Contents

This publication is also available online in a web-accessible version at https://pub.norden.org/temanord2022-512.

Members of the research team

This report was jointly prepared and written by the research team based at Dublin City University and the University of Stavanger
 

Early Childhood Research Centre, Dublin City University

Mathias Urban

Jennifer Guevara

Carolina Semmoloni
 

FILIORUM, Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care, University of Stavanger

Elin Reikerås

Gunnar Magnus Eidsvåg

Janken Camilla Sæbø

Acknowledgements

This study would not have been possible without the support of many individuals and groups in and beyond the five countries at the centre of the research. Early childhood educators generously gave their time and commitment in group interviews, and freely shared their views and experiences with us. Members of the Scientific Advisory Board shared their invaluable knowledge of early childhood education and care policy and practice in their own countries and, more broadly, of the international context of the investigation. Their individual and collective insights gave invaluable orientation to our study, they provided crucial information, and contributed to validating our steps and preliminary findings and conclusions. Policy makers with responsibility for early childhood education and care in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden found time in their busy schedules to accompany the study in a Steering Group and, in addition, contributed to the rich data base of the study by agreeing to talk to us in individual interviews. They, too, pointed us to sources for the documentary analysis that we might have missed had we not drawn on their specific expertise.

We would like to thank Simone Stegeage, Sini Leikkola, Marianne Ree, Lena Ryberg and Artem Ingmar Benediktsson for supporting our investigation as research as facilitators of the group interviews with educators in languages beyond the capabilities of the research team.

We are grateful to the Nordic Council of Ministers for identifying the need for this study, for conceiving its scope, and for making the funds available to carry it out.

Finally, we owe huge thanks to Tarja Kahiluoto at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Helsinki. Without Tarja’s initiative, persistence, guidance, and patience this study would not have been possible!

Sincere thanks to all!

Foreword

The Nordic countries–Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden–have a long tradition of cooperation in many fields of society. The initiative to set up a network on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) was originally made by Finland, and the Network´s first meeting was held in Helsinki in December 2004. The meeting proved to be an important arena for exchanging information, especially since at that time no collaboration existed in ECEC matters in the Nordic Council of Ministers. The network has since then been working together actively and delegates from all Nordic countries, including the Åland Islands, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, have participated in the network. Besides sharing information on topical issues, legislative reforms, development projects and questions related to quality, the meetings have examined common characteristics in ECEC in the Nordic countries, involving questions such as: What does ECEC in the Nordic countries consist of; what are the common denominators and special features in each country; and what does Nordic ECEC look like in relation to the systems in place in continental Europe? The network meetings have also involved preparation for international projects related to ECEC, especially in OECD and the EU, and efforts to find a joint Nordic approach.

The planning of the research project Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care was initiated in the Nordic Network on ECEC because questions on evaluation and assessment had become more prominent and different procedures and tools for monitoring and evaluation were being designed. The purpose of the research was to shed light on the values and principles that have guided the evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care in the various Nordic countries, the ways in which evaluation and quality assessment have been developed in the Nordic countries and the parties responsible for carrying out the evaluation and assessment. A further focus was on whether the Nordic countries have a coherent view on evaluating and assessing the quality of ECEC and how evaluation and quality assessment is seen to be linked to the quality and development of ECEC, to pedagogical practices and to children´s wellbeing, development, and learning.

I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the lead researchers and the research teams based at Dublin City University and the University of Stavanger for this enlightening research report. Many thanks also to the members of the Scientific Advisory Board and the Steering Group for all their shared knowledge and time. And last but not least kind thanks to the Nordic Council of Ministers for funding the research and for publishing the report.

I hope this publication will be a valuable contribution to the international discussion on assessment and evaluation in early childhood education and care and will help both the Nordic countries and other countries further develop their methods of quality assessment and evaluation in the best interest of children.
 

Tarja Kahiluoto

Senior Ministerial Adviser, Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland

Executive summary

This report presents the findings of the research project Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. Participating countries were Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

The project was commissioned by the Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2020 and jointly conducted by the Early Childhood Research Centre, Dublin City University and FILIORUM, Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care, University of Stavanger between January and December 2021.

The project was given the task to investigate four sets of questions that were specified in the detailed tender document published by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Table 1 Research questions

The project adopted a qualitative research methodology, combining two parallel strands of documentary research and interviews.

The research team was supported by an international Scientific Advisory Board comprising ECEC experts from each of the participating countries and external experts. In addition, the project reported to a Steering Group consisting of representatives of the Ministries responsible for ECEC in the five participating countries.

A systematic documentary search and review was carried out to identify local and international literature relevant to the project task. Following the initial search, 157 documents were selected for a systematic review (see Appendix III). They include a wide variety of documents written in English and local languages, such as policy frameworks, reports, white papers, academic literature, country profiles, and international organizations’ reports.

A total of 5 interviews with policymakers (one of them a group interview), 5 interviews with ECEC experts and 5 group interviews with ECEC teachers were conducted. Group interviews with ECEC teachers were conducted in the local languages, facilitated by local research assistants. The aim of the interviews was to reveal how the different actors in the ECEC field perceive and describe the values and principles of evaluation and assessment in ECEC.

A content analysis of the interviews was carried out, using a hermeneutic approach for interpretation.

All project steps and preliminary findings were discussed with the Scientific Advisory Board for processual validation.

Findings from the documentary analysis confirm:

National guidance documents (e.g. national legislation or national curricula) relating to evaluating and assessing the quality of ECEC exist in all Nordic countries.

• There are some minor variations between the countries regarding evaluation of the individual child’s development. The Finnish curriculum states that there should be made an individual ECEC plan for each child. This plan should be evaluated regularly regarding its ability to enhance the child’s development. In Sweden, the curriculum requires the ECEC-teachers to document and analyse each child’s learning and development, in order to evaluate how the ECEC institutions provide the child with opportunities to develop and learn in line with the curriculum objectives. In Norway, all children's development must be monitored and be documented if the staff have concerns about the child.
• In addition to the ministries, all the countries except Iceland have national bodies whose mandate is to support local evaluation and assessment in the ECECs.
• The values and principles in the guidance documents are very similar. All countries emphasise children's own play, holistic growth, all-day pedagogy, well-being, democracy, equality, participation, rights of the child, community, and social justice.
• In all countries, the guidelines describe a wide range of learning areas, each with specific learning objectives. Broadly these areas can be characterized under headings such as democracy, diversity, communication, creativity, and sustainability. The learning objectives are value-oriented and emphasise how the ECECs should work with the specific subjects. With value-oriented objectives, it is the learning process that is important, since a specific outcome or result is not part of the objective.

Findings from the interviews show:

In all the group interviews, the value basis of the respective countries’ laws and regulations appeared as the starting point for the systematic work for improving the practices.

