This paper examines inequality among children, demonstrating its gradual emergence within the folds of daily routines in early childhood education (ECE). Employing Rob Nixon's (2011) concept of slow violence, our focus is on the cumulative impact of practices involving exclusion. Synthesizing Nixon's framework with Deleuze (1994) and Guattari's…

Social dimensions of the caregiving environment, like secure relationships to caregivers and high interactional classroom quality, are seen to directly or indirectly stimulate children's learning and development. However, little is known about the underlying processes, specifically with regard to the role of peers. To fill this gap we videotaped…

For those experiencing them, educational transitions include not only the present time but are embedded within institutions that precede and extend beyond the individuals. This article explores how, as an institutional space, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting is (re)produced within young children's encounters with others during…

Infants, toddlers, and two-year-olds with disabilities or developmental delays often participate in center-based childcare. Just like other care and education settings, childcare for very young children should provide high-quality inclusion. To date, minimal research has been conducted on practitioner perspectives about inclusion in childcare for…

In recent years, limited research attention has been directed to what happens in science education before the age of 3 years. We present the findings of a study that followed 13 infant-toddlers aged 0.1-2.2 years (mean 1.8 years) and their educators from a childcare centre. Under the conditions of an educational experiment, the results of our…

Family engagement in childcare is important to ensure the optimal growth, development, and safety of children. Previous research has explored family engagement practices, but limited research is available on the application of theory to explain the uptake of family engagement principles. The purpose of this study was to explore the use and…

Home-visitation programs have improved child development in low- and middle-income countries, but they are costly to scale due to their reliance on trained workers. We evaluated an inexpensive and low-tech alternative with 2,433 caregivers of children aged 6 to 30 months served by 250 public childcare centers in Uttarakhand, India: automated phone…

This study reports on a medium-scale Jamaican study, The Early Interactions Project, which measured environmental quality in 42 childcare facilities in Jamaica using Infant and Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-3). One of the overarching goals of the project was to quantitatively measure programme quality with the goal of providing…

In this phenomenological case study, we explore how a toddler with autism (Miguel) becomes a member of an early childhood learning community. Drawing on the right to belong and a social-relational model of disability framework, we asked research questions that are fundamental to the rights and agency of the child and how children experience…

Children under five are expelled at high rates from early learning settings, yet little research discusses the relationship between program quality and expulsion. This study examined the relationship between program quality (accreditation, quality rating system participation, child:teacher ratios, suggesting programs are not a match, administrator…

To understand the use of early care and education (ECE) programs in New Jersey, the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducted a representative survey of parents of children under age 5 (not yet in kindergarten) about their use of (non-parental) child care. The survey was conducted between May 25th and June 13rd, 2022, with…

This article concerns itself with the potential for ateliers to disrupt conformist approaches to pedagogy in early childhood education and care. An illustration of the role of the atelier in amplifying the aesthetics of the experience of the educational project of Reggio Emilia illuminates how disruption of conformity can be activated through the…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care, requires states to use information about the provider cost of child care to inform the setting of payment rates under the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) program. This requirement is consistent with the growing recognition that…

Scent matters in the lives of humans (and other living creatures). However, thus far, it is largely unexplored in ethnographic work in education. Drawing on and adding to the literature on 'smellscapes' as a way of conceptualising space, this paper adds new insights into early childhood education and care (ECEC) by reporting on the differentials…

In this article, we endeavour to think spatially about the texture of infants' everyday lives and their ways of 'doing' belonging in the babies' room in an Australian early childhood education and care centre. Drawing on data from a large, multiple case-study project, and on theorisations of space that reject Euclidean notions of space as empty,…