EARLY CHILDHOOD RESEARCH:

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EARLY CHILDHOOD RESEARCH what do we appear to
know and what have we done? Philip Gammage PhD
FRSA
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• When the great scorer comes to write against
  your name, he writes not how you won or lost, but
  how you played the game.

3

• In many countries contraception was banned at
  that time. (Canada did not legalise contraception
  until 1969 Ireland technically in the mid 1980s
  for married people and some countries in Central
  and South America still have not formally done
  so.)

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• The average three-year-old Australian child
  watches some 20-25 hours of television per week.

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• There are now only two major civil aircraft
  plane manufacturers in the world and only three
  major toothpaste firms.

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• All the thirty OECD countries have pensions
  systems and most (except Australia and USA, to
  their shame, 2005) have statutory state maternity
  leave.

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• As Larkin puts it so aptly in a famous poem,
• Sex began in 1963, which was too late for me.
  
• In short the contraceptive pill, now in its
  sixth iteration of quality and refinement, has
  changed the sexual and reproductive mores of the
  world.

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• Qvortrup says,
• Although one must expect important
  within-differences in micro-analyses, a
  relatively high level of generality holds, I
  suggest, for different classes and ethnic groups,
  as well as for different generations.
• Moreover, the within-variation takes place in
  a context which generally presses towards
  commonality. (Qvortrup, 2,000, pp 87-88)

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(No Transcript)
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Births per woman of child-bearing age2004
1.2 Japan 1.75 Australia 1.46 Portugal 1.9 Ca
nada 1.48 EU 2.1 USA 1.71 UK
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• The life expectancy of a Rwandan child is about
  42 years, of a middle-class South Australian girl
  born now, over double that.

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• Policy does change, even if the wheels grind
  exceeding slow at times e.g.
• the incorporation of Swedish daycare into the
  Education Ministry
• the unification of DECS (The Department of
  Education and Childrens Services) in South
  Australia
• the appointment of a Minister for Children (in
  England)

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• the focus on upgrading childcare in New Zealand
• the gradual build-up of programmes (curricula)
  for very young children (OECD 2001 and in press)
  
• all show a greater concern with the importance
  of Early Childhood Education and Care.

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• Childrens early experiences of attachment and
  love help organise their world and impact on
  their behaviour and their ability to cope with a
  changing environment as they grow and develop.
• Children bathed in language and appropriate
  care seem to do well.

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• Bertram put it more starkly at a talk in
  Tasmania in 2001, when he said something akin to,
  
• The child sitting on your euthanasia committee
  in the future may well be the one you
  disregarded, who felt unwanted and unloved. What
  will guide his motives then?

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• The National Child Development Study (NCDS)
• cohorts from 1946, 1958 and 1970 concerned
  mainly peri-natal studies in the UK, but with the
  addition of cross-sectional studies.
• (Strictly speaking these three cohorts are
  separate and have different titles, the first
  being a Medical Research Council study)

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• The Child Health and Education Study (CHES)
• of 15, 000 children born in the spring of 1970
  in the UK. The finance of this has been sporadic,
  such that some analysis is still uncompleted.

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• The pioneering Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health
  and Development Study
• of children born between 1972 and 1973 in
  Dunedin, New Zealand. A multi-faceted study
  yielding much of interest to educationists.

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• The Christchurch Health and Development Study
• of mental health in a sample born in New Zealand
  in 1977.

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• The Australian Temperament Project (ATP)
• looking at psychosocial adjustment in samples of
  children born in Victoria between 1983 and 2000.
  A fascinating series of studies yielding very
  useful insights into parenting and
  socio-emotional development.

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• The Mater-University of Queensland Study of
  Pregnancy (MUSP) 1981
• looking at health and social outcomes for mother
  and child.

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• The National Institute of Child Health and Human
  Development (NICHD)
• of three tranches of over a thousand children
  born in 1991 and located in ten areas across the
  USA. Particularly useful data on the
  child-rearing environment (home, care, school)
  and cognitive outcomes

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• Growing up in Australia (2004)
• This will be the first comprehensive Australian
  longitudinal study. It is carried out by a
  consortia of many of the most active paediatric,
  education and child development research groups
  in Australia (including the Telethon Institute
  for Child Health Research, Perth and the
  Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne.)

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• WHO (1980)
• European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and
  Childhood, which examines pregnancy and child
  health and development.

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• The Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of
  Children and Youth, 1994 (NLSCY)
• Detailed cyclic analysis with considerable
  elements of care and childrearing built in. It
  is used across Canada and some of the provinces
  have bought into sections of it.

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• The Womens Health Australia Study (1995)
• The Millenium Cohort Study (MCS) 2001
• in the UK looking at a very large sample of
  almost 19,000 children born over a 12 month
  period.

