Peer-reviewed article
Care and Social Sustainability in Early Childhood Education: Transnational Perspectives
Kassahun Weldemariam, Angel Chan, Ingrid Engdahl, Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson, Timothy Chepkwesi Katiba et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study compares how early childhood education policies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, New Zealand, and Sweden conceptualise the relationship between care and education. The research found that wealthier nations tend to integrate care within education policy, while poorer nations often treat care as separate from education. The authors argue that strengthening care-focused policies across all countries is essential for building socially sustainable early childhood education systems.
Key points
- Care remains integrated within early childhood education policies in New Zealand and Sweden, but is often viewed as separate from education in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia
- Quantitative goals for early childhood education and care still dominate policy in majority world countries
- Policies in all five nations acknowledge the importance of care and sustainable development
- The study used a cross-national collaborative inquiry approach grounded in local and national knowledge
- Effective 'educare' approaches that integrate care and education are needed to achieve social sustainability in early childhood education
Limitations
This is a policy analysis study that does not measure outcomes or impacts on children's well-being, so it cannot tell us whether policies actually improve care quality or child development. The study examines what policies say rather than how they are implemented in practice.
Abstract
This article explores how the notion of care is conceptualised and described in early childhood education policies across countries in the majority (Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia) and minority (New Zealand and Sweden) world. A central focus is the relationship and balance between care and education. The authors examined whether there are trends and tendencies to strengthen or weaken the care/education component at the expense of the other. Grounded in local and national knowledge, the authors employed a cross-national collaborative inquiry approach and interrogated the notion of care while extrapolating its implications for the endeavour to design socially sustainable early childhood education. The results revealed that care has remained ingrained within policies in the minority world, while there is a tendency to view it as separate from education in the majority world. Although quantitative goals for early childhood education and care still dominate the majority world, the importance of care and sustainable development are present in all policy documents across the five nations. The authors concluded that strengthening these promising policy endeavours paves the way towards effective educare approaches, which lay the foundation for social sustainability in early childhood education.