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European Journal of Education, Vol. 47, No. 4, 2012

Researching Early Childhood Policy and Practice.

A Critical Ecology
Mathias Urban

Introduction
Our societies’ engagement with the upbringing and education of the youngest
children has finally become a highly political issue. At least this is the impression
one could get by browsing through the rapidly increasing collection of interna-
tional policy documents concerned with early childhood education and care. The
World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) and UNICEF have been hugely influential in promoting systematic
investment in services for children below compulsory school age and in outlining
and underpinning early childhood policies in many countries (OECD, 2001,
2006; UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2008; World Bank, 2003). Childcare
and early education have played a role in EU policies for some time, with the 1992
Council Recommendations on Childcare being an early example of a EU policy
document emphasising the need for coherent policy making across several areas
that are seen as affecting families with young children: childcare services, parental
leave, labour regulations and gender equality (Council of the European Commu-
nities, 1992). More recently, the EU policy interest in early childhood has
increased significantly. This is manifest in the publication of high level policy
documents linking early childhood and the services set up by Member States to
support young children and families to the framework strategy for the EU for this
decade (European Commission, 2010). These documents, including the 2011 EU
Commission communication ‘Early childhood education and care: providing all our
children with the best start for the world of tomorrow’ (European Commission, 2011)
are discussed in many of the contributions to this issue. The renewed interest in
early childhood has created a growing demand in research to inform, orient and
legitimate the policies promoted by the EU.
There is a second approach to the relationship between policy and practice in
early childhood. Caring for and educating young children lie at the core of any society.
Childrearing practices and the institutions and professions we establish around them
are the most fundamental manifestations of the relationship between the private and
the public which is not static, universal or uncontested. Due to unequal distribution
of private and public resources, they are more favourable for some than for others.
There are growing numbers of children and families for whom this most basic
relationship has become precarious. Approached from this perspective, early child-
hood education and care has always been a ‘res publica’, a political issue.
The questions we ask as researchers depend on how we position ourselves in
the micro- and macro-politics of early childhood (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). They
are shaped by our personal and professional backgrounds and histories (and
biases) and shape the image of the child and the possible, desirable, imaginable
practices and policies.
In this article, I analyse the questions we might ask in early childhood research
and how they relate to the constructions of the child and to our understandings of

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02148, USA.
 Mathias Urban 495

the role of research.The article begins with a brief examination of recent European
policy documents that have been influential in promoting a particularly important,
but, as I argue narrow, view of children and early childhood education in a
changing European policy context. I then discuss current research in early child-
hood in relation to the policy analysis and argue for a much broader understanding
of the challenges we are facing and the implications for doing research in our field.
The final two sections make the case for a radical reconceptualisation of research
as a democratic, transformative and inevitably political practice.

ECEC in a Changing European Policy Context

Since the 1992 Council Recommendations on Childcare (Council of the Euro-
pean Communities, 1992), Early Childhood Education and Care have been a
recurring topic on European policy agendas. Reasons for the interest in services
for the youngest European citizens and their families have varied widely and have
often been contradictory.The 1992 Recommendations urge EU Member States to
‘take and/or progressively encourage initiatives to enable women and men to
reconcile their occupational, family and upbringing responsibilities arising from
the care of children’ (ibid, article 1).This requires coherent policies addressing the
provision of childcare services, matching parental leave arrangements, organisation and
structure of work in order to meet the needs of workers with children and a general
commitment to gender equality: ‘the sharing of occupational, family and upbring-
ing responsibilities arising from the care of children between women and men’
(ibid, article 2). The document then specifies the characteristics of each of the
above policy areas: ‘childcare services should be affordable and accessible to all
children and families and offer reliable care of high quality combined with peda-
gogical approaches.There is further emphasis on initial and continuous training of
staff, close collaboration with local communities and appropriate public funding
for services. The provision of childcare services needs to be complemented by
much greater flexibility in the workplace in general, which take[s] into account the
needs of all working parents with responsibility for the care and upbringing of
children’ (ibid, article 5). Member States are asked to ensure that ‘due recogni-
tion’ is given to childcare workers, their working conditions and ‘the social value
of their work’ (ibid, see also Peter Moss in this issue).
Following the Maastricht Treaty (1993), the EU saw the development of an
ambitious socio-economic policy agenda. It culminated in 2000 in a set of policies
known as the Lisbon Strategy. The orientation of the EU in the first decade of the
new millennium was to become ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-
based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more
and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Council, 2000). Hence,
childcare was now increasingly seen as an investment and a tool to achieve the
ambitious policy goals. However, come 2010, it was obvious that Europe was far
from being the ‘most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the
world’. Even from the perspective of its architects, the Lisbon Strategy had to be
considered a failure. In June 2009, the then Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik
Reinfeldt stated: ‘Even if progress has been made it must be said that the Lisbon
Agenda, with only a year remaining before it is to be evaluated, has been a failure’
(www.euractiv.com/priorities/sweden-admits-lisbon-agenda-fail-news-221962).
The changes in the role given to early childhood are particularly visible in
the successor to the Lisbon Strategy and the policy documents that have been