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• Principal physical findings of the
  child/adolescent development aspects are
• 1. an association between chronic health
  deficiencies and socio-economic status
• (SES), including mental health
• 2. the greater fragility of the male (for a
  variety of reasons, both social and
• physical)
• 3. an association between tobacco smoking and
  SES
• 4. the association between poor dietary
  conditions and SES
• 5. perinatal mortality patterns and their
  association with SES
• 6. association between emotional development and
  styles of child-rearing.

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• Over the last four decades, since its inception
  by Ladybird Johnson in 1964, it has cost
  approximately 66,000,000,000 US.
• It has been a multi-faceted approach, funded by
  the federal government, but delivered variously
  and differently across individual states through
  its approaches to welfare, employment and
  training, care, health and education.

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• Head Start
• currently provides some 2,100 programmes serving
  865,000 children from birth to five years,
  disadvantaged women and their families.
• They are focused on the child and through an
  integrated service approach, attempt to improve
  the school-readiness of young children in
  low-income families.

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• Reggio Emilia
• is another ikon of importance though,
  strangely, it seems to little affect the overall
  approaches to young childrens education and care
  in Italy as a whole, but does have a major impact
  in the English-speaking world. Perhaps it is
  particularly well-marketed, since its approaches
  would not be that different from the best of
  Plowden, from those of Mia Mia, in NSW (which it
  partially inspired), or from those in a myriad
  Nordic daycare centres.

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• The Plowden Legacy
• is of considerable importance, as noted earlier,
  despite its long period in the wilderness of
  British (and, somewhat less so, in international)
  movements in education.

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• High Scope
• has high credence in the international world of
  early childhood education and care and is
  probably better-known than any other ikon. It
  is one of those long-term, well-researched
  interventions with a longitudinal and
  cross-sectional research base, which I earlier
  referred to as nested in part within another
  major initiative (in this case Headstart). It is
  the oft quoted source of, for every dollar
  invested at three years of age, the return is
  seven fold by age 27.

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• Start Right
• In 1993 Sir Christopher Ball chaired a small
  group of experienced early childhood educators
  (the writer was one) at the behest of the Royal
  Society of Arts in England. The group was
  requested to carry out an inquiry into Early
  Childhood Education and Care.

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• Te Whaariki
• This dates from 1993 and has been solidly
  influential, has shown itself capable of
  reflecting development and change, of progressive
  refinement of its purposes and goals and yet
  remains focused on childrens interests and
  contributions as members of groups and
  communities

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• Starting Strong
• is the twelve country thematic review of early
  education and care by OECD, published by OECD in
  2001. It used both background papers prepared by
  each individual country itself and country
  notes prepared by visiting experts. The tension
  between the two descriptions enabled sharper
  contrast of approach to be seen and to be
  employed in the final overall cross-national
  publication. It is currently being supplemented
  by the study of an additional eight countries.
  (There are thirty member-countries in OECD).

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The OECD Review Highlighted the importance of

• Clear systemic and integrated approaches to
  policy
• Partnerships between childcare and education.
• A universal approach to access
• A substantial public investment in services and
  infrastructure.

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The OECD Review Highlighted the importance of
(cont)

• A participatory approach to quality improvement
• Appropriate training and working conditions
• Systematic attention to monitoring and to data
  collection
• A long-term agenda for research and evaluation.

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• The McCain and Mustard Study (1999)
• The Early Years Study Reversing the real brain
  drain, commissioned by the premier of Ontario,
  has reasonably wide coverage internationally. It
  summarises the available evidence from
  neuroscience claiming that the brain is massively
  dependent for its structure and wiring upon
  experiences during the first three years or so of
  life.

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• EPPE
• The Effective Provision of Preschool Project
• This has been influential in guiding the
  development of policy and has been used by
  ministers and the Treasury as the evidential
  base for expanding universal services and
  targeting enhanced provision for the poor.

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• Developmentally Appropriate Practice (1987)
• A set of guidelines issued by the National
  Association for the Education of Young Children
  (NAEYC) from Birth through to eight years by Sue
  Bredekamp. They were taken up enthusiastically
  by many practitioners and school boards in the
  USA. They were less well-known in Europe and yet
  were of some note in Australia and New Zealand.
  A revised edition of the guidelines was published
  in 1997 (Bredekamp and Copple, 1997).

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• Current trends
• The greater emancipation of women
• Efficient contraception
• A marked decline in the birth rate
• Increasing numbers of women in the work force
• High divorce rates and changing family
  structures

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• Current trends
• Compelling research on early brain development
• The persistent and debilitating effects of
  poverty and the roots of crime
• Conflicting value systems in a more fluid,
  post-modern, mobile world
• The rapidly increasing influence of technology
  and the media
• Increasing globalisation of economies
  (Gammage, P. 2005)

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• The way to get things done is not to mind who
  gets the credit of doing them.