An Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Education and Care and Integration within Education: The Brazilian Experience

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the premises that shape a model for an integrated approach to early childhood education and care and those that shape the integration of ECEC services within Education, considered here as two distinct movements. In previous study (Haddad, 2002), I defended the idea that wide world events such as the Cold War, the Western cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and Globalization clearly influenced the adoption of a more or less integrated approach to ECCE. Now I shall argue that while an integrated approach to education and care is nourished by the ideals propagated by the counter-cultural revolution of the 60s, the integration within education is part of a globally structured agenda for education (Dale, 2000). The study is also oriented by the paradigm proposed by Cochran (1993) that policies and programs are a combination of causal factors and mediating influences, which components co-mingle and produce distinct combinations, which change over time. The main finding is that in the global structured agenda to education there is very small room for issues related to family life, gender equality and conciliation between work and family responsibilities. Basically, ECEC within education implies its legitimation as the first stage of basic education, and not as an integrated policy for ECEC.