Effective early learning: a praxeological and participatory approach to evaluating and improving quality in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper acknowledges the importance of providing high quality early education to young children if positive long term child outcomes and social mobility for the less advantaged are to be achieved. It offers a strategy to improve pedagogical quality in early childhood settings worldwide where quality remains low for many children and sets out an alternative praxeological model of quality assessment and improvement that is democratic, participatory, inclusive and culturally sensitive rather than universalised and metricised. The Effective Early Learning (EEL) quality evaluation and improvement programme embodies this participatory approach and has been successfully implemented across UK, Portugal and the Netherlands, where evidence has shown its impact in enhancing child wellbeing, child involvement and child dispositions to learn through improving the quality of pedagogical processes and the enabling educative context in which these occur.