This paper presents and discusses the findings of a collaborative investigation into Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. The project explored values and principles that underpin and guide evaluation in ECEC systems and practices in five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and…

In Norway, 9 out of 10 children between the ages of one and five participate in an educational formation programme which, despite around half of the kindergartens being privately owned, is regulated by a common law and relatively detailed regulations describing what the content of kindergartens should be. Norwegian kindergartens therefore…

This paper discusses the impact of and close interplay between global discourses on children, notions of (a good) childhood at the national and local levels and childhoods as these are lived and experienced in particular social contexts. Two increasingly powerful global images of children are explored: Children as individual subjects with rights…