespread, and has furnished the basis of many methods of instruction, and many theories of education. The criticism of this view will occupy us later on. At present we shall consider what we know about the kingdom of the child.

The idea is not at all a new one; indeed most of the current movements in education have the avowed purpose of liberating the child to follow his own will and intention; yet this laudable undertaking suffers now quite as it did in the hands of the great reformer, Jean Jacques Rousseau, who startled the world in 1762 with the publication of his treatise on education entitled Émile. It is one thing to maintain in general terms, as Rousseau did, that “nature is right,” and quite another thing to understand how and when and why she is right.

Although more than one hundred and sixty years have elapsed since Rousseau turned the thought of educators “back to nature,” his doctrine has served to quicken the imagination of educators without, however, being able to define the facts of child-life and human development. The rise of a science of human nature undoubtedly owes much to this impetus; but we are still at the beginning of a long journey into a mysterious region, for we have yet to discover the precise place of mind in nature.
Read More : The Nature of Childhood Education

Television In Children's Education Lives

In the time since television first became widely available, nearly half a century ago, the medium has grown to play a major role in the lives of children. Early studies of communities recently introduced to television found that, among families that had television sets, the average amount of time children spent watching television ranged between 1 hour, 36 minutes and 2 hours, 54 minutes per day—the equivalent of approximately 11 to 21 hours per week (Schramm, Lyle,&Parker, 1961). Estimates were even higher immediately after television appeared, probably due to the novelty of the medium. Maccoby (1951) found that, when television was first introduced to a community, children watched television for 3.5 hours on weekdays and 4.5 on Sundays (a total of more than 25 hours per week); after the first few months, viewing settled down to approximately 19 hours per week.

The picture has not changed considerably over the years. In the 1980s, several researchers reported average viewing time to be between 11 and 28 hours per week; although the exact figure varied across studies, all of the studies found that American children spend more time watching television than in any other activity except sleeping (Anderson, Field, Collins, Lorch, & Nathan, 1985; Huston, Watkins, & Kunkel, 1989; Huston,Wright, Rice, Kerkman, & St. Peters, 1987). In fact, despite the recent growth of new media such as computers, video games, and the Internet, television continues to be children’s medium of choice. A 1999 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that American children spent nearly 20 hours per week watching television, far more time than they spent with any other medium (Roberts, Foehr, Rideout, & Brodie, 1999). According to parent reports, even children as young as 2 to 3 years old spend more than 18 hours per week watching television (Jordan & Woodard, 2001).

Nor is this phenomenon unique to the United States. Children in Japan spend more than 17 hours per week watching television (primarily commercial television), an average that has remained stable over a period of 10 years (Kodaira, 2001). A multinational comparison of data from 23 countries found that children spent an average of 18 hours per week watching television. Although individual children varied greatly in their viewing, the mean of 18 hours was 50% higher than the time spent in any other activity (Groebel, 1999). Similarly, a second multinational study revealed that the amount of time children spent with television varied across countries (e.g., a mean of slightly over 10 hours per week in France, Switzerland, and Germany, versus more than 17 in Denmark and the U.K.), but the overall range was consistent with viewing in the United States (Livingstone, Holden, & Bovill, 1999). Indeed, after reviewing 45 studies, Larson (2001) concluded that the time spent by adolescents in the United States, Europe, and Asia was essentially identical.

Given the ubiquity of television in children’s lives, it is not surprising that researchers and laypeople alike have devoted a significant amount of attention to the effects of television on young viewers. Often, these discussions
of the effects of television on children focus solely on the negative. Some critics have argued that exposure to television—even educational television—can lead to outcomes such as reduced attention spans, lack of interest in school (because teachers do not sing and dance like characters on television), or children’s becoming passive “zombie viewers” (e.g., Healy, 1990; Mander, 1978; Medved & Medved, 1998; Postman, 1985; Winn, 1977). Concerns over television’s potential contribution to a broad range of problem behaviors (e.g., aggressive behavior, substance abuse, obesity, sexual activity, decreased school performance) led the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that children’s total time with television and other media should be limited to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day (i.e., 7 to 14 hours per week), and that television should be eliminated entirely for children under the age of 2 (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1997, 2001).

