It is with great pleasure that I introduce the first edition of the EECERJ to be published by our new partners, Routledge. This edition of the Journal marks the culmination of much hard work and commitment on behalf of the EECERA Editorial Team and our Routledge colleagues who will now be working in partnership to take the Journal into a new era. We are hoping that from this year the Journal will have added professionality, extended coverage and a wider reach. Increasingly the Journal’s procedures and protocols will be administered on‐line, with a new web platform supported by Routledge and providing enhanced facilities for paper submission, tracking, search and retrieval of journal articles. We shall be announcing many of these new features as they develop over the next twelve months so watch this space!
In this new era however, the Journal’s mission, aims and individual quality will not be changed. We remain dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of research in early childhood education throughout Europe and beyond. Our underpinning aims are:
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to provide a rigorous academic forum at a European level for the development and dissemination of high quality research on early childhood education;
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to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between European researchers working in this field;
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to encourage the clear articulation and communication of the links between research and practice in early childhood education;
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to give mutual support and offer peer group interaction to researchers in early childhood education;
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to raise the visibility and status of research on early childhood education throughout Europe and beyond.
The Journal’s unique and distinguishing features remain and include:
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an unbroken publication record since its launch fourteen years ago;
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ownership by a European‐based and focused early childhood research association;
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promotion of a European perspective on early childhood education and care within an international field;
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a multi‐disciplinary and multi‐professional focus in its remit which includes, but is not exclusively, sociological or psychological in its focus;
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an intention to establish a new discipline of early childhood educational research;
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the linking of research, policy and practice in early childhood;
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the promotion of new paradigms in early childhood research;
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a cross‐national and highly respected editorial board;
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a cross‐national and established readership;
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promotion at an annual conference of the Association;
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a rigorous cross national refereeing process;
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a cross national publishing policy;
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a rolling programme of editorial comment amongst senior European early childhood researchers.
The papers included in this first edition provide an excellent example of the richness of work that is currently underway in the field. Peter Moss’s paper explores the possibility that early childhood institutions can be, first and foremost, places of political practice – and specifically of democratic political practice. The issues he raises for us are profound and go to the heart of what it is and could be to be a child in Europe in the 21st Century. He also asks some challenging questions about the power of early childhood institutions to shape that future for good or ill.
Michel Vandenbroeck’s paper, draws on history‐of‐the‐present research on Belgian child care, on experiences within the European DECET network (Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Training) and on post‐structuralist theory. This important paper helps us understand how different discourses on diversity and equity in early childhood education have been constructed and questions some of the currently used theoretical concepts underpinning the issue of diversity in early childhood education.
Debora Basler Wisneski takes these central themes of democracy and diversity right back into the challenges of practice in the US in her paper. She points out that in US early childhood practice, creating a classroom community is recognised as a part of ‘quality’ education and a means to teach democratic principles. In her qualitative study she explores how a teacher and her students understand classroom community and exemplifies how the ideals of democracy are interrupted by public school practices and curriculum that favour control and conformity.
Niina Rutanen’s study looks at how culture is co‐constructed in the micro‐level of everyday interactions in a daycare centre and draws evidence from a case study of interaction among two‐year‐old children. The study shows that the wider institutional culture of early childhood education wasn’t a passive frame somewhere outside the flow of actions, but it gained concreteness in the here‐and‐now situations. The adults’ expectations and intentions canalised the children’s possibilities for actions, but the children co‐constructed novel movements and meanings outside the adults’ sphere of expectation.
Polly Elvin, Eva Maagerø and Birte Simonsen’s paper asks if it is appropriate to allow small children as young as three to encounter a foreign language in the kindergarten. In this study of the use of English as a foreign language in Norwegian kindergarten, they provoke the question whether, if this foreign language is English, are we not merely creating an even greater English influence over Norwegian children than we already have, and the potential consequences of this. The issues raised about language, culture and identity are hugely pertinent in the current debate in many countries.
Gabrielle White and Caroline Sharp’s paper points out that recent theoretical conceptions of transition have emphasised the key influence of educational transition on young children’s learning. This paper which focuses on English practice presents findings from a research project which aimed to improve understanding about how best to support children’s learning during the transition to Year 1 and suggests that most children adapted well to the transition but that the changes in curriculum and pedagogy impacted on their enjoyment of learning in Year 1.
Marilyn Fleer and Jill Robbins piece raises and explores key dilemmas in handling conceptions of culture within professional development programmes. It points out that in many European heritage early childhood education communities, cultural–historical theory has become increasingly influential for informing practice. Yet one of the major challenges facing the field has been the slow mobilisation of new theory into practice, and the challenges of supporting both pre‐ and in‐service teachers as they take on board new perspectives.
Isabel Peters & Bert van Oers work shows that teachers possess several strategies to fine‐tune their purposive interactions to children’s needs. The study investigates which strategies teachers use in their goal‐oriented interactions with pupils, whether differentiation is perceptible in the way they interact with children whom they define as ‘children at risk’ as compared to the other children in the classroom. Uncomfortably, they find that there are identifiable differences in interactions with ‘at risk’ children which have profound implications for practicing teachers.
Margaret Brennan’s paper looks at how young children learn to be part of a group and draws on a socio‐cultural framework to investigate the enculturation of young children into childcare settings. The study makes the point that the use of cultural activities and tools cannot be considered apart from human and that the relationship between the teacher and the group is critical in children’s socialization.
In part, all of these studies reflect the human and socio‐emotional dimensions of learning and demonstrate unequivocally that although we are beginning to map out the field of knowledge of the relationship between affect and cognition, we still have a long way to go to ensure policy and practice has centrally taken this emerging knowledge to heart.