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developed in its context. Europe 2020. A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive
growth (European Commission, 2010) provides the current strategic orientation
for the EU. It builds on a rather bleak analysis of the state of the EU at the
beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. Two terms that feature most
prominently in the EU 2020 strategy are crisis and transformation:
Europe faces a moment of transformation.The crisis has wiped out years of economic
and social progress and exposed structural weaknesses in Europe’s economy. In the
meantime, the world is moving fast and long-term challenges — globalisation,
pressure on resources, ageing — intensify.The EU must now take charge of its future.
(European Commission, 2010, p. 3)

Crisis — What Crisis?

Clearly, what the European Commission has in mind when it re-draws the picture
of the present and future Union is an economic and financial crisis: the dramatic
failure of global capitalism to provide and maintain the sound foundation for social
and political progress, and its disastrous capacity to ‘wipe out’ social achievements
built on previous economic prosperity. Again, it is not within the remit of this
article to speculate why, despite the dysfunctionality of our global economic
system, the authors of the Strategy hold on to the primacy of the economy over
every other aspect of life. Could it be that, despite the ubiquitous talk of transfor-
mation and change, the architects of the future EU are unable to question the
dominance of the ‘neoliberal imaginary’ (Ball, 2012)? A more critical analysis of
the situation in which we find ourselves, I want to argue with Stephen Ball (ibid)
and Aihwa Ong (2007), would focus on the complex relationships between micro-
and macro-politics of everyday neo-liberalism in our societies. It would question an
economic system that perpetuates the economisation of every aspect of social
life and its need to constantly create opportunities for profit and address the
fundamental dependence of this system on individuals who are ‘willing’, ‘self-
governing’ and ‘enrepreneurial’ — a Foucauldian mindset of governmentality
(Foucault, 1982; Lemke, n.d.). Ong (2007, p. 4) refers to the former as neo-
liberalism with a big ‘N’, to the latter as neo-liberalism with a small ‘n’ (Ball,
2012).
Choosing the frame of analysis is critical, as it orients the questions we ask
(research!) and the ways forward we suggest in order to deal with the crisis
(policy!).
Defining the situation in which we find ourselves as an ‘economic’ or ‘financial’
crisis is likely to lead to economic questions and answers. In other words, it
contributes to further the neo-liberal assumption that everything, including the
upbringing of young children, can and should first be understood in economic
terms. Putting Europe ‘back on track’ (European Commission, 2010) means
putting the European economy back on track. And, like the much more enthusi-
astic feel of the Lisbon Strategy, early childhood education and care has its role to
play. Already, influential EU policy documents depict it as a powerful means to
achieve economic progress, both individually and collectively. ECEC can remedy
‘socio-economic disadvantage’, break the ‘cycle of poverty’ (European Commis-
sion, 2010, p. 4) and increase children’s ‘employability when they become adults’
(p. 1). The language used in recent policy documents can be confident about the