Yet, asWartella (1995) has observed, many of these claims have been put forth with little, if any, basis in empirical data. Instead of growing out of experiments with children, some claims have been based entirely on
content analyses of material shown in television programs or correlational research that cannot establish causal relationships. Other claims have been based on not much more than personal opinion, and have been directly
refuted by research with children. For example, observational studies of children’s viewing of television have shown that children watch television actively, not passively (e.g., Anderson, Lorch, Field,&Sanders, 1981; Lorch, Anderson, & Levin, 1979). Moreover, numerous studies have found that educational series such as Sesame Street produce long-term benefits in school rather than boredom and reduced attention spans.

This is not to say that television is completely without negative effects. Hundreds of studies have confirmed the finding that violent television programs contribute to aggressive behavior among viewers (see Wilson et al., 1997 for a review). The persuasive effects of advertising on children have also been documented (Kunkel, 2001), as has the influence of stereotyped portrayals on television in shaping children’s attitudes (Graves, 1993; Signorelli, 1993).

Nevertheless, even those negative effects that are supported by data do not present the entire picture. Often, far less attention has been devoted to the positive effects that carefully crafted, developmentally appropriate
television programs can hold. If we believe that children can learn negative lessons from television, then it stands to reason that they can learn positive lessons, too. The same medium that leads children to learn product information from a commercial should also be able to help them learn science concepts from an educational program. And the same medium that influences children to act aggressively after exposure to violent programming should also be able to influence them toward cooperative behavior after watching prosocial programming. Research indicates that all of these propositions are true.

Why, then, has the literature on educational effects received so little attention? Part of the reason lies in the fact that a great deal of the research is not easily accessible. Because the literature covers such a wide variety of issues and academic subjects, published research in this area has been scattered across numerous disparate sources, ranging from the Journal of Educational Psychology to Educational Technology Research and Development to the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. Moreover, a significant percentage of the literature has never been published in scholarly circles, appearing only in conference papers, technical reports, or research reports to producers and funders.

It is intended to serve two main purposes. The first is to make the disparate literature on the impact of educational television more accessible by gathering it into a centralized resource. To that end, the volume draws together empirical data on the impact of educational television programs (both academic and prosocial) on children’s knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior.

The second is to address an equally important gap in the existing research literature. Although, as we will see, numerous studies have shown that children learn from exposure to educational television, there has been very little theoretical work to explain why or how these effects occur.
Read More : Television In Children's Education Lives

Early Childhood as a Time to Learn

Understandings of early childhood as a time for learning emerged from child development laboratories such as John Dewey’s at the University of Chicago. The mantra of “learning by doing” was soon part of the discourse of the early nursery school movement of the 1920s, and children were not the only ones who were busy. Social activists and others committed to progressive education traveled abroad and returned with new perspectives on early educational practices. As Friedrich Froebel’s kindergarten came under criticism, the ideas of Maria Montessori gained favor. Abigail Eliot returned from England with new ideas about the “total child” concept, including a focus on parents. Teacher training schools were launched, and by 1925 a National Committee on Nursery Schools was convened a group of women who eventually served as founding mothers of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

As laboratory schools and research centers spread across the United States some at major research universities—so too did the influence of child development research on teacher preparation. By the 1930s, many middle-income children attended nursery school and/or kindergarten for purposes of enhancing their development and their teachers sought training in departments of home economics, psychology, or education.

By mid-century, the kindergarten was increasingly viewed as the first and best place to establish children’s “readiness” for formal schooling. Jean Piaget’s treatises on the child’s distinctive ways of reasoning—most disseminated decades after they were first published—provided new windows on children’s developmental processes and new rationale for an early childhood education.

Ideas about the period of early childhood—and children’s early education were also reflected in and supported by businesses. For example, by the end of the nineteenth century, major toy companies were marketing toys as educational games. The twentieth century saw a dramatic increase in mass-produced toys,
many of them designed for solitary play. Lincoln Logs, Erector sets, and Crayolas enhanced constructive and creative activities and provided new interest, in play that could take place indoors. Subsequent debates on the value and nature of toys, and their roles in educational environments, were sparked by such leading figures as Montessori, Roland Barth, and Erik Erikson, among others. Controversy surrounding the contributions of play to children’s learning, identity, and development became a part of the early childhood education discourse.

