The Policies Of Childcare And Early Childhood Education

This timely book reveals how policies of childcare and early childhood education influence children’s circumstances and the daily lives of families with children. Examining how these policies are approached, it focuses particularly on the issues and pitfalls related to equal access.

Due to the demand for flexible working hours and employees who are available around the clock, the time patterns of childcare and schooling have increasingly become a political issue. Comparing the development of different “time policies” of half-day and all-day provisions in a variety of Eastern and Western European countries since the end of World War II, this innovative volume brings together internationally known experts from the fields of comparative education, history, and the social and political sciences, and makes a significant contribution to this new interdisciplinary field of comparative study.

Assembling key experts and activists in the area of Canadian child care policy, this book makes an important contribution to understanding how Canada, with its particular institutions, politics, and values, should design a national child care strategy.

This title answers questions about early childhood education and childcare (ECEC) in Canada.

This book evaluates recent early childhood education policies on the basis of a ‘3A2S’ framework, which refers to accessibility, affordability, accountability, sustainability, and social justice. It systematically and empirically reviews early childhood education policies in specific countries and areas in the Asia-Pacific Region, such as Australia, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, and so on. As the first English-language collection of large-scale reviews of early childhood education policies in Asia Pacific, this book will be of great value to early childhood educators, policymakers, researchers, and postgraduate students in the Region and beyond.

"This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors - representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods - bring to life the volume's innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private. The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come."--Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future."--Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles

Early childhood education is critical for preparing children for success in formal school settings, and as such, is a major concern throughout the world. This volume brings together ground-breaking research in this area to help practitioners, students, policy makers, curriculum designers, and intervention program developers understand the latest ideas and advances in the field. Recent Perspectives of Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada centres on three key themes. The first provides a survey of historical, social policy, economic, and provincial regulations and policies related to early childhood education and care. The second focuses on issues related to children's learning, curriculum, and teachers. The final theme addresses recent developments in government involvement in early childhood education and care that are unique to Canada. The contributors to this volume demonstrate the pressing need that exists to further public discussion on early childhood education to help policymakers shape better decisions for Canadian families.