Datafied at four: the role of data in the formalisation of early childhood education in England This paper examines processes of datafication in early childhood education (ECE) settings for children from birth-five years in England and how this relates to increased formalisation. Unusually, ECE in England includes a standardised curriculum and formative and statutory assessments; thus it has been described as subject to both datafication (Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes, 2017c) and 'schoolification', a term used to describe the adoption of school-like practices and values in ECE (OECD, 2006). Using interview data from ECE settings over the last decade and a theoretical framework drawing on Foucault (1979) and Deleuze (1995), the paper sets out the ways in which settings in schools and nurseries are subject to the demands of data, and how this produces data-driven subjectivities for both teacher and child. These developments are then linked to aspects of 'schoolification' including more formal teaching, a focus on literacy and mathematics, and use of 'ability' grouping.
There is an ongoing debate over the nature and necessity of teacher 'professionalism', particularly in early childhood education. In England, this sector was a particular focus of the education policies of Labour governments in the 2000s, and this had a significant impact on early childhood teachers and classrooms. This article examines the impact of a specific policy:
Teaching children to read is one of the most fundamental goals of early years and primary education worldwide, and as such has attracted a large amount of research from a range of academic disciplines. The aims of this paper are: (a) to provide a new critical examination of research evidence relevant to effective teaching of phonics and reading in the context of national curricula internationally; (b) to report new empirical findings relating to phonics teaching in England; and (c) examine some implications for policy and practice. The paper reports new empirical findings from two sources: (1) a systematic qualitative meta‐synthesis of 55 experimental trials that included longitudinal designs; (2) a survey of 2205 teachers. The paper concludes that phonics and reading teaching in primary schools in England has changed significantly for the first time in modern history, and that compared to other English dominant regions England represents an outlier. The most robust research evidence, from randomised control trials with longitudinal designs, shows that the approach to phonics and reading teaching in England is not sufficiently underpinned by research evidence. It is recommended that national curriculum policy is changed and that the locus of political control over curriculum, pedagogy and assessment should be re‐evaluated. The video abstract for this article is available at https://youtu.be/bJImJ79JKNI.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.