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 Mathias Urban 497

outcomes of children participating in ‘high quality’ ECEC because the far reaching
claims are backed up by research findings (Barnett, 2010).
However, defining both the ‘crisis’ and the ‘solution’ as economic prevents us
from taking other views into account. Edgar Morin in his ‘Manifesto for the new
millennium’ (Morin & Kern, 1999) insists that, on a global scale, we can no longer
pretend to identify one key problem, the solution to which would miraculously lead
to ending the ‘crisis’:
‘One is at loss to single out a number one problem to which all others would
be subordinated. There is no single vital problem, but many vital problems,
and it is this complex intersolidarity of problems, crises, uncontrolled proc-
esses, and the general crisis of the planet that constitutes the number one vital
problem.’ (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 74)
We are indeed facing global challenges and life-threatening catastrophes, includ-
ing, but not limited to:
— the increasing danger posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons
— the global climate crisis, threatening, among others, to unleash unrest, conflict
and mass-migration due to growing shortages of water, food and fuel
— the threat to biodiversity
— the impossibility of unlimited economic growth
— the dysfunctional economic and financial system.
(Moss & Urban, 2010, p. 15).
These ‘challenges’ should provoke radical new approaches to education and to
early childhood education in particular, as we have argued in ‘Democracy and
Experimentation’ (Moss & Urban, 2010):
All of these challenges mean we cannot continue as we are, and they should
provoke major democratic debate in all countries. In relation to education,
the question of its purpose becomes even more critical and urgent. The
dangers we face require spreading and deepening democratic values and
practices, collaborative action and a willingness to think and act differently,
trying new approaches: “more of the same” is no longer an option (p. 16).
This view finds support from José Manuel Barroso, President of the European
Commission. He writes in his preface to the Europe 2020 strategy document:
The crisis is a wake-up call, the moment where we recognise that “business
as usual” would consign us to a gradual decline, to the second rank of the new
global order. This is Europe’s moment of truth. It is the time to be bold and
ambitious. (European Commission, 2010, p. 3).
However, the question in early childhood policy and practice is not so much
whether we can continue with ‘business as usual’. It is, much more fundamentally,
whether ‘business’ is an appropriate concept for the societal engagement with the
youngest children at all.

Researching Complexity
The policy arguments for early childhood education and care brought forward in
recent EU policy documents seem to be strangely at odds with Barroso’s ‘wake-up
call’. Instead of opening the debate for radically new questions (and actors), they

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498 European Journal of Education, Part I

seem to rely on and ask for ever ‘more of the same’ evidence to legitimate the most
effective interventions, e.g. to ‘close the gap’ by promoting early literacy and
numeracy, especially for children from the most ‘disadvantaged’ communities.
In fields of research other than education, the complex ‘problématiques’ (as the
Club of Rome refers to the interwoven crises of the planet (Max-Neef, 2005)) have
raised questions of transdisciplinarity and critical epistemology: how can we col-
laborate to understand the complexity and bring in many different perspectives?
How can we come to new understandings of knowledge and how (and by whom) it
is produced? There are, transdisciplinary thinkers suggest, at least five dimensions
shaping the complex realities we address as researchers:
1. Multi-dimensional — complex problems straddle different levels of reality
at the same time and therefore imply a thorough understanding of the simul-
taneity of both the discontinuity and coexistence of natural and social
systems;
2. Systemic — complex problems are interconnected — it is not so much the
individual problem areas that are complex, but rather the sets of overlapping
relationships between them that define and constitute the bigger, planetary,
nexus of problems;
3. Emergence — complex problems tend to reveal new or different sides as our
perceptions of them change — understanding complex problems therefore
implies a multi-referential epistemology with its point of departure in a
non-separable subject-object relationship which involves all our faculties of
knowing and understanding — the mind, body and feelings / intuition;
4. Global-local context — complex problems do not manifest themselves exclu-
sively at either the macro-, meso- or micro-levels — they are not restricted to a
particular ‘scale’ or ‘level’, neither are they limited to a specific geographical
place or region — complex problems are, by definition, planetary, which means
that their presence is observed and experienced both globally and locally;
5. Long-term consequences — complex problems pose severe/adverse impli-
cations for the continued existence of the human species if left unattended or
unresolved — this implies the urgency of sustainability or finding sustainable
solutions to these problems.
(Swilling & van Breda, 2005, pp. 3–4)
All this implies that we can no longer study and interpret the world with concepts
of certainty (e.g. linearity, local causality, predictability), but need to embrace
concepts of uncertainty instead (e.g. non-linearity, global causality, unpredictabil-
ity).The implications for research methodology and for the questions we ask are far
reaching, but rewarding: ‘Using these new lenses not only changes our perceptions
of reality, but they allow us to observe a radically different ‘reality’ (ibid, p. 5).
Beyond ‘limited situations’, writes Paulo Freire, lies ‘untested feasibility’ — and
hope (Freire, 2004).
European research in early childhood tends to fall into two categories. On the
one hand, there are large-scale, often international studies with a strong element of
comparison and/or evaluation (between countries, programmes, groups of chil-
dren, etc.). They include landmark studies such as the first two ‘Starting Strong’
reports (OECD, 2001, 2006), SEEPRO (Oberhuemer et al., 2010), EPPE (Sylva
et al., 2004) or the Roma Early Childhood Inclusion (RECI) study (Bennett,
2012), to name but a few. On the other hand, there is an increasing volume of