• The respondents reported on their evaluation and assessment of their pedagogical work, but also explained that structural qualities or lack thereof, such as ratio, group size, lack of personnel etc., had an important impact on their ability to live up to the national guidelines. The structural qualities were, however, seldom a part of the evaluation and assessment of the respondents.
• The respondents reported in their work on improving the ECEC as a pedagogical institution. Throughout all the group interviews, the respondents singled out pedagogical practices, not children, as the prime object of evaluation.

ECEC experts from the participating countries were asked a general question of what characterises good ECEC. They referred to values such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing marginalization by working towards equal opportunities regardless of background and abilities. These values line up with values in the national legislations and curricula.

• The experts held education level of the ECEC-staff to be a crucial factor for translating these values into practice. However, they also emphasized other aspects such as structural factors and the interplay between pedagogical quality and structural preconditions. Children’s learning and well-being require sensitive presence of pedagogues and co-workers.
• The respondents were also asked to reflect upon the usage of evaluation and assessment tools. They all agree about emphasising evaluation and assessment of the learning environment in the ECECs, and mapping individuals only when they had concerns about the child’s development. In Norway, the respondent pointed to systematic observation to assess and evaluate the practices of the ECEC-institution. If the systematic observation gives reason for concern regarding individual children, then mapping the abilities of these children makes sense. This mapping must lead to action. The respondent emphasises that that efforts and resources should be directed towards the ECEC practices, not towards mapping all children.

Policy makers from the participating countries report that all five countries organize the governance of the ECEC-sector under their respective ministries of education. The debate whether ECEC is a social service, or a part of the education system seems to have settled, although Denmark may be an exception since ECEC recently changed ministries there.

• The dual mission of ECEC-services, i.e., provider of education and equal opportunities in the job market, may be seen in the dual emphasise of care/well-being and learning as fundamental pillars of ECEC-pedagogy.
• In all five countries there are national laws and guidelines, but the task of evaluation and developing the ECEC-institutions is placed on the municipal level. Local variations may therefore occur (e.g. in Norway it lies with the kindergarten ‘owner’, 50% of which are private).

Despite differences between groups of respondents and countries, common features appear in the interviews:

Throughout the interviews, both with experts, officials from the ministries and ECEC-teachers, some values regarding assessment and evaluation recured. These were values such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing marginalization by working towards equal opportunities regardless of background and abilities. These values represent important objectives in the ECEC of all the Nordic countries and are therefore central for the evaluation and assessment.

• All the informants reflect upon the staff competence as a decisive factor for developing ECECs. Furthermore, an agreement appeared throughout the interviews that evaluation and assessment should primarily be of the learning environment, not the children. However, most of the evaluation and assessment were delegated to the local level, which entails variations in evaluation practices, also regarding evaluation of individual children. The informants underlined those individual evaluations were performed if the staff considered needs for extra efforts.
• In the interviews the respondents reflect upon the different requirements concerning pedagogical documentation regarding assessment and evaluation in the countries. Although the variations between the countries concerning documentations, the ECEC-teachers mentioned extensive documentation and frame factors as a hindrance to achieve the quality objectives.

Concluding arguments and pointers for further investigation

Bringing together the analyses of the interviews and the documentary analysis we conclude that is justified to refer to the existence of a shared Nordic model, and a shared Nordic approach to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. It is based on shared values and principles such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing inequalities.

Notwithstanding its shared characteristics, the Nordic model must be carefully interpreted in its specific and varied local contexts. Much responsibility is delegated to the municipality level, leading to local variations and influences on the evaluation and assessment in local ECEC-settings. This may indicate that the variations are not so much country specific, but rather linked to local contexts. For example, a municipality in Iceland and a municipality in Norway may have more in common with each other regarding evaluation and assessment than they have with other municipalities in their respective countries. An important conclusion, therefore, is that Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care are firmly situated in a Nordic model of governance that emphasises decentralisation and values local democracy. This overall policy context is then reflected in the systems of local ECEC governance.

At the same time, external influences are relevant to how evaluation and assessment are approached in the varied local and municipal contexts. This extends to the application of tools and the reception of research from outside the Nordic context. Governance of the ECEC-systems and sub-systems at the various levels is influenced by many factors. The focus on learning that emerged from the interviews, for instance, may not only be the consequence of the integration of ECEC in the education sector in Nordic countries, but also a result of impulses from a wider international discourse. These influences may include, among others, the approach to standardised assessment of young children pursued by the OECD, most prominently through the International Early Learning and Child-Well-being Study (IELS).

The situatedness of the Nordic model in a policy context of decentralisation, local multiple layers of government, and municipal autonomy emerges as an important element that requires further investigation. We propose that this will be particularly relevant when interpretations of the Nordic model are made in more centralised country contexts.

We recommend that Nordic countries explore concrete alternatives to IELS-style assessments and invest in comparative ECEC systems evaluation based on the principles and values documented by this research.

Introduction

With this document we report on a research project that conducted collaboratively by the Early Childhood Research Centre (ECRC) at Dublin City University and FILIORUM, Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care at the University of Stavanger. The research was commissioned by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and was funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The context for our study is the ongoing attention to services for young children, their families and communities in the international policy arena. This is, to a large extent, a story of success. Over the past two decades a broad global consensus has emerged, that participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is beneficial for children, for families, and for society in its entirety. The consensus is manifest, for instance, in the inclusion of early childhood education in the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2021), recommendations by international policy forums like the Group of 20, and high-profile policies of the European Union (Council of the European Union, 2019). Policy arguments for public and state engagement with, and investment in services for young children regularly draw on the importance of these services being of ‘high quality’ (i.e., Council of the European Union, 2011), leading to further questions about how to understand, develop, assure, assess, and evaluate the quality of early childhood education and care. None of the concepts listed above are neutral, all of them are highly contested in policy, professional, and academic debate (Moss, 2016; Urban & Swadener, 2016). All of them are imply choices to which there are always alternatives.

It has been one of the central criticisms of the practices of some of the most influential policy actors in the field, that particular understandings of quality, evaluation, and assessment are presented as undisputed and matters of fact, while in reality they are the result of paradigmatic and political choices. It is important, too, to remind ourselves that the international debate on quality and its related concepts is mainly conducted in the English language, which has become the de facto lingua franca in both policy and scholarship. This has profound implications, not least because English (like any language) is embedded in a considerable cultural, historical, and in consequence onto-epistemological hinterland that it projects (and imposes) onto other cultural contexts.

One of the discursive spaces that has emerged in the early childhood field is the positioning of a Nordic model or approach to providing services for young children, and to social welfare policies more broadly (Esping-Andersen, 2002). This Nordic model of universal, rights-based, democratically accountable, high tax and high public investment is often presented in contrast to Anglo-Saxon approaches characterised by low tax, low public spending welfare regimes, targeted interventions, combined with centralised, prescriptive governance, managerialism, and technical accountability. Both are constructs–discourses–rather than objective definitions; they might well serve introspective purposes as much, or more, as they describe the reality of early childhood education and care practice and policy.

