An Interdisciplinary Approach to Early Childhood Education and Care

Perspectives from Australia

Susanne Garvis, Matthew Manning

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317373292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Early Childhood Education and Care explores early childhood education and care in Australia from a variety of perspectives, highlighting the complexity of working within the field and the need for a truly interdisciplinary approach. It argues that only a holistic understanding of each perspective will allow a clear future for early childhood education within Australia, and that all government parties should provide better outcomes around policy and provision to ensure the support and development of the sector.

Chapters offer insights into how children and families are positioned in educational reform by examining current government policy, as well as individual and collective initiatives. Key paradigms considered include positivist, behavioural, developmental, economic, sociocultural, and postmodern models. Garvis and Manning identify challenges to the field and propose improvements needed to develop an interdisciplinary approach to help close the disadvantage gap on educational outcomes. With recommendations aimed at stakeholders within different disciplines, it is hoped that this book will encourage significant improvements to early childhood education and care within Australia.

Providing important insights into the landscape of early childhood education and care, this book will promote new ways of thinking of policy and provision development for the future. As such, it will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of early years education, education policy and politics, and sociology of education, as well as those studying childcare alongside economics, criminology and sociology.

Chapter 1

Australia and early childhood education and care

Early childhood education and care in Australia is a growing field, with more demand from families than ever. Over the last decade there have been many changes within the early childhood sector, including greater government intervention and changes in policy provision. What is unclear, however, is the future of early childhood education and care in Australia and what this means for young children and their families. This chapter will provide a snapshot of the past in regards to early childhood education and care, before providing a quick snapshot of the present landscape. It will then introduce the different perspectives around early childhood education that you will discover in the book. Our stance as researchers will also be shared. The hope of the book is to inform people more about the landscape of early childhood education and care and to promote new ways of thinking of policy and provision development for the future.

Introduction

Early childhood education and care within Australia has had significant reform in the past years. It has become a highly politicized issue around issues of quality, affordability and accessibility. In each election, policies within early childhood education and care are hotly debated and scrutinized.

Within the history of early childhood education and care, the terms of education and care have often been split. Both education and care services types were provided and delivered by separate organizations and delivered in different locations (Spirit, 1974). When state governments become involved, preschool (the year before formal schooling) was associated with education departments, while provision for younger children was assumed under the responsibility of care and within social services. Over time, preschool has been associated with education and learning, while childcare has not been given the same respect as recognition.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, parallel systems of education and care developed across Australia (Brennan, 1998). In the late 1980s, the privatization of the early childhood sector continued with lobbying by private providers to amend the Child Care Act to allow subsidies to be paid to users of for-profit as well as non-profit childcare centers.

In 1996, the election of the Howard government intensified the marketization of care, removing the small subsidies paid to non-profit services. This suggested that the government allowed and supported the privatization of the early childhood sector. Today the majority of the early childhood sector in Australia is within the private sector. The sector continues to grow as more demand is sought from families of young children.

This brief introduction shows the complexity of the Australian early childhood education and care sector. The approach taken by the government has been different to many other countries around the world, with many countries choosing to have government ownership and control over early childhood services. The approach taken by the Australian government has been described by Sumsion (2012) as a national experiment in corporatized early childhood education and care.

The focus of this chapter is to provide a short summary of the current situation of Australian early childhood education and care, before providing a summary of each of the proceeding chapters. Each proceeding chapter describes different perspectives within the Australian early childhood education and care sector. The authors’ stance is also disclosed in a type of reflexive statement, allowing the reader to understand the position and reasoning of the two authors. Their stance also includes a call for a greater focus on interdisciplinary ways of working within early childhood education and care as a step forward. Both authors acknowledge that interdisciplinary ways of working provides new possibilities and hopes for the challenges faced within the Australian early childhood education and care sector.

In the context of this book, early childhood education and care also includes the concepts of early childhood development and early childhood. The term is also used to describe other terms used within Australia such as childcare, early learning and early childhood. While each of the terms has a different definition, in the concept of this book they are considered under a bigger umbrella term of early childhood education and care.

