Governing Education Across the Life Course: Examining the Global Construction of Early Childhood in Education Reforms, 1960-2020

• In Event: Global Trends in Education Reform Amid Political Upheaval and Cultural Transformation

Proposal

In today’s divided world, the boundaries between what constitutes a “public” and “private” spheres of education become growingly blurred. For example, in the U.S., while some families assert their right to educate their children at home or in private settings, the state maintains an interest in ensuring that all children receive education of adequate quality. For much of history, the education of young children was not the responsibility of states but primarily of families and communities. By the late twentieth century, however, governments around the world increasingly assumed authority over early childhood education. Pre-primary enrollment rate grew from just 16 percent in 1970 to more than 60 percent in 2020. International organizations also supported this trend, encouraging countries to expand access to free and compulsory education for the youngest children and to strengthen their legal and policy frameworks governing early childhood. For instance, a 2022 UNESCO report calls for “building and strengthening the legal framework on early childhood care and education (ECCE) rights.” These global trends to expand and improve early learning raise several key questions: Why did states begin to govern early childhood directly? What explains the global shift to transform early childhood education from a private responsibility into a public right? To address these questions, I examine national education reform discourse related to early childhood in more than 150 countries between 1960 and 2020. The World Education Reform Database (WERD) offers a unique compilation of reforms reported by countries to international organizations, such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and OECD. Using early childhood education reforms as the outcome variable, I draw on independent variables from other cross-national and longitudinal datasets (e.g., Varieties of Democracy, World Development Indicators, etc.) to test several hypotheses about the worldwide rise of early childhood education reforms during this period. I also compare the trends of early childhood education reforms to reforms at other levels of education, such as primary, secondary, and tertiary. Preliminary findings indicate that while reforms in other education levels remain relatively stable over time, the proportion of reforms addressing early childhood—though still lower than at other levels—rises significantly since the 1990s. Women’s status in society and changing gender norms clearly play a role, as reflected by the increased number of women in the workforce and the need for childcare facilities outside the home. Yet, this paper seeks to go beyond these factors to argue that the diffusion of early childhood education reforms is linked to a cascade of norms that see “childhood” as a public concern—as states and societies take greater responsibility for multiple aspects of children’s lives. As a result, the study demonstrates how the expansion of education for the youngest children reflects shifting global norms about what constitutes the public versus private spheres of education.

Author

• Minju Choi, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)