In the field of early childhood education and care, the Anglo-Saxon paradigm is epitomised, among others, by initiatives taken by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), especially its International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS). IELS was proposed by OECD as early as 2012 as large-scale standardised testing exercise for young children. From 2017, a first round of IELS has been conducted with three participating countries: the US, England^{[1]In the UK, only England took part in IELS. All other constituting countries of the UK (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) chose not to participate).}, and Estonia. Several other countries were invited to participate but declined, often pointing out that IELS was not commensurate with the underpinning values of their ECEC systems. These include countries as diverse as Germany, Japan, New Zealand and others. First IELS results were published by OECD in 2020 (OECD, 2020). IELS has drawn criticism from the early childhood field globally from the outset. Main points of critique are that IELS:

• adopts a largely decontextualised approach that is insensitive to cultural and local contexts;
• uses standardised testing of five-year-olds to produce country comparisons and league tables, modelled on other International Large-scale Standardised Assessments (ILSAs) run by OECD, most prominently the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA);
• disregards the histories, political contexts, values and principles that underpin countries’ ECEC systems. Instead, it treats the education of young children as a merely technical practice;
• has questionable validity considering the unexplained choice of sample (a comparison between three countries with profoundly different ECEC systems)
  (Carr, Mitchell, & Rameka, 2016; Moss et al., 2016; Moss & Urban, 2017, 2018, 2020; Pence, 2017; Urban & Swadener, 2016).

Despite numerous approaches from ECEC scholars, professionals and their associations OECD has consistently declined to respond to any concerns or to take part in an open critical debate.

This project is grounded in these contexts, and their ongoing changes and developments. For instance, questions and doubts about the appropriateness of standardised testing of young children (the OECD’s IELS model), raised by Nordic policy makers, were an important impulse for commissioning this research. We will return to this question in the concluding section of this report.

This, briefly, is some of the context for the study on Nordic Approaches to Evaluation and Assessment in Early Childhood Education and Care.

Research brief

The task given to the research team was to conduct a study that will shed light on the values and principles that have guided the evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care in the various Nordic countries’ (Invitation to Tender, July 2020). More specifically, the brief asked for an investigation into the ways in which evaluation and quality assessment has been developed in the Nordic countries and the parties responsible for carrying out the evaluation and assessment.

The questions regarding ECEC policy and practice in each of the participating countries–Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden–lend themselves to a comparative analysis across the sample:

whether the Nordic countries have a coherent view on evaluating and assessing the quality of early childhood education and care and how evaluation and quality assessment is seen to be linked to the quality and development of early childhood education and care, to pedagogical practices and to the wellbeing, development and learning of children.

More specifically, we were given the brief to investigate the following topics:

1. The study will analyse the legislation and key guidance documents of each Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), ECEC legislation and key guidance documents (ECEC legislation, curricula, and other possible national guidance documents) and examine how legislation and documents regulate and guide ECEC evaluation and assessment and how the values and principles of the assessment are reflected in legal provisions and guidance documents.
2. The study will analyse and describe how evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care is implemented at national and local level in each Nordic country and by which parties it is implemented.

The task is broken down into four sets of research questions (see table below).

Table 2 Research questions

Structure of the report

In the following sections we outline our approach to investigating the research questions that were given to us by the Nordic Council of Ministers. We begin with a positioning of our research and ourselves as researchers in relation to the paradigms that frame the debate in policy and practice and, in consequence, the research brief we set out to investigate. We then move into a description of the methodology, i.e., our concrete approach to data collection and analysis across our sample of five participating countries. This is followed by a short summary of country profiles of the participating countries, and the presentation of the findings. The findings are presented in two sub-sections: Findings 1 focuses on information from the documentary research; Findings 2 on our interviews with educators, policy makers, and academics. We conclude the report with a brief discussion of some of the implications of this study, including the necessity for further research on the role of local actors (municipalities, ECEC providers) in the construction and characterisation of a possible Nordic model.

Positioning the research

Early childhood education and care [ECEC] has received unprecedented attention over the last two decades. There is now a global consensus of scholars and policy makers that the first years are a critical period in human life that requires our shared attention and responsibility in all societies. It is widely accepted, and supported by a strong body of research evidence, that participation in early childhood education and care, provided the programmes are of high quality, is beneficial for all children, and especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds (Council of the European Union, 2019; European Commission, 2011; Eurydice, 2009; United Nations, 2017). Beyond individual children, universal early childhood education and care services of high-quality benefit families, communities, and society on the whole. Increasingly, participation in early childhood education and care programmes is understood as right of each child, an essential public service for families and communities, and an investment in the present and future cohesion and prosperity of society. However, the concept of quality itself, how it can be defined, developed, and evaluated, is highly contested by early childhood scholars, professionals, and international organisations (Penn, 2011; Urban, 2005; Woodhead, 1996). While some promote more universal definitions that are meant to apply in any country and context, and that lend themselves to standardised testing and measurement (OECD, 2010, 2012, 2015; Raikes, Koziol, Davis, & Burton, 2020; Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2004; Sylva, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2003), others argue strongly for contextualised and multi-dimensional understandings of quality that are closely linked to local and cultural values, and require respectful observation, dialogue, and systemic approaches to definition and evaluation (Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 2007; Jones, Osgood, Urban, Holmes, & MacLure, 2014; Matthes, Pulkkinen, Pinto, & Clouder, 2015; OECD, 2001, 2006; Urban, 2015; Woodhead, 1996). The European Union has recently published a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care that emphasises the importance of these holistic approaches to defining, developing, and evaluating quality in ECEC across countries’ entire early childhood system (Council of the European Union, 2019; Urban, Vandenbroeck, Van Laere, Lazzari, & Peeters, 2011, 2012; Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care, 2014).

Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) have a long tradition of value-based approaches to understanding and describing quality in ECEC. They are often summarised as the Nordic approach to ECEC policy and pedagogy and have raised special international interest based on the high priority given to values of social inclusion through the ideas of universal ECEC services and the Nordic ideal of child-centeredness (Einarsdottir et al, 2015). However, the uncritical assumption of a single Nordic approach carries the risk of undue simplification. It is important to bear in mind that significant differences exist between the five Nordic countries. Carefully documenting and analysing these differences as well as communalities is of particular relevance to this study.

Systemic approaches to evaluation and Competent Systems

Internationally, the recognition of the importance of early childhood education and care services has led to an increased interest by policy makers, professionals, and scholars alike in the systems of policy and practice that enable and support the development of high-quality services for young children and their families. This is evident at global level, for example, in the policy briefs adopted by the T20 (an official engagement group for the Group of 20) over the last four G20 summits (Urban, Cardini, & Flórez-Romero, 2018; Urban, Cardini, Guevara, Okengo, & Flórez-Romero, 2019). The internationally emerging systemic turn is grounded, to a large extent, in the concept of a Competent System, developed by Urban et al, based on research carried out for the European Commission (Urban et al., 2011, 2012).

The raised visibility of early childhood education and care as a central policy area has also created an unprecedented interest in evaluation and comparison within and between countries, in order to understand similarities and differences, and elicit common characteristics of quality.

