A cultural analysis of ECEC quality across Countries: the view of the insiders.

Positive benefits of ECEC attendance are closely linked to the quality of the provisions (Sylva et al., 2004) and this issue has drawn researchers’ and institutions’ attention and interest in monitoring quality of ECEC and in getting to a shared understanding and language on quality (Ishimine & Tayler, 2014; Grammatikopoulis et al., 2015). The international debate on quality raises crucial questions on how far quality can be considered a universal concept and how far «is a value- and cultural-based concept» (OECD, 2013, p. 35) and how far its conceptualization may vary across different cultural contexts (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence 2007; Tobin et al., 2009; Vandenbroeck & Peeters, 2014). As documented in studies related on parental ethno-theories (Super, Harkness 2004, 2009) and on ECEC teachers’ ethno-theories (Tobin et al., 1989, 2009; Tobin, Arzubiaga, & Adair, 2014; Tobin, Mantovani, & Bove, 2010), adults upbring and educate children in similar and different ways, as they follow diverse ideas about children, their development pace, their learning process, about what make a child prepared to face the world, and as Super and Harkness highlight (2004), there is a lack of studies on the differences among western European countries. The debate on universal vs cultural-related quality values still require a theoretical and empirical efforts to get to a balanced understanding and to develop a cultural-sensitive quality framework of indicators – as CARE project point out as a main aim. In the multiple case-study, seven countries (Germany, Finland, Italy the Netherlands, Portugal and England) collected video-data from four «good practice» ECEC centres on curriculum implementation, pedagogical approach and global process quality. A qualitative and cultural ethnographic research (Alexander, 2000, 2008; Gillen et al., 2007; Moran et al., in press; Rogoff, 2003; Tobin et al.,1989, 2009) of the selected ECEC settings has being conducted, involving the teachers protagonist of the video-clips as key-informants on the local pedagogical theories-beliefs that underpin the activities videotaped. Observations, video-cued one-to-one and focus group interviews were aimed to listen and to understand the point of view of the insiders-interviewees, their vision on education, on the relationship with a child/children, on the activity in the video clips, their major beliefs on what is quality in ECEC, and to compare them at a cross-national level. A content-ground qualitative analysis of the collected data has been carried out, based on full transcriptions of the interviews and on the videos, anchoring words and clips, in describing emerging meanings and interpretations on values and objectives, educational strategies (providing good climate, managing misbehaviour and conflicts, fostering learnings, …), communication, emotion , images of the child, of the teacher and of the service. The analysis of the collected data is providing portrays of local pedagogies and give insights in developing a reflection on a cross-national cultural-sensitive quality framework of indicators.