Beyond crisis? A critical reflection on comparative scholarship in early childhood development, education and care

• In Event: Supporting early childhood development during the COVID-19 pandemic

Proposal

At the time of writing this proposal, in summer 2022, the world is cautiously adapting to a post covid-19 reality. The covid-19 pandemic–which is far from over for the majority of the world’s population–has been exacerbated by lack of international solidarity (vaccine nationalism), inadequate global coordination, and unacceptable levels of inequality between and within countries in both the global south and global north. It has become clear, too, that the current pandemic is only one of several existential, self-inflicted, and mutually reinforcing crises converging on humanity, most prominently climate, biodiversity, forced migration, conflict, poverty, and democracy. We are experiencing, in real time, what Edgar Morin (1999) identified as humanities’ most vital existential threat in the 21st century: ‘a complex intersolidarity of problems, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet’ (p. 74).

While countries have been, and continue to be, affected differently by the crises scenarios, first analyses show that young children regularly are the worst affected group, not least due to widespread disruption of early childhood development, education and care (ECD/ECEC) services, programmes, and systems (UNESCO, 2021; UNICEF, 2020, 2021). Inequalities that affect infants, young children and their families predate the covid-19 pandemic but have been compounded by it. In consequence, young children from marginalised groups in all countries, including the most affluent ones in the global north, fare increasingly worse on a whole range of indicators including health, (mal)nutrition, healthy development (stunting), and fulfilment of their full potentials (well-being, education).

Against this background, an increasing number of countries, many of them in the global south, are adopting ambitious multisectoral ECD/ECEC policies (Kagan, Landsberg, & Tucker, 2019; Kagan & Tucker, 2018; Vargas-Barón, Diehl, & Small, 2022). From these approaches emerges a fundamentally ethical and political project for ECD/ECEC to contribute to countries’ transition to more sustainable and equitable systems for all, and to enable achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Framework in its entirety.

Notably, the covid19 pandemic has emphasised the crucial role of early childhood education as a common good and public service, essential for the functioning of societies (Blofield, Braunstein, Filguiera, Grimalda, & Urban, 2020). Despite significant differences of early childhood systems between countries, similar issues have emerged and ECD/ECEC has become a ‘matter of concern’ (Latour, 2004) in both the Global South and North, raising urgent questions about future directions not only of policy and practice, but of comparative research and scholarship in the field. These questions range from how to develop and support ECD/ECEC systems that are resilient to disruption and converging crises, to the ability of influential actors and organisations in the field–e.g. OECD, EU, G20, UNICEF, UNESCO, World Bank Group–to adequately embrace issues of diversity and context.

Rising inequality within and between countries, exacerbated–not caused–by the Covid-19 pandemic (Bloch, 1986; Blofield & Filgueira, 2020; Guevara, 2022) together with the localised provision of early childhood services (Neuman, 2005) has arguably led to some alignment of life experiences for children from marginalised groups regardless of their global location. Seen from this vantage point, simplistic dichotomies are becoming irrelevant; the Global South is no longer a geographical concept (de Sousa Santos, 2018) giving way to a ‘blurring of boundaries’ and ‘paradoxes, power dissymmetries and fragmentations of the present historical context’ (Braidotti, 2011, p. 14), reflected in early childhood services.

Challenged by all this is the (still!) dominant paradigm of early childhood education: the paradigm of the universal, individual child and its development, of decontextualised knowledge and its creation, of simplistic measurement and comparison, and of policies and practices as tools for solving distinct social problems by distinct professions and academic disciplines. In this paper I argue for a necessary–and possible–paradigmatic shift (Kuhn, 1962, 1996) that embraces multiplicity, diversity, ambiguity, uncertainty and shared situated knowledge creation (Nicolescu, 2008). The contours of the new paradigm are already emerging, albeit, as I argue, as three interconnected fields of tension:

First, a systemic field of tension that plays out between the emerging realisation, by some international actors, of the complexity of the field and systemic characteristic of early childhood education (Urban, Cardini, & Flórez-Romero, 2018), contradicted by the hegemonic positions of those invested in standardised, decontextualised, one-size-fits-all approaches.

Second, a geo-political field of tension, emerging from the persistent but untenable imaginary of fundamental difference between ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries and regions, and a blurring of boundaries (Braidotti, 2011; Chiara, 2020) between the Global South and North (de Sousa Santos, 2018; Guevara, 2022) in the context of rising inequality within countries.

Third, an epistemological field of tension between the theoretical foundations of the mainstream of early childhood scholarship that continue to draw upon bodies of knowledge that originate in external disciplines, and the emerging realisation that the resulting absence of field-generated theory–i.e. grounded and integrated ways of knowing, being, and doing impedes the field’s emancipation and leaves it subject to external domination and persistent colonisation (Cannella & Viruru, 2004; Diaz Soto & Swadener, 2002; Ritchie, 2016; Ritchie & Skerrett, 2014).

Grounded in my own work researching early childhood education as political practice, and drawing on Theories and Epistemologies of the South (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012; de Sousa Santos, 2018) as well as Sotolongo’s (2013) reflections on the 'Power of Marginal Notions', I present and discuss these fields of tension. In the light of the inability of dominant theories of early childhood education to conceptualise present experiences and future directions, I discuss implications for comparative studies in early childhood. I concur with Boaventura de Sousa Santos that what we need is not another ‘theory of revolution’. Rather, ‘we need to revolutionise theory’.

Author

• Mathias Urban, Dublin City University