We strongly believe in the importance of systematic evaluation, and comparative studies of early childhood education. Equally strongly, we believe that they should be approached with respect and understanding of the cultural context, pedagogical tradition, image of the child, governance, and value base of the countries under investigation. This raises questions about the limitations of International Large-scale Assessments (ILSAs) as promoted, for example, by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the field of early childhood education and care (OECD, 2020). An understanding of comparison and evaluation as part of a science of difference (Nóvoa, 2018) can address some of these limitations. In this way the world’s rich diversity and complexity can be taken into account in evaluation and assessment of quality and remind us of that early year’s education is not primarily a technical endeavour (of standards and indicators, measurement and management), but a political endeavour about meaning, purposes, values and ethics’ (Moss & Urban, 2020).

Evaluation as meaning making and dialogue about values

The position we take with this study is supported by John Bennett, the author of the OECD’s landmark comparative studies in early childhood education and care, Starting Strong I+II, who points out the importance of acknowledging the ‘underlying assumptions about childhood and education’ that shape policies and practices in different countries (OECD, 2001). The call for a project to assess and evaluate the quality of early childhood education and care in the Nordic countries acknowledges the deep connection between the value base of early childhood systems and any attempt to better understand, document, and develop them further. Evaluation and assessment are terms that are firmly established in the global discussion on early childhood education and care, not least due to endeavours by transnational organisations like OECD (in the Global North) and World Bank (in the Global South). Developing a better understanding of early childhood system based on reliable data is undoubtedly important. It enables governments to set priorities, allocate resources more equitably, and monitor the effectiveness of policies put in place to reduce inequalities and achieve better and more equitable outcomes for all children, families and communities. However, large scale evaluations and assessments in early childhood education and care have become overly influenced by a particular paradigmatic position (i.e., A basic belief system through the lens of which we see, interpret and make sense of the world and our experiences in it (Moss, 2019)). The paradigmatic position, assumed, for example by OECD, tends to over-emphasise decontextualised truths revealed by scientific methods. In consequence, it tends to disregard complexity, context, and subjective interpretation and meaning making. A growing body of international scholarship that has been critiquing the way such thinking have informed recent and current assessment practices in the field of early childhood education and care (Auld & Morris, 2016; Carr, Mitchell, & Rameka, 2016; Morris, 2016; Moss, 2014; Moss et al., 2016; Moss & Urban, 2010, 2017, 2018; Pence, 2017; Roberts-Holmes, 2019; Sahlberg, 2015; Urban, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019; Urban et al., 2018).

Research approach

In consequence, there are two immediate implications for the design and conduct of the project at hand:

1. Languages of evaluation

We believe it is crucial to establish a starting point that acknowledges the value base that underpins early childhood education and care in the participating countries. This requires a careful, respectful and informed consideration of the cultural and societal values, their commonalities and differences across the five Nordic countries. It requires, too, the acknowledgement that differences exist within an overarching Nordic value system, and that values and practices are contested and subject to change and democratic debate. This responds directly to the stated purpose of the study, which is to shed light on the values and principles that have guided the evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care in the various Nordic countries, the ways in which evaluation and quality assessment has been developed in the Nordic countries and the parties responsible for carrying out the evaluation and assessment. Hence our starting point for the research was what Moss et al (Dahlberg et al., 2007) call languages of evaluation: a careful exploration of concepts and terms of evaluation that are commensurate with the ontological, epistemological, political and ethical positions that underpin the Nordic’ approach.

2. Comparative approach: Learning with each other

The second pillar of our approach to the research responds to the comparative purpose of the study that asks ‘whether the Nordic countries have a coherent view on evaluating and assessing the quality of early childhood education and care and how evaluation and quality assessment is seen to be linked to the quality and development of early childhood education and care, to pedagogical practices and to the wellbeing, development and learning of children’. Addressing this purpose, we paid careful attention to the possibilities of learning from and with each other across the early childhood systems of the Nordic countries. It guided us in designing a methodology that prioritises dialogue between countries and participants in a shared framework (values) over simplistic comparison of predetermined items. Our approach follows the examples set by leading international educational comparativists, i.e., Steiner-Khamsi (2004, 2013), Alexander (2000, 2012) and Morris (Auld & Morris, 2016; Morris, 2016) who emphasise the inseparable connection between culture and pedagogy (Alexander, 2000) and the value of cross-country comparison while, at the same time, cautioning against naïve attempts at policy transfer between distinct country contexts (Auld & Morris, 2016; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). A similar approach to carefully designed learning from and with each other across countries was employed by OECD in the initial Starting Strong studies (OECD, 2001, 2006). Instead of a simplistic ranking of the five countries, our approach to comparative study, evaluation and assessment emphasises pedagogical practices and their implications in context–as complex cases (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017; Stake, 2003)–and explores and documents the policy choices available to decision makers in relation to the specific contexts of their own countries.

Methodology

This study adopted a qualitative approach. To respond to the complexity of the information involved, we adopted a range of research methods and analytical tools. 

The project methodology consists of two interconnected elements:

1. Documentary research, focused on the content and discourse analysis of relevant policy and practice documents, and scholarly articles related to ECEC, identified through a systematic literature search.
2. A series of individual and group interviews with ECEC educators, policy makers, and scholars in the five Nordic countries

Both strands of the project were developed and carried out in parallel. Findings and analysis were then brought together, discussed with the scientific advisory board (see below) for validation, and documented in this report.

Project support structures

The project received continuous feedback from an International Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), comprised of leading early childhood scholars from the five Nordic countries and internationally renowned experts in early childhood education, evaluation, and comparative studies. Also, a Steering Group (SG) was established, consisting of the PIs, research team members, and a representative from the ministry responsible for early childhood education and care in each Nordic country. We have used the expertise of the members of the SAB and the SG to ensure validity and reliability of analysis and interpretation of the results. For members of both project support groups see appendix I.

Ethical approval

This research project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at Dublin City University (DCUREC/2021/121).

Data collection

The following table summarises the sources of information used in this study. The consist of documents identified in a systematic literature search and individual and group interviews with early childhood educators, policy makers, and academics in the five participating countries.

Table 3 Data sources (documents and interviews)

Documentary analysis

We carried out a systematic literature search and review, followed by content and discourse analysis of all documents deemed relevant to the brief of this study.

As a first step, we conducted a documentary search to identify local and international literature in the five Nordic countries. In order to identify the different voices (government, academics, practitioners, international organizations) around evaluation and assessment, we looked at a variety of documents, such as policy frameworks, reports, white papers, academic literature, country profiles, and international organizations’ reports. We conducted an in-depth search of local google domains, Google Scholar, and various databases through the DCU and Stavanger University library, using keywords in English and in local languages (evaluation, assessment, quality, early childhood, early childhood education and care, among others). In addition, we received support from all members of the steering group and the scientific advisory board to identify the most relevant documents in each country, including official texts and grey documents (i.e., unpublished texts and working documents).

