Quality in early childhood education and care: A cultural context

This paper suggests that different cultural communities may hold different definitions of “quality” in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) conforming with their respective, culturally valued educational goals and culturally based beliefs regarding practices that facilitate their attainment. Despite the negative implication of stereotyping socio-cultural communities as “individualist” or “collectivist” (Triandis, 1995), the conceptualisation of cultural variations in educational goals and practices along a continuum between these dichotomous extremes, has a heuristic value in clarifying our thinking about “quality” in ECEC in different cultural contexts. The paper examines valued educational goals (self-identity and motivation, social and emotional behavior and cognitive processes) and valued educational practices (children's learning environments, learning activities and educator-child interaction) in the context of “individualist” and “collectivist” cultural scripts. In conclusion the implications of this analysis for variations in the understanding of “quality” of ECEC in multi-cultural and rapidly changing societies are discussed.