A brief snapshot of early childhood education and care in Australia

The benefits of high-quality early education and care

Over the past decade and a half, a rapid growth in early childhood education and care provision has occurred around the world. Simultaneously, there has been greater attention by governments to invest in the years before compulsory schooling, prompted by research highlighting that increased spending in the before-school sector reduces short- and long-term costs to society and promotes the development of better education, health and socio-economic stability (Heckman, 2006). Specifically, Heckman argues:

Investing in disadvantaged young children is a rare public policy initiative that promotes fairness and social justice and at the same time promotes productivity in the economy and in society at large. Early interventions [including education] targeted toward disadvantaged children have much higher returns than later interventions such as reduced pupil-teacher ratios, public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies, or expenditure on police. At current levels of resources, society overinvests in remedial skill investments at later ages and underinvests in the early years

(p. 1902).

The collapse of ABC learning centers

In 1988, Eddy Groves and his wife opened a childcare centre in Brisbane, followed by successful ownership of other centres. Run as a franchise model, the centres quickly expanded across Australia and were listed on the Australian stock exchange, becoming the dominant player in Australian long day care (Ellis, 2009). At its peak, the Australian company was worth $2.5 billion (AUD), making Eddy Groves one of the richest people at the time under 40, with his personal wealth estimated at $272 million (AUD) (Baroque, 2006). Other companies quickly followed and within a few years Australia had experience a shift towards corporate care that was provided by companies whose shares were traded on the stock exchange (Sums ion, 2012). However in 2007 the share price fell rapidly, with the company having to go into administrative receivership after fallout from a subprime mortgage crisis. The company went into voluntary liquidation in 2008, creating chaos for Australian families who attended one of the 1,200 centres. At this time it had 25 per cent of centre-based long day care services in Australia, with 120,000 children and 16,000 staff (Ellis, 2009). Fifty-five ABC centres were closed immediately and the government paid $24 million (AUD) to keep the remainder open.

The ABC network was eventually sold in December 2009. Most centres (650) were sold to a coalition of charitable organisations (The Benevolent Society, Mission Australia, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Social Venture Australia) that created a non-for-profit group known as Good Start.

The ABC network was subject to much criticism and controversy. The Community Child Care Co-Operative in New South Wales argued that the profits of ABC Learning were created from inequitable low staff wages and cost-cutting, both linked to the quality of early childhood education and care. The group also argued that the business model of early childhood education was not sustainable (Djokovic, 2002). Other concerns included the expansion of the company to create a monopoly on childcare services. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission reviewed the company’s operations and imposed certain conditions such as closing centres in some areas and agreeing not to purchase in others (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, 2004).

Australia’s push to improve the early educational sector

In light of the demonstrated benefits to individuals and society at large of providing high-quality education and care and in the early years (c.f. Manning, 2008; Manning, Homel & Smith 2010), Australia has undergone policy transformations with the goal of becoming one of the world’s leaders in this area. The strong focus on early childhood in Australia was initiated in 2007, when the Commonwealth Government responded with a higher-level commitment to improve the quality and provision of early childhood education and care. A key initiative was the endorsement of the National Early Childhood Development Strategy – Investing in the Early Years in 2009 by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Strategy is a “… collaborative effort between the Commonwealth and the state and territory governments to ensure that by 2020 all children have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation” (COAG, 2009). The Strategy proposed six priority areas for change:

1. 1 Strengthening universal maternal, child and family health services;
2. 2 Providing support for vulnerable children;
3. 3 Engaging parents and the community in understanding the importance of early childhood development;
4. 4 Improving early childhood infrastructure;
5. 5 Strengthening the workforce across ECD and family support services; and
6. 6 Building better information and a solid evidence base.

The Council of Australian Governments also agreed to a National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care in 2010, which established a National Quality Standard from 2012 to ensure high-quality education and care is consistent across all states and territories (COAG, 2009). The Australian Government (2013) recognizes that early childhood is not only a predictor of the child in Australia today; it is also a predictor of future health and human capital.

Currently, more than 900,000 children attend early childhood services in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). Within Australia, childcare and early learning is provided with a market services model, often within the private sector (71 per cent) (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). Only 3 per cent of services are government-managed centers, with the remaining falling under community management (26 per cent). While improvements have been made, there are still significant gaps of concern that require immediate attention. These include (McKenzie, Glover, & Ross, 2014, p. 5):

• Thirty-two per cent of children living in the most socio-economically disadvantaged Australian communities are developmentally vulnerable on one or more of the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) domains (Centre for Community Child Health and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, 2009).
• Some 17.5 per cent of these children are developmentally vulnerable on two or more of the AEDI domains (Centre for Community Child Health and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, 2009).
• The proportion of children enrolled in preschool in the year before full-time school is lower for children from low socio-economic backgrounds.
• The National Quality Standards have revealed that low socio-economic status and remote students have a lower quality of care in early childhood than the average (ACECQA, 2013).