In a second step, we carried out a systematic literature review of a total of 157 documents. All sources were entered into the CovidenceÒ software package for screening and data extraction. We extracted the documents based on key variables, such as publication year, document type, objective and topic, voices made visible, methods, empirical and conceptual basis, and what the documents said about quality, evaluation and assessment. We analysed the information with a content and discourse analysis approach. For processual peer validation, preliminary findings were shared and discussed with the Scientific Advisory Board.

The figure below summarises the documentary research:

Figure 1 Summary of documentary research

An overview of the 157 studies included can be found in Appendix III. Only the guidance documents are presented in the findings because these are the only documents the research questions ask for. The other studies found in the documentary analysis are used to inform the discussion.

Semi-structured interviews

A total of 5 interviews with policymakers (one of them a group interview), 5 interviews with ECEC experts and 5 group interviews with ECEC teachers were conducted. The aim of the interviews was to reveal how the different actors in the ECEC field perceive and describe the values and principles of evaluation and assessment in ECEC.

All interviews were conducted using encrypted Zoom video conferencing software. Recordings were transcribed, anonymized, and transcriptions given a file identifier that it is not traceable to individuals.

However, considering the small sample in expert interviews and in the interviews of the employed in the ministries, participants in these interviews may be identifiable. These participants were aware of this when they were asked to give their consent prior to the interview.

Description of dimensions and variables considered in the interviews.

Interviews with policymakers

The Ministries in each country were asked to choose a representative for an interview. Denmark asked for a group interview, which we agreed to. The five interviews with policy makers were carried out by members of the research team. In the interviews of the policymakers, we asked for organisations of the ministries and the responsibilities of evaluation and assessment in the ECEC sector, how they perceive the assessment and evaluation in the curriculums of ECEC, their view on what should be assessed/evaluated, what are current developments in their country related to assessment and evaluation, and what do they think is common in the Nordic Countries regarding assessment and evaluation in ECEC.

Expert interviews

Members of the Scientific Advisory Board (identified through our existing networks) based in the five participating countries agreed to take part in expert interviews. The five expert interviews were carried out by members of the research team.

The experts were asked about what they think is ‘good’ ECEC, what are the decisive factors that characterise high quality in ECEC, what role assessment and evaluation (systematic approaches) have, what are the objects of assessment or evaluation, who initiates, and what tools are used, different views in their country on assessment and evaluation, and what do they think is common in the Nordic Countries regarding assessment and evaluation in ECEC.
 

Group interviews

We organised five group interviews with early childhood educators, one in each participating country. The group interviews were conducted by locally recruited research assistants in order to facilitate conversation in the local languages. The local research assistants received preparation and training by members of the research team.

Participants were early childhood education teachers in the five Nordic countries, identified and recruited in a purposive sampling process, advised by members of the Scientific Advisory Board with extensive knowledge of the local contexts in the parti|ci|pating countries. The identity of participants in the group interviews is protected.

During the group interviews, participating ECEC teachers were asked to discuss issues relevant to their professional practice, in relation to aspects of evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. They were asked about what they think is a good ECEC/ECEC, what are the processes need to make good ECECs, if and eventually how they work systematically with improving their ECEC, what role assessment and evaluation have, what are assessed or evaluated -who initiate and what tools are used, and how influence the assessment and evaluation their work in the ECEC.

The group interviews were transcribed in the language of recording and summarized in English.

Table 4 Interview guiding questions

Analysis of the interviews

We have used a hermeneutic approach to the analysis of the interviews, reading the interviews as coherent texts and interpreted individual parts in light of the whole. This is traditionally explained as a hermeneutical spiral (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2016, 194). We carried out content analyses of the interview material (Jacobsen, 2018, 207). Based on the transcribed interviews, we identified categories and abstractions keeping in mind that these analyses seek to shed light on aspects of the informants' horizon of understanding. This form of analysis is often referred to as double hermeneutics (Gilje & Grimen, 1993, 144–147).

Country profiles

The table below provides a brief contextualisation of the ECEC landscapes in the five participating countries.

Table 5 Country profiles

Findings 1: Documentary analysis

The presentation of the findings is organised according to the four sets of research questions. We begin with the results from the documentary analysis, then move into the findings from the individual and group interviews.

Guidelines for evaluating and assessing the quality of ECEC

I. Do legislation or guidance documents contain provisions or guidelines for evaluating and assessing the quality of early childhood education and care? Have guidance documents set out why and how the evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care is carried out and what the objective and purpose of quality assessment and evaluation are?

Does each Nordic country have a national body responsible for the evaluation and assessment of early childhood education and care, and what mandate does it have and how does it perform its role in early childhood education and care?

In all the Nordic countries there are a national legislation and a national curriculum. The guidance documents contain provisions or guidelines for evaluating and assessing the quality of ECEC.

Denmark

In Denmark, the Act on Early Childhood Education and Care is the legal framework for the ECEC, and provides the legal basis for the pedagogical practices, including the establishment of an evaluation culture. The document requires municipalities to prepare a quality report, which describes developments in the municipal ECEC system. The objectives and guidelines for evaluation must be set by the municipal council. The Act also states that the work with the pedagogical curriculum is evaluated at least every two years. This evaluation must be based on the pedagogical goals set in the Act, including the assessment of the connection between the pedagogical learning environment in the ECEC service and the children's well-being, learning, development, and education. The director/leader of the ECEC is responsible for establishing an evaluation culture, which must develop and qualify the pedagogical learning environment.

The focus on the development of an evaluation culture is also established in the Strengthened pedagogical curriculum (2018). The document states that the ECEC leader is responsible for ensuring a continuous pedagogical documentation of the connection between the pedagogical learning environment and the children's well-being, learning, development, and formation. The purpose is not to evaluate individual children, but the learning environment. Within the responsibilities and guidelines set out by the municipal council, the individual ECEC leader may decide which type of pedagogical documentation to apply and how.

Finland

In Finland, the national legislation also states that the municipalities must evaluate the quality of ECEC programs and ensure compliance with the national defined minimum program standards. The Act on Early Childhood Education and Care (2018) defines that the purpose of the evaluation of ECEC is to ensure the implementation of the Act, support the development of ECEC and promote the conditions for the development, learning and wellbeing of children. It defines that the organizer and producer of ECEC (municipalities and private providers) shall evaluate the ECEC they provide and participate in external evaluations of their operation, and the core results of the evaluation shall be made public.  The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care - published 2016 and revised 2018- gives some guidelines on evaluation of ECEC. The document sets aims and goals for ECEC that are evaluated both nationally and locally. The document states that there should be made an individual ECEC plan for each child, and it should be evaluated regularly regarding its ability to enhance the child’s development.

As a supplement to the Act and the National Core Curriculum, the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) has published the Guidelines and recommendations for evaluating the quality of early childhood education and care (2019). The evaluation in itself must be enhancement-led. It should be goal oriented and spelled out in observable indicators of whether the goals are achieved. The evaluation process and the ensuing development are more important than the summative results. The evaluation may collect comparative data, these should however not be used for rankings of ECEC-institutions, but for local development of the ECEC-practices. The guidelines describe a research-based model for evaluation, which both functions as a tool and as a requirement for the ECEC-providers.

