Children of two to three years of age in France: early childhood settings and age divisions

ABSTRACT

In a French early childhood care and education system that is strongly divided by age and institution, the current research studies the collective life of children at the pivotal age of two to three years of age in four different early childhood settings: 1) a group of ‘grands’ (nursery) in a crèche (daycare centre), 2) a jardin maternel, 3) a classe passerelle and 4) a group including ‘tout-petits’ in an école maternelle (nursery school). Our methods combine the observation of children and the point of view of professionals, obtained using visual aids (photos and videos). We analyse successively the institutional organisation of ages, material culture and professional practices. Depending on the ways in which their age is defined by these settings, we show how these settings create different experiences for children, which make them ‘petit’ (at the école maternelle) or ‘grand’ (at the crèche). The interest of the jardin maternel and the classe passerelle is to show intermediate ways of framing the age of children two to three years old.

KEYWORDS:

• Age categorisation
• early educational centre
• children’s experiences
• professional practices

Notes

1. The proportion of children of two years of age who attend école maternelle reached 35% in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has been in decline, representing 11% of children of this age in 2012–2013. Revived in 2013, this early schooling remains in principle aimed at areas that are underprivileged and marked by significant geographical disparities.

2. We have also established a set-up to construct the personal point of view of children where they would take photos themselves in their collective life setting and comment on them, as well as setting up interviews with the parents with the help of an edited video specific to the collective life of their own child, the analysis of which is impossible to develop here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CNAF (Caisse nationale des allocations familiales [Family Allowances National Fund]), a national French governmental institution for ECEC.