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small-scale, mainly qualitative (and often unfunded) local research, e.g. document-
ing the experiences in a particular setting, programme or community. Many of
these studies are conducted by practitioner-researchers who are closely involved
with their specific enquiry. There is also a small but growing body of small-scale
qualitative research that pushes the boundaries of traditional ECEC research and
introduces new theoretical frameworks, e.g. using the work of Deleuze and Guat-
tari as a basis for analysis and interpretation (Mozère, 2007; Olsson, 2009). Only
a few studies seek to bridge the ‘global’ and the ‘local’, not by adding up distinct
local experiences into a comparative picture, but by creating spaces for encounter
and collaborative enquiry between the macro-, meso-, and micro-aspects of early
childhood policy and practice. In our CoRe project (Urban et al., 2011, see also in
this issue, pp. 508–526) we attempted this by systematically connecting local case
studies (and the local researchers who conducted them) with the overarching
European policy environment.
There are obvious problems of perspective and vantage point in both large-
scale transnational and small-scale local studies in early childhood. Researchers,
like cartographers, must find the right scale for their representations of the world
(how these differ fundamentally in different knowledge systems is discussed by
David Turnbull (2003) in Masons,Tricksters and Cartographers).The larger the scale,
the less detail can be included in the map, the smaller the scale, the less likely it is
to see the big picture. Peter Moss, in his contribution to the launch of the first
Starting Strong report (OECD, 2001) in Stockholm in 2001 reminds us of the
dilemma in early childhood research:
Cross-national studies of early childhood can lose sight of the child. Or
rather, their focus on structures and technologies runs the risk of producing
an image of the child as a universal and passive object, to be shaped by early
childhood services — to be developed, to be prepared, to be educated, to be
cared for. There may be little sense for the child as a social actor, situated in
a particular historical and spatial context, living a childhood in these services,
and making her own meanings from the experience. (Moss, 2001)
The problem with the studies that produce the type of data that are most
appealing to those committed to ‘evidence-based’ policy making is not just one
of scale, proximity or distance. The concept of ‘comparison’ itself is problematic,
as it is often linked to the number one question in evidence-based policy making:
what works? Posed in contexts of policy making and governance, the underlying
question of comparative studies tends to be one of transferability: How can what
works there be made to work here? Pursuing this rationale inevitably shapes the
what? and how? of research: the questions we ask of the complex, diverse, mul-
tifaceted and often contradictory worlds of children, families, practitioners and
communities and the approaches we take to explore and understand the
‘swampy lowland [of] messy, confusing problems’ (Schön, 1987, p. 28) that con-
stitutes the reality of early childhood practices. It also runs the risk of restricting
the who? — the participants in the enquiry into, analysis, interpretation and
transformation of the world — to those on the ‘high ground’ (Schön, 1987), the
experts and academic researchers. The focus on ‘what works’, obscures the fun-
damental democratic deficit in educational research argues Gert Biesta because it
‘makes it difficult, if not impossible to ask questions of what it should work for
and who should have a say in determining the latter’ (Biesta, 2007, p. 5).