Iceland

In Iceland, the Preschool Act (2008) and the National Curriculum Guide for Preschools (2011) states that ECEC should be evaluated regularly, both by external and internal evaluations. The main purposes guiding the evaluation and the quality control are to provide information about the school activities, achievements and development, and to ensure that school activities are according to the law and regulations. To increase the quality of education and encourage improvements, and to ensure that children's rights are respected are also purposes for the external and internal evaluation.

According to these guidelines, municipalities shall administer evaluation and quality control of preschool activities and provide the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture with information about implementation of preschool operations, internal evaluation of the preschool, external evaluation by municipalities, process of preschool policy and plan for improvement.  In addition, each preschool shall systematically evaluate the achievements and quality of preschool activities, with active participation from preschool personnel, children, and parents as relevant. The internal evaluation involves evaluation of children’s wellbeing and education and the activities the preschool initiates in order to secure this. The evaluation should focus on children’s interest, abilities, and competence. Specifically, children’s development should be evaluated when it comes to independence, area of interest, participation in indoor and outdoor play, social skills and solidarity, initiative and creative force, expression and communication. The guideline documents stress the importance of transforming the results of the evaluation into development of practice.

Norway

In Norway, the Framework Plan for Kindergartens (2017) aims to give headteachers of kindergartens, pedagogical leaders, and other staff a binding framework for the planning, implementation, and assessment of the activities of kindergartens. In this document, an entire chapter is concerned to describe how the ECEC institutions must plan and evaluate their work. The object of evaluation is pedagogical practices, and the purpose is to ensure that the children are provided for in accordance with current laws and regulations. The group of children and the individual child's well-being and development must therefore be observed and assessed on an ongoing basis. Based on these guidelines, assessment involves not only describing and making visible the child group's and the individual child's well-being and development, but also actively analysing and critically examining the quality of the daily interaction in accordance with criteria from the management documents and observations and other forms of documentation. Quality in daily interaction is emphasized as the most important prerequisite for children's development and learning.

The Framework Plan and the Act on kindergartens (2020) emphasize that children shall regularly be given the opportunity to actively participate in the planning and assessment of the day care centre's activities. Also, the national legislation obligates the municipalities to evaluate the quality of ECEC programs and ensure compliance with the national regulations.

Sweden

At the national level, the Swedish government set targets and determine frameworks including extensive documentation, follow-up, evaluation, and development of quality. They draw up the quality goals in the Education Act (2010) and in the Curriculum for the Preschool (2018). The Act contains a clear requirement for systematic quality work. The Framework Plan defines that the purpose of the evaluation is to acquire knowledge of how the quality of the preschool (i.e., its organization, content and implementation) can be developed so that each child is given the best possible conditions for development and learning. The document thereafter specifies the roles and responsibilities of the teachers, the employees, and the director/head of preschool. It also states that all forms of evaluation should take the perspective of the child as the starting point, and children and parents should participate in the evaluation and their views are to be given prominence. The document also emphasized that children's development and learning must be monitored, documented and analysed systematically, while at the same time it is clear that it is the activities that are to be evaluated. This has left room for different interpretations of the curriculum text.

Common features in the Nordic countries

Although there are slight differences in the description of the guideline documents, they all focus on evaluation of the learning environment, relational quality, and organization of the ECEC. The main emphasis in all these documents is to evaluate and assess the pedagogical activities and learning environment, mainly by self-evaluation, in order to improve the ECEC. Common for all the countries is that the local level has the main responsibility for how the assessment and evaluation is carried out.

The documents stipulate that the ECEC-staff must monitor the children's development, but not assess children regarding learning objectives. The objective and purpose of quality assessment and evaluation are linked to objectives in the curricula, that emphasize holistic growth, all-day pedagogy, well-being, democracy, equality, and participation. Learning and playing is seen as interwoven processes, and childhood has intrinsic value.

Country variations

There are some minor variations between the countries regarding evaluation of the individual child’s development. The Finnish curriculum states that there should be made an individual ECEC plan for each child. This plan should be evaluated regularly regarding its ability to enhance the child’s development. In Sweden, the curriculum requires the ECEC-teachers to document and analyse each child’s learning and development, in order to evaluate how the ECEC institutions provide the child with opportunities to develop and learn in line with the curriculum objectives. In Norway, all children's development must be monitored and be documented if the staff have concerns about the child. In Denmark, the objectives and guidelines for evaluation are set by the municipal council. The director/leader of the ECEC is responsible for establishing an evaluation culture.

National's bodies responsible for the evaluation and assessment of the ECEC

I. Do legislation or guidance documents contain provisions or guidelines for evaluating and assessing the quality of early childhood education and care? Have guidance documents set out why and how the evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care is carried out and what the objective and purpose of quality assessment and evaluation are?

Does each Nordic country have a national body responsible for the evaluation and assessment of early childhood education and care, and what mandate does it have and how does it perform its role in early childhood education and care?

In addition to the ministries, all the countries except Iceland have national bodies whose mandate is to support local evaluation and assessment in the ECECs.

Denmark

The Danish Evaluation Institute (EVA) is an independent state institution established under the Ministry of Education in 1999 (succeeded the Evaluation Center, which existed from 1992-1999). The Institute explores and develops the quality of day care centres, schools and educational programs in Denmark. It provides usable knowledge at all levels and of interest for both local governments, ministries, and practitioners in all educational institutions.  Research and evaluations are carried out on its own initiative as well as on request from ministries, local authorities and educational institutions among others. EVA carries out evaluations as well as collecting and conveying knowledge in the field. This work can be about children’s development of language skills, or about how the local authorities carry out the obligatory task of assessing the language skills of three-year-old children.

Finland

In Finland, the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) is an independent agency responsible for national evaluation of the education sector, including ECEC and the development of evaluation. FINEEC’s has developed an evaluation system focusing on the national and local. FINEEC conducts external evaluations of ECEC and provides support for ECEC organizers in their statutory task of self-evaluation and quality management. The act on the National Education Assessment Center sets the obligation for the Centre to evaluate ECEC from 2015, before that ECEC was not included in its scope. FINEEC has published guidelines and tools for evaluation in ECEC-settings. Different materials related to the national evaluation of early childhood education and care (EAPI), information on ongoing external evaluations and reports of completed evaluations are published on the FINEEC website. The evaluation shall be enhancement-led.

Iceland

The Icelandic ministry of education administers an external evaluation that consist of assessments, surveys, research in addition to collection, analysis, and disseminations. The purpose of the external evaluation is to develop the local ECEC institutions. The Directorate of education is responsible for the external evaluation of ECEC and publishes reports on external evaluations https://mms.is/leikskolar (only in Icelandic).

