Exploring Collaboration in National Early Childhood Development Systems: Comparing the Cases of Jamaica and Guyana

• In Event: Governance, systems and policy for ECE programming

Proposal

This presentation is based on my doctoral dissertation work that explores the subject of collaboration in early childhood development systems. The aim of the dissertation is to understand how national agencies and actors in two countries in the Commonwealth Caribbean, Guyana and Jamaica, conceptualize and operationalize collaborative approaches in early childhood development systems. The dissertation explores differing conceptions of ECD and collaboration across multiple sectors that constitute the field (e.g. health, education and social protection), to analyze how actors and agencies currently interact with each other, to understand the different factors that facilitate and hinder collaboration in the ECD field, and to probe how collaboration in ECD systems affects ECD systemic outcomes.

A key governance issue in ECD is reconciling the fragmented nature of various sectors/entities that comprise the field. Child development occurs across many overlapping domains, for example, in physical, cognitive and socio-emotional domains of development. Responsibility for different domains of development often lies with different government agencies and sectors. Relatedly, policies and actions (or lack thereof) in one sector have an impact on other sectors, and ultimately on the nature and quality of holistic child development. Understanding ECD in this comprehensive way impels an integrated perspective in policy design, implementation and analysis. As such, the achievement of high-quality early childhood development outcomes requires input and involvement from multiple sectors, including those in the areas of health, education, economic development, social protection, labor and justice in the planning and implementation of strategies, programs and initiatives. This dispersion of responsibility across different government agencies and sectors as well as between actors and jurisdictional levels complicates the notion of working together across sectors given the challenges of crossing physical, conceptual and operational boundaries to achieve joint outcomes.

In this paper, I share the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of my research. This is generated using insights from political science, policy studies, public management and public administration. I utilize the literature on policy integration, coupled with studies of collaboration and collaborative processes, as well as political science approaches to policy analysis and implementation to create a framework within which I can study the topic of how national-level policy sectors/ministries/agencies work together in the field of early childhood development. I also share preliminary findings from qualitative interviews and network analysis conducted in Guyana and Jamaica that compare and contrast how the early childhood systems are constructed and operate in these two settings. The presentation focuses on understanding the factors that facilitate or hinder collaboration in early childhood development settings.

The relevance of this research is multi-fold. Early childhood development, an increasingly important policy priority in many countries around the world including in the Commonwealth Caribbean, is an inherently multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional policy area. Greater attention is being directed to understanding, developing and evaluating coordinated systems approaches in early childhood development, and a critical part of systems development is fostering collaboration and creating linkages across the sectoral boundaries within the field. Many countries around the world are currently shaping their ECD systems and have the opportunity to design and implement coordinated systems and approaches. It is therefore a critical research priority to better understand and analyze what constitutes effective collaboration for ECD, under what conditions this arises, and how opportunities can be maximized and challenges minimized.

Author

• Amlata Persaud, Teachers College, Columbia University