Early Education and Development

High-Quality Practices in Early Childhood Education and Care: Global and Culturally Situated Perspectives

Issue Rationale

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has long been recognized as a critical foundation for lifelong learning, well-being, and development. Across diverse contexts, there is agreement that interactions between children and adults in the ECEC context are central to children’s experiences and a shared view on the importance to provide safe, warm, and cognitively stimulating environments in which young children can thrive (Hanno et al., 2021; Raikes et al., 2024; Thorpe et al., 2023).  Taken together, these elements are thought to define “quality” settings in ECEC.

Accurate and relevant data on ECEC settings can play a powerful role in driving quality improvements by informing policy and practice, identifying overall quality levels, and guiding targeted investments (Raikes et al., 2024; Thorpe et al., 2023). However, there remains a lack of agreed-upon global indicators of quality and standardized recommendations for measurement tools (Chen & Wolf, 2021). Current global understandings of “high quality” ECEC continue to be dominated by frameworks, perspectives, and research largely rooted in high-income, Western contexts. This has contributed to a significant gap in knowledge about young children’s learning and development in many regions of the world (Campbell-Barr & Bogatić, 2017; Raikes et al., 2024; Thorpe et al., 2023).

To generate meaningful data on ECEC systems, quality measurement tools should be not only valid and reliable but also contextually relevant and useful for improving quality (Raikes et al., 2024; Wuermli et al., 2015). Culturally and contextually sensitive measurement is crucial for ensuring the long-term utility and applicability of assessment results (Raikes et al., 2020).

Therefore, there is a need for new approaches to quality measurement that are grounded in diverse contexts and reflect a broader range of culturally meaningful definitions of quality — particularly from Majority World countries, where research and representation remain disproportionately limited (Chen & Wolf, 2021). Expanding research to include these perspectives is important for more equitable and comprehensive understandings of quality assessment.

Purpose and Types of Manuscripts

This special issue is intended to expand the conceptual and methodological understanding of assessing quality in early childhood settings. We aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about ECEC quality by including research from a range of cultural and geographic contexts.

We welcome contributions that explore how definitions of quality are culturally constructed, assessed, and enacted within different communities  —  and how these understandings can challenge, complement, or enrich dominant models of quality assessment in ECEC.

We invite submissions of rigorous empirical research employing a range of methodological approaches—including quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and, to a limited extent, systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Manuscripts should address, but are not limited to, the following thematic areas:

• Comprehensive, locally grounded definitions and assessments of "high quality" ECEC
• Methodological challenges and innovations in assessing ECEC quality in underrepresented contexts
• Incorporating teacher/practitioner/parent perspectives in assessments of ECEC quality
• The role of culture, language, religion, and family in shaping early learning experiences
• Collaborative and participatory research approaches to quality assessment involving practitioners, families, children, and communities
• Critical examinations of global quality standards and assessment tools

We particularly encourage submissions from researchers based in Majority World countries, as well as studies that focus on underrepresented or under-studied populations within the United States and other Western contexts. We also welcome interdisciplinary collaborations that foreground relational, ecological, and culturally responsive approaches to ECEC.

References

Campbell-Barr, V., & Bogatić, K. (2017). Global to local perspectives of early childhood education and care. Early Child Development and Care, 187(10), 1461–1470. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2017.1342436

Chen, S., & Wolf, S. (2021). Measuring the quality of early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.774740

Raikes, A., Koziol, N., Davis, D., & Burton, A. (2020). Measuring quality of preprimary education in sub-Saharan Africa: Evaluation of the Measuring Early Learning Environments scale. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 53, 571-585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2020.06.001

Raikes, A., Sayre Mojgani, R., Heinzel-Nelson Alvarenga Lima, J., Davis, D., Cassell, C., Waldman, M., & Escalante, E. (2024). Profiles of quality in three distinct early childhood programs using the brief early childhood quality inventory (BEQI). International Journal of Early Childhood, 56(2), 211-236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-022-00344-9

Thorpe, K., Houen, S., Rankin, P., Pattinson C., & Staton, S. (2023). Do the numbers add up? Questioning measurement that places Australian ECEC teaching as ‘low quality’. The Australian Educational Researcher, 50(3), 781-800. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00525-4

Wuermli, A. J., Tubbs, C. C., Petersen, A. C., & Aber, J. L. (2015). Children and youth in low- and middle-income countries: Toward an integrated development and intervention science. Child Development Perspectives, 9(1), 61–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12108