The Guest Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

The International Journal of Early Childhood aims at bringing together the global early childhood community as well as facilitating the interchange of ideas and information. Its purpose is to contribute to an international and critical scientific debate concerning research and practice in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) with an emphasis on children’s rights, children’s general position in society and their education all over the world. In this special issue, ‘‘Learning cultures in early childhood contexts’’ are under scrutiny. As invited guest editors, our aim for the theme of this issue is to contribute to a critical and scientific discussion where the concepts of learning cultures and a cultural theory of learning can be debated, explored and hopefully further developed. All articles are related to learning cultures in some way or another, but they still differ considerably in their perspectives. The authors come from different countries like Australia, Great Britain, Norway and Portugal, and they represent different contexts and kindergarten traditions. Although the articles differ in relation to both theoretical and empirical background, they all have a focus on investigating issues related to a cultural understanding of learning in early childhood education. The variations of contexts in particular bring important dimensions into the field of learning cultures. Issues related to learning, the effects of learning, assessment of learning outcome etc. have received increased attention in recent research in education. International reports discuss and evaluate the desired learning ‘‘outcome’’ of children’s achievements in school (e.g. OECD PISA). As the growing number of national curricula in ECEC institutions and other documents indicate, the focus on learning has increased also in this area in many countries. This raises a number of complex