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As I have discussed elsewhere (Urban & Dalli, 2011), researchers such as

Robert Stake (Stake, 2003) remind us that ‘comparison is a grand epistemologi-
cal strategy, a powerful conceptual mechanism’ (p. 148). The problem with this
grand and powerful strategy is, he argues, that it systematically obscures any
knowledge that fails to facilitate comparison. Complexity, the ‘thick of things’, is
not only lost; it becomes threatening as it undermines the imposing edifices
constructed from comparative data. Instead, ‘comparability’ must be constructed
proactively by systematically eradicating from the picture anything that is juicy,
contradictory, puzzling, alive, in short meaningful. The result, too often, is pieces
of decontextualised information — ‘evidence nuggets’, as recently found on the
web (www.whatworksforchildren.org.uk/).
It must be mentioned that, unlike policy makers who see comparative data as
a basic commodity, comparative educational researchers have long been aware of
the simplification trap. Joe Tobin, visiting and re-visiting ‘pre-schools in three
cultures’ (Tobin et al., 2009, 1989), removes the comparative inter- from his
conceptual framework and argues for negotiation as a process of meaning-making.
Robin Alexander, in his seminal ‘culture and pedagogy’ (Alexander, 2000), urges
us to ‘bite the methodological bullet and progress beyond policy and structure to
the classroom’ (p. 3). The authors of the first OECD Starting Strong reports
(OECD, 2001) are also well aware that is impossible to decontextualise early
childhood without losing meaning:
[. . .] ECEC policy and the quality of services are deeply influenced by
underlying assumptions about childhood and education: what does childhood
mean in this society? How should young children be reared and educated?
What are the purposes of education and care, of early childhood institutions?
What are the functions of early childhood staff? (OECD, 2001, p. 63)
While my depiction of the European early childhood research ‘landscape’ is sketchy
at best, it does point to some critical issues that require urgent attention if we want
to overcome the limitations of a research environment in which the perceived
problems, the resulting research questions and methodologies and the desirable (imagi-
nable?) solutions are caught in the same paradigm.

What Counts? Who Counts? The Case for a Democratic Turn in

Research
For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human.
Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless,
impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the
world, and with each other. (Freire, 2000b, p. 53)
I argue for a radical democratic turn in early childhood research. I do so not out
of naïve sympathies with participation or out of a belief in the importance of giving
a voice to children, parents and practitioners (a deeply undemocratic concept, I
would argue, as it implies that the power to grant or withhold the possibility to
speak lies with the researcher). A democratic reconceptualisation of how, with
whom, and for what purpose we conduct research is a necessary step towards the
needed shift of paradigms to break the cycle where more-of-the-same research
leads to more-of-the-same ‘solutions’. Early childhood research (in its established,
funded, listened to variants) has become what Thomas Kuhn (1962) called a

