Constructions of quality: Australian Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services during COVID-19

There is increasing pressure on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings to align their practices and values to that of schools, with the notion that a quality education in ECEC consists of providing care whilst also ensuring strong learning outcomes. This paper employs the constructs of structural and process quality to theorise the perceived disparities between ECEC institutions and schools and between ECEC services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experiences of 29 Australian ECEC educators provide insight into the differing constructions of quality across ECEC services during the COVID-19 lockdown periods that occurred from May to August 2020 in the state of Victoria. The findings suggest that despite increasing pressure for ECEC programmes to be more like schools, the pandemic amplified society's positioning of ECEC as a caregiving service, highlighting the perceived differences between ECEC and schools and within the ECEC sector itself. While the findings suggest that ECEC educators were discouraged by the lack of recognition they received for providing quality education during the pandemic, the disruption of the pandemic prompted opportunities for reflection and action, providing more visibility of the quality of care that ECEC educators provide and the importance of their roles within the community.