Norway

The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training (UDIR) is the executive agency for the Ministry of Education and Research. The Directorate is responsible for the implementation of the national kindergarten policy and for the development of a solid knowledge base and guidance materials to support the quality work in kindergartens and the implementation of the Framework plan. For this purpose, UDIR has developed support material and tools linked to the Framework plan and a “quality system” that provides all the actors in the sector with a good basis for reflection and dialogues on quality, and for assessing and developing quality in the ECEC provision.  Furthermore, UDIR collects and analyses statistics and evaluations from the sector, including a national Parents Survey.

Sweden

In Sweden, the Swedish National Agency for Education (NAE) is the state authority that is responsible for supervision, follow-up, and evaluation of ECEC at the national level. The Agency is also responsible for official statistics in the area of education, support and publish guidelines, and achieving communication between the state and municipal level around ECEC evaluation. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate is responsible for supervision and quality assurance regarding preschools (primarily the municipal preschools), compulsory schools, upper secondary schools and the various forms of adult education. The primary aim of the inspectorate is to contribute to school improvement and development

Although there are some varieties of what kind of support these bodies produce, a central part of what is offered is providing material suitable for evaluation and assessment in the ECEC. These materials are easily accessible online and are formulated in line with national guidelines. The usage of these material is encouraged, but not mandatory. These materials mainly aim at enhancing local self-evaluation in order to develop the learning environment and quality in the ECEC.

Values and principles associated with evaluation and assessment

II. What values and principles are associated with the evaluation and assessment of early childhood education and care in the guidance documents in each Nordic country? What are the grounds for these values and principles?

III. What are the similarities and differences between the values and principles on which evaluation and assessment is based in the different Nordic countries? On the basis of this analysis, is it possible to ascertain that the Nordic countries have a common value base for evaluation and quality assessment? Can it be concluded that there is a specific Nordic model of evaluation and assessment of the quality of early childhood education and care in the Nordic countries?

The values and principles in the guidance documents are very similar. All countries emphasise children's own play, holistic growth, all-day pedagogy, well-being, democracy, equality, participation, rights of the child, community, and social justice.

The grounds for these values and principles have to do with the conceptualization of what ECEC should be and what role it should have in society. Although all the countries sort ECEC under the education sector of the welfare system, not a social service, the guideline documents recognise ECEC pedagogy as concerned with all aspects of the children’s development. Well-being and learning are two equally emphasized and integrated objectives of ECEC-pedagogics.

In all countries, the guidelines describe a wide range of learning areas, each with specific learning objectives. Broadly these areas can be characterized under headings such as democracy, diversity, communication, creativity, and sustainability. The learning objectives are value-oriented and emphasise how the ECECs should work with the specific subjects. With value-oriented objectives, it is the learning process that is important, since a specific outcome or result is not part of the objective. 

Central principles for evaluation and assessment in each country can be found in the table below.

Table 6 Central principles for evaluation and assessment

Findings 2: Values and principles as expressed in the interviews

The presentation of the findings in the interviews is organised according to the informants’ roles and country. The emphasis is on the similarities and differences between the countries. At the end, the most important findings are summarised.

Group interviews

In all the group interviews, the value basis of the respective countries’ laws and regulations appeared as the starting point for the systematic work for improving the practices. The respondents reported on their evaluation and assessment of their pedagogical work, but also explained that structural qualities or lack thereof, such as ratio, group size, lack of personnel etc., had an important impact on their ability to live up to the national guidelines. The structural qualities were, however, seldom a part of the evaluation and assessment of the respondents.

The respondents reported in their work on improving the ECEC as a pedagogical institution. Throughout all the group interviews, the respondents singled out pedagogical practices, not children, as the prime object of evaluation.

In Finland, the respondents referred to national evaluation tools that helped them to work goal oriented and take children’s perspective into account. The reflected on the purpose of the evaluation as giving the children the best possible ECEC. Together with other forms of assessment, such as municipality-initiated assessments and parent satisfaction surveys, they formed an over-all picture of their ECEC-institutions.

The respondents from Sweden explained how they used a reflection protocol to improve their pedagogical activities. Being an ECEC-teacher is a complex role, and systematic reflection improves their awareness and professionality. The respondents were primarily concerned with meeting children’s needs, not place them according to some pre-conceived categories of an assessment tool. With this precaution, the tools could provide information that was useful for evaluation.

The respondents from Norway reflected upon a similar concern. They all reported usage of various assessment tools such as CLASS, Marte Meo, and TRAS. Some of the respondents shared information from these assessments with parents, other used them strictly for internal improvement. These tools could be useful, one respondent claimed, but one should keep in mind that they are not context-sensitive and should not be regarded as a neutral and objective description of normality. The respondents’ experiences with presenting results for parents indicated that parents were mostly concerned with their child’s wellbeing, not scores on assessment tools.

In Denmark, the respondents also used reflection tools to improve their practice. They reported that they evaluate their work on topics set by the manager of the ECEC-institution. However, the management often failed to produce feed-back to the ECEC-teachers. The respondents reflected on the pros- and cons with assessment of children. Such assessment could be used to help children with special needs, but could also be too rigid and context blind, and present children with stigma rather than assistance.

In Iceland, all the respondents had experience with ECERS, but none of them were currently using it. It did not really answer to their needs in the evaluation work. The respondents explained how they organized the evaluation thematically into work teams. Each team had the responsibility to improve the practices on their theme, such as well-being, and work out strategies on what and how to improve on this theme. This internal evaluation worked well, in their view. The respondents had fewer positive experiences with national external evaluation. The evaluation resulted in a report lacking in the recommendations for improvement, and the evaluators did not follow up how the suggestions were implemented in the ECEC-institution.

Interviews with experts/researchers (Scientific Advisory Board)

The members of the project’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) were asked a general question of what characterized a good ECEC. They referred to values such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing marginalization by working towards equal opportunities regardless of background and abilities. These values line up with values in the national legislations and curricula.

The (SAB-members) experts held education level of the ECEC-staff to be a crucial factor for translating these values into practice. However, they also emphasized other aspects such as structural factors and the interplay between pedagogical quality and structural preconditions. Children’s learning and well-being require sensitive presence of pedagogues and co-workers.

The respondents were also asked to reflect upon the usage of evaluation and assessment tools. In Norway, the respondent pointed to systematic observation to assess and evaluate the practices of the ECEC-institution. If the systematic observation gives reason for concern regarding individual children, then mapping the abilities of these children makes sense. This mapping must lead to action. The respondent does not regard mapping the whole group of children as worth the effort and the resources spend on it.

The respondent from Denmark explained that the object of evaluation and assessment were of the pedagogical learning environment. However, there is a pressure from the municipality level and from parent groups for more assessment of children and their achievement of learning objectives. The respondent’s experience is that assessment on individual level is not a demand put forward by the ECEC-institutions, it is a pressure from the outside. The National Pedagogical Curriculum from 2018 support the line of evaluation the learning environment.  