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‘normal science’. It has adopted forms of enquiry that remain safely within the
boundaries of the dominant world view and serve to ‘solve’ the accepted problems
within that paradigm. It is widely accepted and supported by research, for instance,
that children from poor and marginalised communities are disadvantaged in the
education system and therefore fare considerably worse in life than their privileged
peers. Research has identified ‘the gap’, provided the ‘evidence’ for policy makers,
and is now offering ‘solutions’ and interventions that ‘work’ to close ‘the gap’. The
problem here is that the question implies the solution (e.g. greater participation in
early childhood education and care in order to raise children’s literacy and
numeracy levels). Once the ‘problem’ is identified as one of lacking educational
attainment, ‘more’ education is offered as a solution.
But what if the situation is not as straightforward as it seems through the
educational lens? What if the question of educational attainment is tangled up with
structural injustice, systemic inequality, oppression or blatant racism (see Colette
Murray’s contribution in this issue, pp. 569–583 and Murray & Urban, 2012)?
How is it possible to reframe the question of who does well in education as a
question of dominant and widely accepted knowledge versus other knowledges,
e.g. indigenous, that are ignored, seen as irrelevant or openly suppressed? What if,
as Paulo Freire (2000a; 2000b) argues, the education system itself, its preschools,
schools and universities, played an active role in perpetuating the oppressive
situation? How do poor housing, poverty, exclusion come together with educa-
tional experience in multifaceted ‘problématiques’, an ‘intersolidarity of crises’
(Morin) in the lived experience of ‘disadvantaged’ children and communities?
Access to ‘high quality’ early childhood education has an important role to play,
but on its own it certainly does not provide a ‘solution’.
‘Normal’ scientists, argues Kuhn (1962, p. 46), ‘do not usually ask or debate
what makes a particular problem or solution legitimate’. In other words, they do
not question the rules of the game where the problems are framed by those who
define what counts as problems to be solved. This is the argument John and Jill
Schostak make in their book on ‘Radical Research’ (Schostak & Schostak, 2008).
In it, they argue that, in order to bring about the kind of paradigmatic change
Kuhn talked about in his ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, ‘normal’ research
will have to be challenged by questions raised ‘by people face to face with issues in
their everyday lives’ (Schostak & Schostak, 2008, p. 8).
What does current ‘normal research’ in early childhood look like? An example
can be found in a recent programme of a seminar with ‘internationally renowned
scientists’ for early childhood PhD students. It was hosted by a Foundation
committed to counter the ‘foreseeable dearth of qualified young academics’ in our
field, and firmly grounded in the conviction that the ‘importance of education in
early childhood for an individual’s personal development is uncontested’
(www.boschstiftung.de/content/language2/html/25076.asp). Lectures were given
on topics such as emotional and behavioral self-regulation and learning skills, Quality
assessment in early childhood care and education (ECE) using the ECERS and the
CLASS and Promoting literacy and numeracy development: the role of curriculum and
teacher in ECE.
I have no intention to belittle the importance of the initiative or to question the
motives of the funders and participants. My argument is, however, where, in
‘normal research’ in early childhood, the importance of the early years of life is
largely uncontested, so are the questions, the procedures, and the answers. What

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counts, the researchable topics (e.g. self-regulation and learning skills, quality
assessment, curriculum), is clearly defined by those who count (internationally
renowned scientists), rarely by those who are counted.The solutions to be suggested
by this research are already implied in the questions: programmes and interven-
tions to support children’s ‘self-regulation’ in order to increase their ‘leaning skills’,
to measure ‘quality’ using externally defined criteria, and to support teachers to
‘deliver’ effective curricula. Assumed is a normality of the individual child (behav-
iour, skills), the environment (quality) and the content (curriculum) that remains
unquestioned. But if ‘behaviour’ and lack of learning skills are a general problem
(to pick just one of the issues as an exemplar), how then is it that ADHD diagnosis
rates for children from marginalised groups in society (e.g. Roma in Europe and
indigenous children in Canada and Australia) are regularly ‘significantly higher
than expected based on prevalence rates in the general population’ (Baydala et al.,
2006)? What other questions could we ask if we turned the focus of our attention
from the child to the relationship between the marginalised and the dominant and
their privileges to define what behaviour is acceptable in educational settings?
Schostak and Schostak (2008) ask ‘why so much research contributes so little
to democratic questioning of the powerful’ (p. 1). They outline a programme for
research that is ‘radical’ in at least two respects: first, the etymology of ‘radical’
(roots) implies a focus on the essential assumptions, foundations, values and ethics
that frame our perspective on the world. It is concerned with identity, race, class,
gender, religion and politics. The question of the radical, they write, ‘emerges in
conflict, where fundamental approaches to life, to ways of thinking, to ways of
seeing the world are in dispute’ (p. 6). Research, conceptualised from this ‘radical’
vantage point, insists on asking why? questions.
Second, reframing research as ‘radical’ implies a political dimension. Not to
accept the social reality as a given, but to ask why things are the way they are
implies there are other ways of seeing and doing things. Questioning the taken-for-
granted may not in itself ‘effect the transformation of the world, as Freire (2004)
wrote about the practice of education, ‘but it implies it’ (p. 23). The political
dimension of ‘radical’ research lies in its suggestion that it is possible to ‘overthrow
[. . .] a previously stable or at least dominant order of ways of knowing, thinking
believing, acting’ (Schostak & Schostak, 2008, p. 1).
Radical, transformative research and radical democracy (Moss & Urban, 2010)
go hand in hand because the questions that matter (what counts?) are not exclu-
sive, they cannot be defined by the academic researcher alone (who counts?). On
the contrary, with ‘faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment
and action if proper conditions are furnished’ (Dewey, 1939, p. 227),
everyone is capable of asking questions such as:
— Why do things have to be like this?
— Why am I considered to be inferior to them?
— Why do they have more than me?
— So, what is actually going on here? Who benefits from these circumstances and
who loses?
— Why can’t I do just whatever I want?
— How do I stop them from doing whatever they like and hurt me in the
process?
— Why can’t we all just get on with each other?
(Schostak & Schostak, 2008, p. 1).

