The Quality Agenda in Early Childhood Education

Book excerpt: This book investigates notions of ‘quality’ in early childhood settings both in Australia and globally. After experiencing quality reform as an educator, the author turned to research as a means by which to better understand early childhood quality reform and agenda over time. This book questions how early childhood reform policy and agenda have constructed quality - what it is presumed to be and do - over time and the implications of these 'truths'. Taking a Foucauldian governmentality view of the history of Australian early childhood services, the impetus for the quality reform era, the quality reform policy assemblages and the contemporary post-reform era, this book rigorously examines prevailing policy assumptions, ambitions and deployments of quality, and warns of an emerging ambition for ‘only quality’ settings in early childhood. This book will appeal to early childhood students and educators, education policy sociologists and all who are interested in reclaiming early childhood education and care.