Purpose: This article provides an exploration of the internal relationship between ethics and pedagogy in early childhood education and care (ECEC). It aims at a clarification of the interrelationships between political and administrative government, the absence/presence of a pedagogical foundation, and the need for a code of ethics.…

In this article I investigate how corporate Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) providers negotiate their position by contributing to a national ECEC policy development process. I discuss how their political engagement connects to changes in the institutional arrangements of the ECEC sector. The ECEC provider corporations' written responses…

In this paper I argue for a necessary -- and possible -- paradigmatic shift in early childhood scholarship that embraces multiplicity, diversity, ambiguity, uncertainty and shared situated knowledge creation in response to a profoundly changed global context. The contours of the new paradigm are already emerging as three interconnected…

Early childhood education changed in the twentieth century, from mother-at-home-care in the 1950s, to professional early education today. Theoretical and social-political choices of pioneers in ECE had a profound impact on the way children's education is conceptualized. We argue from a social constructivist perspective. The oral history method is…

We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…