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Research that enables asking these and other questions cannot be designed and
‘conducted’ within the boundaries of traditional disciplines. It implies transdisci-
plinary approaches (Fairclough, 2005), a ‘refocusing of research and action on the
political, the cultural [the educational, M.U.] and the social without splitting them
up into separate disciplines’ (Schostak & Schostak, 2008, p. 8).

Researching ECEC in Europe as Political Practice

My discourse in favor of dreaming, of utopia, of freedom, of democracy is the
discourse of those who refuse to settle and do not allow the taste forbeing human,
which fatalism deteriorates, to die within themselves. (Freire, 2007, p. 26)
Mainstream research in early childhood has not yet embraced the transdisciplinary,
transformatory and radically democratic challenge (and possibility!) arising from
the complex and often contradictory realities of children, families and communities.
Despite debates taking place in other fields of social science, humanities and beyond
(Fairclough, 2005; Nicolescu, 2002;2008), early childhood appears to be stuck in a
dated paradigm where the subjects and objects of research are constructed from
limited perspectives without them taking an active role in that process. Mono-
dimensional constructions of children (e.g. in relation to their learning skills),
families and communities (e.g. in relation to their ethnicity) contradict a fast
growing body of knowledge and professional experience that confirm children’s
holistic and multi-dimensional ways of learning, developing their multi-faceted
identities, and making sense of the world. Hilary Lenz-Taguchi (2009), exploring
this puzzling theory-practice divide, suspects a ‘desire to control’ as a leitmotif:
the more we seem to know about the complexity of learning, children’s
diverse strategies and multiple theories [of] knowledge, the more we seek to
impose learning strategies and curriculum goals that reduce the complexities
and diversities of learning and knowing. The more complex things become
the more we seem to desire processes of reduction and thus control, but such
reduction strategies might simultaneously shut out the inclusion and justice
we want to achieve. (Lenz-Taguchi, 2009, p. 8)
Returning to the EU’s research-informed approach to early childhood education
and care, we find a conspicuous ‘construction’ of children from a very specific
perspective. The importance of ‘high-quality’ early childhood education and care
is clearly stated: ECEC can ‘close the gap in social development and numeracy
and literacy skills between children from socially advantaged and disadvantaged
backgrounds (European Commission, 2011, p. 4), and generate future ‘employ-
ability’ (p. 1). While the value placed on early childhood education and care is to
be welcomed, this perspective seems to be based on two fundamental assumptions:
— children (especially from ‘disadvantaged’ communities) are deficient
— children (in general) are potential future contributors to the economy.
Research is an inevitably political praxis (Freire) as it requires the researchers to
position themselves in relation to the world they are engaging with. A central
question here is whether we choose to maintain and support the status quo, or
commit ourselves to questioning the accepted and to enquiries that aim at trans-
formation and more just and equitable experiences for all.Transformative, ‘radical’
research would challenge the assumptions made about children, families and