Early Childhood as Contested Terrain
Each of the above features—the notion of scientific research as a basis for decisions about early childhood, the premise of early intervention into the lives of children deemed “at risk,” and the presumed benefits of capitalizing on children’s early learning potentials—has generated controversy as well as new policy initiatives throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

There is little doubt that decisions by governors and state legislatures to invest public revenues in early childhood programs has been influenced by advances in child development knowledge that have occurred during the past quarter century, including new understandings of the infant brain as brimming with neurological
potential waiting for stimulation rather than as an empty vessel seeking to be filled.

Such political involvement in ECE has brought long-desired recognition as well as unanticipated challenges, as evidenced by theNo Child Left Behind Act and new performance standards for Head Start that are more akin to those of elementary schools than what many believe is appropriate for young children. The nature and
aims of science are also at stake, as funding agencies increasingly emphasize the importance of empirical evidence to the exclusion of qualitative forms of inquiry in the determination of developmentally appropriate educational practices as essential to maintaining the “scientific” and professional status of the field.

As the stakes increase for research that can demonstrate “what works” in early childhood classrooms, postmodern scholars and contributors to the reconceptualist movement question the capacity of research to tell it “how it is,” and caution against the certainty based on empirical knowledge, especially when such “truths” include a standardized image of childhood. Within this oppositional context, professionally derived determinations of quality and developmentally appropriate practices in the United States continue to be informed by child development research; and comparative studies of early education, in turn, continue to demonstrate alternative interpretations of high quality early care and education. In short, debates about the role of early childhood education and the consequences of various curricula and teaching methods on children’s lives echo many of the debates of a century ago. And yet the field has much to acclaim, as the following policy initiatives show.
Read More : Early Childhood as a Time to Learn

Early Childhood as a Period of Human Development Worthy of Study

It was within the context of industrialization and the modernist project at the end of the nineteenth century that the pursuit of scientific knowledge and social progress began to influence the study and education of young children (Lubeck, 1995). The twentieth century was proclaimed as the “Century of the Child” and students of child development became partners with social advocates for an early childhood education. William James proposed that child study serve as a scientific basis for pedagogy; and G. Stanley Hall urged mothers to observe and record their children’s development.

Eventually rejected as not sufficiently “scientific,” Hall’s informal approaches to child study were replaced by more systematic and “scientific” methods, many based on Edward Thorndike’s ideas on educational measurement. As the notion of “ability” as a measurable characteristic became more widely accepted, the emerging field of child development embraced notions of normative development and soon asserted its scientific status over the field of early childhood education. Child Study and Child Welfare Institutes, among them the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, and university laboratory schools created new settings in which professionals could work with and study young children. Throughout the second quarter of the century, early childhood institutions continued to develop in response to new understandings of child development. In this new century, amidst growing controversy, much of it fueled by Western European scholars and philosophers, child development theory and research remains the primary knowledge base for early childhood education in the United States. New brain research has added to the conviction that there is much to learn about, and much to promote during, the period of early childhood.


Early Childhood as a Time to Intervene
Early educational initiatives have historically been vulnerable to social causes and, in the United States, many have focused on children deemed underprivileged. Decisions about which children needed an out-of-home educational experience were reflected in the charity movement and the day nursery movement ; some of these innovations also reflected the changing work habits of American families. Concerns about child labor and child welfare drew attention to children’s physical and psychological needs—especially those born in poverty or
to uneducated parents. In 1912, the Children’s Bureau was established as a symbol of federal interest in young children as well as the beginnings of a concern with the “at risk” child.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, early childhood educational services expanded in directions established decades earlier. Wealthy children stayed home or enrolled in play groups or private nursery or preschools. Children of poor families and/or those whose mothers worked enrolled in federally run or privately funded daycare centers, nursery schools, or kindergartens, with family daycare in the homes
of nonfamilial adults the most common. At a time when notions of universal stages of cognitive development were being detailed and the role of constructive play took on a new importance in promoting early intelligence, President Lyndon Johnson launched Head Start as a centerpiece to the War on Poverty.

