Community, Children, Child: New Directions for Equitable Delivery Of High-Quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

Theory and measurement approaches to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) quality focus disproportionately on educator inputs. Yet, ECEC quality is profoundly relational. Each child and the collective of children in the ECEC classroom contribute to the nature of educators’ daily work and the resources they require to enable high-quality learning experiences. We review the literature examining the contribution of the child, and collective of children in a class on ECEC quality and identify design and measurement strategies to advance understanding of the ways in which high-quality ECEC can be co-created. We discuss implications for proportionate universal policy approaches to support educator wellbeing and attendant practice to deliver on the promise of ECEC to redress inequities.