Constructions of quality: Australian Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

There is increasing pressure on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings to align their practices and values to that of schools, with the notion that a quality education in ECEC consists of providing care whilst also ensuring strong learning outcomes. This paper employs the constructs of structural and process quality to theorise the perceived disparities between ECEC institutions and schools and between ECEC services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experiences of 29 Australian ECEC educators provide insight into the differing constructions of quality across ECEC services during the COVID-19 lockdown periods that occurred from May to August 2020 in the state of Victoria. The findings suggest that despite increasing pressure for ECEC programmes to be more like schools, the pandemic amplified society’s positioning of ECEC as a caregiving service, highlighting the perceived differences between ECEC and schools and within the ECEC sector itself. While the findings suggest that ECEC educators were discouraged by the lack of recognition they received for providing quality education during the pandemic, the disruption of the pandemic prompted opportunities for reflection and action, providing more visibility of the quality of care that ECEC educators provide and the importance of their roles within the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Early Childhood and Care
• Australia
• Covid-19
• process quality
• structural quality
• caregiving

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the ECE educators who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melissa Barnes

Melissa Barnes is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, working within the fields of teacher education, assessment, policy and TESOL. She teaches and leads research initiatives that focus on policy construction, interpretation and enactment, with a focus on how policies impact and shape teaching and learning. She has published in journals such as Critical Studies in Education, Higher Education and Teachers and Teaching, among others. Melissa has been a classroom teacher in the US, Germany, Vietnam and Australia, collectively shaping her understanding and approach to teaching and learning.

Gloria Quiñones

Gloria Quiñones is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research focuses on emotions, pedagogy and visual methodologies. Her recent research focuses on children’s peer relations and friendships, infant–toddler play and affective pedagogies, and emotional wellbeing of early childhood educators during COVID-19.

Emily Berger

Emily Berger is a registered and endorsed Educational and Developmental Psychologist and an approved supervisor with the Psychology Board of Australia. She lectures in the Faculty of Education at Monash University and is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the School of Rural Health. Emily has worked on various child and adolescent mental health and trauma research projects. Emily also works as a child and family psychologist, assessing and treating children with developmental and mental illnesses, and supporting families, teachers and other professionals in response to child and adolescent mental health concerns.