Begun in 1965 as an eight-week summer program, Head Start soon became a large-scale social welfare program that has varied as a function of politics as well as growing understandings of child development. In 1975, another group of children—those with disabilities—was identified as entitled to publicly funded
early intervention services. Eventually renamed and amended in 1997 to include younger children, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) effectively changed the landscape and the language of early childhood education, from the classroom to teacher education to a new field of early childhood special education. To date, U.S. policies have continued to prioritize funding for children needing early intervention over the provision of universal early care and educational services.
Read More : Early Childhood as a Period of Human Development Worthy of Study

What Is Early Childhood Education?

Early Childhood Education (ECE) has been described as many things: a form of applied child development, purposeful and targeted early intervention, or any of an array of services designed to support the learning and development of children in the first years of life. For most people, as acknowledged in the following passage from a forthcoming publication by one of the editors (Cochran, 2007), early childhood education refers to services provided during the period from birth to the age of compulsory schooling:
Early care and education policies and programs involve the provision of (a) child care  to preschool-aged children, and care before and after school to school-aged children while their parents are employed or receiving further education; (b) other child development focused and early educational experiences to preschool-aged children; and (c) child development, child care, and early education informationmade available to the parents of preschool-aged children.

This definition provides room for many of the more narrowly focused child care and early education programs and providers found across the country, including child-care centers, family and group family child-care programs and networks, preschools, nursery schools, Head Start programs, and prekindergarten programs. It also includes efforts to inform and educate parents about child development, child-care alternatives, and approaches to teaching preschool children appropriate social, cognitive, and language skills. For some in the field, however, this definition does not capture all of the meanings of early childhood education.

The term “preschool children” in the definition refers to children during the period immediately prior to their entry into primary school. In the United States, this age group is typically three- and four-year-old children, and the endpoint of this definition wavers between the ages of four, five, and six. In the absence of national policies, kindergarten (for five-year-olds) remains nonobligatory in many states across the country but is a part of compulsory schooling in others. Further acknowledging the socially constructed nature of this time in the life of the child, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) defines early childhood as the period from birth to age eight. As editors, we agreed to avoid a fixed definition of the age range of the field, given these vast disparities in common use. As the reader will soon learn, a majority of the contributors have interpreted the age range of these volumes to encompass the period from birth through age five. The absence of early childhood perspectives in the primary grades has emerged as an area of major concern to many in the field.

Nor did we delimit the language used to describe the field. For many Americans, child care (of infants and toddlers) is distinct from early childhood education (interpreted as a form of early schooling). For others—the editors included—the field of early childhood education embraces the multiple systems of early care and education, as acknowledged in the previous definition. For some, the politics of this discourse is central to the controversy in that adults who are identified as caregivers typically earn less than those identified as teachers. On the other side of this particular coin is a growing concern about increased efforts to “teach” infants and toddlers so as to promote early brain growth and development. Many of our international contributors refer to systems of early care and education.

This introduction to the field of ECE is not a digression; rather, it acknowledges the fact that much of what is thought about and done for young children is wed to the particular sociocultural and historical contexts within which children live and learn and grow up. It is for that reason that we have solicited entries on the ecology of early childhood, represented in Volumes 1, 2, and 3 with entries on the changing nature of families, the growing prevalence of media and technology in children’s lives, and new concerns about children’s physical health (e.g., obesity), and their mental well-being (e.g., violence, drug abuse).

We also invited contributors in Volume 4 to describe the “place” of childhood as interpreted and experienced in their various cultural contexts. These entries include discussions on how childhood has changed, both from a legal point of view (as expressed through laws and conventions of children’s rights) as well as the position of the child in various extra-family spaces. Throughout the four volumes of this work, contributors from various fields have responded to our invitation to add to the ongoing debate about the nature and meaning of early childhood, drawing upon literatures in anthropological studies, child development, education, psychology, sociology, social policy, and the history of childhood itself. Their entries provide a compelling case for the complexity of the field, its dependence on collaboration, its varied positioning within diverse cultures, and its inevitable controversial nature.
Read More : What Is Early Childhood Education?