Other concerns are also Australia’s performance in the OECD indicators, with Australia ranked in the bottom third. Australia is also ranked 30 out of 34 OECD countries for the percentage of children attending preschool (ARACY, 2013). Other areas of concern within OECD indicators are the number of jobless families, infant mortality, incidences of diabetes and asthma, young children accessing education and young children’s exposure to carbon dioxide emissions (ARACY, 2013). Another major concern has been the number of children on care and protection orders, which has doubled in the past decade (AIHW, 2012).

Although Australia has made advances with respect to advancing the sector via the new National Quality Framework, there is a long way still to go before the Australian Government realizes its goal of becoming a world leader in the provision of early childhood education and care. Achieving such a goal cannot occur in the absence of interdisciplinary research highlighting where and how Australia makes changes to support both educators and children.

While clearly much effort has been placed on researching early childhood education and care in Australia by various academic disciplines (e.g. education, development and economics), often, different disciplines attempt to advance the knowledge base from different perspectives and often in a fragmented way (i.e. non-integrative approach). In addition, this knowledge is often published in areas specific to the discipline (i.e. discipline-specific journals). The above issues make it extremely difficult for policy makers to access and consolidate this important evidence. Thus, disciplinary silos and issues relating to information access and fragmentation can moderate the development of effective policy.

Positioning Australia within the international context

Many countries, like Australia, are dedicated to improving the provision of early childhood education and care for children and their families. Many developed countries have a shared focus of providing universal access, learning programs, access and affordability. How this is implemented, however, across various countries, depends on the roles of governments and the positioning of early childhood education and care as a private or public good. In some countries, early childhood education and care policies are part of an overall family policy, allowing parents to work to decrease child poverty. To achieve such a goal, some governments may provide cheap early childhood education and care.

Many countries also experience the problems associated with disciplinary silos and the related fragmentation of child and family services. While this book focuses mainly on the Australian context, many parallels can be drawn with the international sector. Lessons can be learned from the Australian context around policy and practice. The Australian early childhood education and care system can be considered similar to some countries, but largely different to others. Readers can begin to position Australia within the larger global context of early childhood education and care and find positive and challenging examples of policy and practice. By reflecting on a country’s context, the reader is also challenged to compare and contrast with other countries they may know about or have experienced around early childhood education and care.

The different perspectives within the book

The book is intended to provide an overview of the different perspectives that are encompassed within Australian early childhood education and care. These perspectives sometimes align and diverge with their aims and outcomes in regards to children and their families. The perspectives are also based within research disciplines, with historical understandings of culture and context embedded within traditions of research and practice.

This book is innovative as it is one of the first books to explore Australian early childhood education and care from a variety of perspectives, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach. The aim of this book is, therefore, to provide: (1) an understanding regarding the complexity of working within the Australian early childhood education and care sector; (2) a summary of the challenges the sector faces; and (3) different perspectives on how the sector can move forward to address these challenges. In short, this book will review and evaluate:

1. 1 Current government policy that shapes the future of early childhood education and care in Australia;
2. 2 Challenges to the early childhood education and care sector identified in the education literature;
3. 3 Challenges to the early childhood education and care sector identified in the economics literature;
4. 4 Challenges to the early childhood education and care sector identified in the literature; and
5. 5 Closing the gap in outcomes for diverse populations.

Each perspective offers the reader insight into how that discipline envisages the positioning of children and families in educational reform, as well as how they view individual versus collective initiatives. Key paradigms to be explored include positivist, behavioral, maturational, developmental, socio-cultural, cultural-historical, postmodern and poststructural. In short, this book will report findings on the current persp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Abbreviations
• 1 Australia and early childhood education and care
• 2 Policy perspectives in Australia
• 3 Education perspectives in Australia
• 4 Economics perspectives in Australia
• 5 Developmental lifecourse theory perspectives in Australia
• 6 Closing the educational gap between mainstream and Indigenous children
• 7 Where to next for early childhood education and care? The importance of an interdisciplinary approach
• Index