84 | Quality Early Learning
and development, social and emotional development, preliteracy and prenumeracy understandings and abilities, ways of understanding the world, and self-expression through the creative arts. The chapter suggests a threestep approach for putting policies into practice, moving from diagnosing the challenges to planning and then to continuous improvement of pedagogy and the curriculum.
INTRODUCTION: THE QUALITY OF CHILDREN’S EXPERIENCE IN ECE Preschool and the early grades of primary school can promote the development of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will enable children to thrive in their schooling and in life. At the present time, much ECE across the world does not do this well, and many children fail to thrive, do not reach their full academic potential, or drop out of schooling altogether. A major cause of this situation is the transition to overly formal modes of ECE and primary education provision before children are developmentally able to benefit from these approaches (Bingham and Whitebread 2018). This chapter reviews evidence regarding the most beneficial “process” aspects of ECE provision (that is, the child’s direct experience in the setting or classroom) and how they might be most effectively developed within resource-constrained environments in low- and middle-income countries. Process variables most directly affect the quality of children’s ECE experience, and fall under two broad headings: (1) pedagogy (how the educator organizes and facilitates the educational experience for the children), and (2) curriculum (what key aspects of the children’s development and learning are focused upon). The main principles set out in this chapter, which underpin the provision of high-quality ECE, are as follows: • The real strength of high-quality ECE is more commonly not the formal curriculum but the nature and quality of the relationships between the educators and the children in the setting or classroom (Jenkins et al. 2019). This relationship needs to be a key element in initial and continuing educator training. • Three key elements in ECE pedagogy are associated with children’s longterm academic achievement and emotional well-being: practices that support children’s communication skills, practices that support children’s ability to self-regulate their cognitive and emotional mental processes, and practices that provide opportunities to the children for active learning through play (Whitebread et al. 2019).
