Question

Please help me write a 500 word paper about Diversity In Early Childhood Education

Answer 1

Ans) Diversity and equity are central concerns in early childhood education. However, different approaches to these issues are possible.

- A comprehensive view would aim to integrate economic, educational and social perspectives rather than favouring one paradigm only.

- A narrow focus on the economic returns from early childhood services may disregard parental and child perspectives and the wider purposes of education.

- In turn, treating early childhood services as a purely welfare concern can lead to poor quality, with weakly qualified staff unable to meet the educational needs of young children.

- In similar fashion, a narrow educational perspective may lead to a “schoolification” of early childhood services that fails to take into account broader dimensions of access and curriculum that immigrant and ethnic minority children may need to succeed.

- Focusing on simply extending existing educational services, for example, through market means, without asking questions about “whom do they serve,” is often counterproductive from a diversity and equity point of view.

- These critiques are not presented to dismiss economic, social or educational approaches per se, but rather to suggest that in diversity situations, public policy needs to be complemented by analyses from different perspectives.

- Administrations need therefore to think beyond stereotypical notions that particular social categories or ethnic families do not value education enough or are so possessive of their children that they will not send them to early childhood services. Over the last decades, there have been extensive discussions on the issue. Whereas initially some scholars thought that culture may explain the weak enrolment of diverse groups, it is now clear that the reality is much more complex.

- Parents from all classes and ethnicities attach importance to good quality services, but parental choices for a specific type of service are greatly influenced by environmental constraints. Differences in preferences often reflect restricted child care options and in this respect, one needs to criticize the notion of “choice.” To put it simply: parents can only “choose” what is available to them and generally resign themselves to that (restricted) choice.

- For instance, that quality care is hardly accessible for immigrant families in Finland, France, Italy and Portugal. Similarly, in the case of Belgium, quality child care is more readily available in affluent neighborhoods where enrolment criteria generally favor double-income, white, middle-class families.

- In short, while early childhood care and education may be viewed theoretically as a central plank of inclusive policy, the reality is that these services serve, in too many countries, to widen the education gap.