Neoliberal thinking has increasingly shaped global and national policy incursions in early childhood education. Research has highlighted the power effects of such policies with consequences for pedagogy, provision and the professional identities of educators. Less well understood are educator responses to these policies. Whilst literature offers some exploration of resistance movements, little is known from empirical studies about how acts of resistance are enacted individually (and collectively) in the professional lives of early years educators. This article explores how English early childhood educators resist policy constructions of ideal professional identities. Using reconceptualized critical theory, this paper considers both neoliberal shaped demands on early educators and their resistance to these. Employing data from professional life story interviews ( n = 16) by early educators in a range of contexts, narratives were constructed which document their responses to ECE policies. This paper draws on three of these narratives. A Critical Narrative Analysis reveals that educator resistances are not always large scale, collective or mobilized but are often expressed in atomized contexts through a dispersed network of actors. Individual responses included ‘micro resistances’ which were often local, quiet and invisible but multiple. The paper offers novel insights into c/overt resistances revealing educators’ complex, nuanced and subversive responses to discursive policy manoeuvres.

In 2015, the British government implemented a national Baseline Assessment policy for children at the start of their Reception Year (aged 4-5 years) in England. Adding further assessment to the national Early Years Foundation Stage, the Baseline policy was predicated on reform for improved school accountability, with a focus on measurement of both children's outcomes and school readiness. This small-scale research study juxtaposes the dominant policy narrative that focuses on assessment for accountability, with the alternative lenses of relational pedagogy and care ethics. The study seeks to establish the extent to which an ethic of care is present or absent in policy texts and teacher talk on summative assessment in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Through a critical discourse analysis of government policy texts and a thematic analysis of teachers' dialogue from a focus group, three analytical themes were identified: accountability, quantification of children's development and the perceived impact of Baseline Assessment. Furthermore, the study explores the possibility that care ethics, while missing from policy, are backgrounded rather than absent in participant teachers' dialogue and classroom life. While acknowledging the limitations of a small focus group and the novelty of the Early Years Foundation Stage Baseline Assessment policy, this study argues for a reorientation of the current 'accountability' discussion to one which foregrounds more care-full relationships in assessment policy and practice. Such a contention has implications beyond the single country focus of this study and contributes to international debate on the importance of care in testing times.

The early childhood workforce in England has experienced periods of policy attention and more recently policy neglect. During the past two decades (2000–2022) the extent of interest in workforce policy has fluctuated with episodes of investment followed by phases of disinvestment. Throughout this period, early childhood educators have been subjected to multiple, often conflicting and shifting demands upon them, which have evolved with varying political priorities. This paper builds on earlier analyses and exposes how neoliberal logic has been advanced in the intervening years and continues to permeate the terrain. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of nine English early childhood workforce policies numerous, dominant, institutional discourses and reciprocal obligation are discerned. This analysis uncovers how policies of standard setting, credentialising and surveillance create discursive borders which are established and maintained to create the ‘ideal’ professional identities of early educators. It is contended that these conceptual and discursive borders delimit versions of professional identities and thereby curtail capacity to imagine and act beyond such boundaries. The paper concludes that identifying and naming these borders are important prerequisites for contestation of such institutional discourses and for asserting alternative subject positions.

National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) has recently launched an accreditation scheme: Quality Counts. Nathan Archer provides an overview.

Nathan Archer explores the idea that an outcome-driven, accountability culture is shaping a limited and limiting research agenda. He calls for richer, more diverse perspectives.