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504 European Journal of Education, Part I

communities. The first questions it would ask would not be about how to treat the
deficiency or how to ensure ‘best practices’ for future outcomes. Rather, it would
start with questions about here and now:
— What are the lived experiences (Van Manen, 1990) of children, families and
communities, e.g. in and with the education system?
— What knowledges other than the dominant worldview do marginalised
and oppressed children, families and communities use to make sense of the
world?
— What are their capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000); what contributions could they
make now if ‘proper conditions were furnished’ (Dewey, 1939)?
In early childhood education and care, such questions extend beyond the imme-
diate classroom, programme or early childhood setting to the relationship between
children and adults, between the private and the public, and the governance of the
institutions and systems we establish around this relationship. They challenge the
position of the researcher-as-expert, as they require a radically different under-
standing of the nature of the body of knowledge underpinning our policies and
practices and of those who contribute to it (Murray & Urban, 2012). Elsewhere, I
have argued that the ‘epistemological hierarchy’, the top-down structure of
knowledge-production-and-application in our field can be replaced by much more
reciprocal and inclusive ways of understanding, orienting and theorising early
childhood practices as a ‘critical ecology’ (Miller et al., 2011; Urban, 2007; 2008).
Recent European research has taken this approach as a vantage point and has
shown how a ‘competent system’ in early childhood depends on the systematic and
reciprocal relationship between individuals, institutions, research, professional
preparation and governance (Urban et al., 2011 and in this issue, pp. 508–526).
However, to fully engage with the diversity of children’s, families and communities
experiences in Europe, and especially experiences of dominance, marginalisation,
exclusion (see Murray and Herczog in this issue), I suggest that more radical steps
are necessary to reconceptualise research, policy and practice in early childhood.
But how, for instance, could we re-frame the relationship between the ‘advantaged’
and ‘disadvantaged’ communities (e.g. Roma, Travellers, Immigrants) in a more
equal and respectful way and move beyond the deficit model of early childhood
intervention?
Could we learn from experiences outside Europe in the ‘majority world’? (e.g.
from ECD interventions in Africa that ‘are more successful when built on local
knowledge’ (Pence & Schafer, 2006, p. 2)). Referring to cross-cultural psycholo-
gists, Judith Evans and Robert Myer, Pence and Schafer point to the value of
indigenous knowledge and child rearing practices not only from an ethical and
philosophical perspective. They are ‘intrinsically sound and valuable’, and impor-
tant to ‘understand, support, and improve child-rearing; respond to diversity;
respect cultural values; and provide continuity during times of rapid change (Evans
& Myers, 1994, pp. 2–3 cited in Pence & Schafer, 2006, p. 2).
Alan Pence and colleagues have applied the recognition that there are multiple
ways of knowing that can mutually enrich each other to develop an early childhood
curriculum jointly with First Nations communities in Canada, a process they refer
to as ‘generative curriculum’ (Ball & Pence, 2000). Their experiences with the
effectiveness of including indigenous knowledge in ECD curricula have informed
successful professional development and capacity building initiatives in Canada

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Mathias Urban 505

and, in particular, the Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU)

in Africa (Pence & Marfo, 2004).
In Europe, policy interest in early childhood education and care is to be
welcomed. The dominant research paradigm, however, carries the risk of perpetu-
ating rather than countering exclusion and marginalisation. In order to challenge
this, we need to learn from and engage with experiences from the margins.
Mathias Urban,University of East London, Cass School of Education and Communities,
Stratford Campus,Water Lane, London E15 4LZ, UK, m.urban@uel.ac.uk, www.uel.
ac.uk/cass/staff/mathiasurban

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