Table Of ContentTransforming Early Childhood
in England
Transforming Early
Childhood in England
Towards a Democratic Education
Edited by Claire Cameron and Peter Moss
First published in 2020 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk
Collection © Editors, 2020
Text © Contributors, 2020
Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2020
The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.
This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International licence (CC BY
4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt
the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to
the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the
work). Attribution should include the following information:
Cameron, C. and Moss, P. (eds.). 2020. Transforming Early Childhood in England:
Towards a Democratic Education. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.
9781787357167
Further details about Creative Commons licence are available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons
licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like
to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence,
you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
ISBN: 978-1-78735-718-1 (Hbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-717-4 (Pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-716-7 (PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-719-8 (epub)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-720-4 (mobi)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787357167
Contents
About the contributors vii
List of figures and tables xiii
List of abbreviations xiv
Preface: The pandemic as a moment of decision xv
1 Introduction: The state we’re in 1
Peter Moss and Claire Cameron
2 Families living in hard times 19
Abigail Knight, Rebecca O’Connell and Julia Brannen
3 Child health and homelessness 34
Diana Margot Rosenthal and Monica Lakhanpaul
4 Towards a unified and unifying ECEC system
from birth to 6 years 54
Peter Moss
5 Towards a ‘rich’ ECEC workforce 67
Claire Cameron
6 Towards a public ECEC system 83
Eva Lloyd
7 Towards a child-centred curriculum 100
Georgina Trevor, Amanda Ince and Lynn Ang
8 Towards valuing children’s signs of learning 119
Kate Cowan and Rosie Flewitt
9 Towards a listening ECEC system 134
Alison Clark
v
10 Towards a democratic ECEC system 151
Diana Sousa
11 Towards a pluralist and participatory
accountability 170
Guy Roberts-Holmes
12 Towards empowerment for food and eating
in ECEC 188
Francesca Vaghi
13 Towards an ECEC system in synergy
with parenting leave 203
Margaret O’Brien and Peter Moss
14 Conclusion: From ‘the state we’re in’ to ‘what do
we want for our children?’ 220
Peter Moss and Claire Cameron
Index 239
vi CONTENTS
About the contributors
Peter Moss is Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood Provision at the
Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education. He co-founded
the international network on leave policies and for 10 years co-edited
the book series ‘Contesting Early Childhood’. Much of his work has been
cross-national and his interests include early childhood education, democ-
racy in education and the relationship between employment, care and
gender. His most recent books are Alternative Narratives in Early Child-
hood (Routledge, 2019) and Parental Leave and Beyond (edited with Alison
Koslowski and Ann-Zofie Duvander, Policy Press, 2019).
Claire Cameron is Professor of Social Pedagogy at the Thomas Coram
Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education. She has a long-standing record
of research on children’s services, including studies of the early childhood
care and education workforce. Publications include Men in the Nursery:
Gender and caring work (with Charlie Owen and Peter Moss, Paul Chap-
man Publishing, 1999), Care Work in Europe: Current understandings and
future directions (with Peter Moss, Routledge, 2007), International Per-
spectives in the Early Years (edited with Linda Miller, SAGE, 2014) and The
SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Policy (edited with Linda Miller, Car-
men Dalli and Nancy Barbour, SAGE, 2018).
Lynn Ang is Professor of Early Childhood in the Department of Learning
and Leadership, UCL Institute of Education. She is an expert in early
learning, early childhood and primary education, and international evi-
dence-based research, particularly in developing countries. She has led
and co-led many major research grants including a five-year study to
assess the effectiveness, impact and sustainability of the World Bank Early
Learning Partnership (ELP) (2018–22) and the Education Endowment
Foundation (EEF)-funded project ‘Manor Park Talks’ (2018–20) to
embed an evidence-based intervention programme of professional devel-
opment to improve the outcomes for disadvantaged 2-year-olds accessing
free early education entitlement in Manor Park, Newham, UK.
vii
Julia Brannen is Professor of Sociology of the Family at the Thomas
Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education and a Fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences. She has an international and national rep-
utation for research on the family lives of parents, children and young
people and work–family issues in Britain and Europe, intergenerational
relationships, and food in families and a particular interest in methodol-
ogy including mixed methods, biographical approaches and comparative
research. Her latest book is Social Research Matters (Bristol University
Press, 2019).
Alison Clark is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at UCL Institute of
Education, University College London and Adjunct Associate Professor at
the University of South-Eastern Norway. She is an academic and an art-
ist who developed the Mosaic approach – a visual, participatory research
framework first published in 2001 and sinceadopted and adapted widely
by practitioners and researchers. Her research interests include young
children’s rights, early childhood environments and slow pedagogies.
Recent research includes ‘Children’s Photographic Voices’, a collaboration
between the University of South-Eastern Norway, local kindergartens and
Preus, the National Museum of Photography in Horten, Norway.
Kate Cowan is an education researcher interested in young children’s
multimodal communication. Based at UCL Institute of Education, Uni-
versity College London, her research interests include play, creativity,
literacies and digital technologies. Her work also involves developing mul-
timodal methodologies and considers the ethics of video-based research
with young children. Recent research projects include ‘Playing the Archive’
(funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and
‘Valuing Young Children’s Signs of Learning’ (funded by the Froebel Trust).
Prior to joining UCL Institute of Education, Kate worked as a nursery
teacher and she remains committed to connecting research and practice.
Rosie Flewitt is Professor of Early Childhood Communication in the
Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Manchester Metropolitan
University, and former Co-Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for
Pedagogy at UCL Institute of Education, University College London.
She is an expert in young children’s multimodal meaning- making and
in ethnographic research with young children, their parents and profes-
sional educators. Recent publications include the award-winning book
Storytelling in Early Childhood: Enriching language, literacy and class-
room culture (edited with Teresa Cremin, Ben Mardell and Joan Swann,
viii ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Routledge, 2017); the Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early
Childhood (edited with Ola Erstad, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and
Íris Susana Pires Pereira, 2019); and Research Methods for Early Childhood
Education (with Lynn Ang, Bloomsbury, 2020), in the ‘National Centre
for Research Methods’ book series.
Amanda Ince is Programme Leader for MA Primary Education and MA
Early Years Education at UCL Institute of Education, University College
London and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has a
background as an early years teacher and works with early years profes-
sionals on developing practice through action research and practitioner
enquiry in settings across London and the south-east of England. Her
research focuses on professional learning, leadership in early years and
the use of cognitive dissonance as an educative resource. Her latest book
is A Practical Guide to Action Research and Teacher Enquiry: Making a dif-
ference in the early years (with Eleanor Kitto, Routledge, 2019).
Abigail Knight is Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Thomas
Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education and also an independ-
ent social worker and researcher. She has over 20 years’ experience of
carrying out qualitative research with children, young people and fam-
ilies experiencing challenging circumstances, such as poverty, inequal-
ity and disability; her most recent role was leading the UK qualitative
phase of a European Research Council-funded study ‘Families and Food
in Hard Times’. She has published in journals such as Child and Family
Social Work and the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice.
Monica Lakhanpaul is Professor of Integrated Community Child
Health at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University
College London. She is UCL Pro-Vice-Provost South Asia and now leads a
multidisciplinary translational research group. Her expertise is in cross-
sector, multidisciplinary, structured and collaborative approaches from
clinical trials to intervention design to participatory methods includ-
ing public engagement, citizen science and working with the arts and
humanities to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and transform
services for patients. Her research programmes currently run in the UK
and India.
Eva Lloyd is Professor of Early Childhood in the Cass School of Education
and Communities at the University of East London (UEL); she previ-
ously worked at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS ix
