Spotlight on early childhood education. A newspaper coverage analysis of universal preschool debate in Argentina

Carolina Snaider

doi:10.1186/s40723-018-0045-2

Carolina Snaider

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-018-0045-2

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Abstract

Throughout the past decade, the Argentinean government has lowered the starting age of compulsory education and early childhood education enrollment has been growing steadily. However, ECE services have evolved in a fragmented manner, leading to an unequal and inequitable scenario: while private education supports the largest part of the growth, children from low-income families are less likely to attend preschool and more likely to receive low-quality service. Through a newspaper coverage analysis, I explore how these problems are addressed in the public debate on universal preschool. Results show that the voices of policy-makers and “experts” are prominent while teachers’ and parents’ views are ignored; I found a widespread consensus for universal preschool and a scarcity of arguments against. I suggest the need to draw on research findings in ECE more critically and posit that the need to ensure high quality preschool for all children should be central in the debate.

Highlights

Educating infants and toddlers has historically been a private enterprise: home was the “right” place for children, and mothers assumed to be the primarily responsive adult (Bloch 1987; Fuller 2007)
What is said? Major topics in early childhood education (ECE) The process of selecting the news allowed me to distinguish six major ECE themes recurrently covered by the media: (a) technology and child development, (b) paternal leave, (c) child nutrition, (d) child poverty, (e) child abuse and maltreatment and, (f ) the topic on which I deepened the analysis, universal and mandatory preschool
For the topic of early schooling, most the articles (i.e., 15 articles) discussed the Law No 27.045 that established age 4 as the mandatory starting age for education; eight articles focused on the current government initiative of lowering it to 3 years, and nine on the expansion of the “alternative” centers (i.e., Community Centers, CeDIs and Centers of First Infancy (CPIs))

Summary

Introduction

Educating infants and toddlers has historically been a private enterprise: home was the “right” place for children, and mothers assumed to be the primarily responsive adult (Bloch 1987; Fuller 2007). This approach to early childhood (EC) has notably shifted: over the past five decades, EC has progressively turned from a primarily private-family responsibility into a public-state concern. By the end of the twentieth century, studies in the field of Child Psychology and Pedagogy altered our understanding of childhood, centering attention on children’s developmental needs, the learning potential entrenched in the first years of life, and the negative consequences that improper stimulation during EC might cause (Diker 2001; New 2016). Advancements in neuroscience reinforced our understanding of EC as a crucial sensitive period and concluded “early environments

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