Significant variations across national contexts in key terminology for this entry necessitate the inclusion of explanatory notes. The age range for early childhood is from birth to 8 years. The term early childhood education and care is used to refer to formal education and care services provided for young children in the years before compulsory schooling and in the early years of school. These services may or may not be part of State education systems. This definition encompasses the range of prior to school education and care services available to children including preschool, kindergarten, nursery school, and child care.
Introduction
Policy imperatives frame and shape the implementation of early childhood education and care systems in particular ways and are bound by social understandings of childhood, children, and the role of the family. Since the spread of formal early childhood education with the nineteenth-century kindergarten movement, there have...
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Press, F. (2017). Policy Imperative in Early Childhood Education and Care. In: Peters, M.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_249
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_249
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