The respondent from Iceland reports on a comparable situation. The ECEC-teachers emphasizes the ECEC-rooted play-centeredness, while learning objectives of academic skills is regarded with scepticism. The respondent experience that some parents voice an opinion to focus on school-like learning. However, the respondent reports that the ECEC-researchers and academics in Iceland support the current evaluation of learning environment, and clearly rejected the idea of a PISA-test on the ECEC-level.

In Finland, there are different views on how good the ECEC-institutions really are. The respondent relates that this is not merely an academic discussion but involves several groups. There is not so much disagreement on the values and overall objectives of the ECEC, instead the debate is concerned with how and whether these values are realized in the ECEC-settings. Such discussions are led on topics like children’s participation, belonging and the risk of marginalization, and schoolification. The respondent’s experience is that cooperation between ECEC-academics and officials in the ministry of education runs smoothly, while there has not been a similar tradition for cooperation between academics and officials at the municipal level.

The respondent from Sweden reports that the national regulation from 2011 concerning teaching in ECEC, initiated a comprehensive discussion of what teaching in ECEC means. One of the outcomes of the debate was a clear appreciation of the all-day-pedagogy that characterizes the ECEC. Teaching and learning concern all aspects of the child and happens throughout the entire day, just as often in unplanned activities as in planned. Therefore, it follows that evaluation and assessment should be of the learning environment in a broad sense. The respondent experiences the fact that the national curriculum specifies objectives for the learning environment, not for children’s academic skills, as widely supported in Swedish ECEC-academic circles.

Interviews with policymakers (members of the Steering Group)

All the five countries organize the governing of ECEC-sector under their respective ministries of education. The debate whether ECEC is a social service, or a part of the education system seems to have settled, although Denmark may be an exception since ECEC recently changed ministries there.

The dual mission of ECEC-services, i.e., provider of education and equal opportunities in the job market, may be seen in the dual emphasise of care/well-being and learning as fundamental pillars of ECEC-pedagogy. This was a topic in the interviews with the officials at the Steering Group.

The respondent from Sweden expressed that care and learning are difficult to separate, because they take place throughout the entire day. There is an ambition to clarify the concept of teaching in the curriculum and through emphasizing the pedagogical responsibility of the ECEC-teachers. In this manner, the respondent expresses that school-thinking influences ECEC more than ECEC influences the primary school. However, this influence is different from schoolification of the ECEC. It is a formulation of ECEC’s place in the education system giving ECEC freedom to define teaching/learning in their own terms.

In Iceland, the respondent emphasized play as the children’s way of learning and the teachers’ way of teaching. By playing, children learn even though there is no sense of instrumentality to their play. They do not play to learn, they simply play. This idea of learning is fundamental to ECEC-pedagogy.

The respondents from Denmark referred to values from the strengthened pedagogical curriculum (2018) such as recognition of the children’s perspective and children’s participation, and play. In this manner the value of children as human beings as well as human becomings is a central part of the national curriculum.

In Finland, as well as in Sweden, there is pre-primary school organized within the frames of ECEC. The interrelatedness of ECEC and primary school is seen in the overlapping regulations of the pre-primary school. Pre-primary school regulation governs the part of the day when the children have their pre-primary education, while ECEC-regulations governs the rest of the day. A pilot project of expanding the pre-primary school to 5-year-olds, is a step towards seeing the ECEC as part of the education.

In Norway, the discussion concerning how to understand teaching/learning in ECEC took place as the current curriculum was formulated. There was much discussion and involvement of the sector in the development of the new Framework plan and the curriculum learning objectives are formulated as processes of learning, A holistic view on learning and play continues to hold a prominent role in the curriculum.

The respondents were also asked to reflect upon the division of responsibilities between national and municipal level. In all five countries there is national laws and guidelines, but the task of evaluation and developing the ECEC-institutions is placed on the municipal level. Local variations may therefore occur.

The respondent from Norway explained how the ministry works to realize the ambition of equal quality and availability of the ECEC-services throughout the country. In addition to the national regulations, the directorate produce support material, and they collect statistics based on the annual reports from the ECEC-institutions. The respondent point to new regulations regarding staff and regulation of the supervising role of the municipality, as examples where the national level of governance had to create clearer framework for the municipalities. The respondent furthermore explains how research provides essential information on how the ECEC-sector works. Qualitative and quantitative assessments and studies provide the information other countries could choose to collect through national tests or assessments.

In Denmark, the local ECEC-institutions must create a local pedagogical curriculum and evaluate how they work to realize its aims. The municipalities supervise the ECECs with a new and updated model for municipal supervision.

The respondent from Finland reported on the work of the newly established national centre, FINEEC. This centre works to support and guide the municipalities in their development of the ECEC-sector. These guidelines are research-based and focus on pedagogical and structural qualities. The centre work on a digital evaluation platform but seeks to avoid benchmarking. The respondent explains how the centre works to guide the municipalities to do evaluations that enhance the quality of the local ECEC-practices.

In Sweden Skolverket has a similar role as FINEEC in producing support material to enable the ECEC-institutions to evaluate themselves. The municipality has the responsibility that the ECEC-institutions are run according to the national curriculum.

The respondent in Iceland related that the gross variety in municipality size, sometimes created difficulties for the evaluation processes. Small municipalities may not have the resources to do this according to the national recommendations. The ministry has newly published a report on development of the ECEC-sector, here the internal and external evaluations play a crucial role. The respondent reports that there is work in progress to strengthen the external evaluation. As it is now, the external evaluation is in-efficient.

Common features and variations

Throughout the interviews, both with experts, officials from the ministries and ECEC-professionals, some values regarding assessment and evaluation recured. These were values such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing marginalization by working towards equal opportunities regardless of background and abilities. These values represent important objectives in the ECEC of all the Nordic countries and are therefore central for the evaluation and assessment.

All the informants reflect upon the staff’s competence as a decisive factor for developing ECECs. Furthermore, an agreement appeared throughout the interviews that evaluation and assessment should primarily be of the learning environment, not the children. However, most of the evaluation and assessment were delegated to the local level, which entails variations in evaluation practices, also regarding evaluation of individual children. The informants underlined those individual evaluations were performed if the staff considered needs for extra efforts.

In the interviews the respondents reflect upon the different requirements concerning pedagogical documentation regarding assessment and evaluation in the countries. Although the variations between the countries concerning documentations, the ECEC-teachers mentioned extensive documentation and frame factors as a hindrance to achieve the quality objectives.

Discussion and conclusion

This study is an investigation into questions that relate the ongoing international debate about quality in early childhood education and care to the specific situation in the participating five Nordic countries–Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In commissioning this study the Nordic Council of Minister also responds to an increasingly prevalent discussion: how do actors at all levels of the early childhood system assure themselves and their respective audiences of what is actually going on in our ECEC settings, and how do we make sense of it in order to support and improve it? In recent years, these are questions have increasingly been framed as questions of evaluation and assessment. The conceptual link between quality and evaluation in education in general, and in early childhood education more specifically, has been promoted by influential international actors. They include the European Union, who specifies evaluation as one of five pillars of the EU Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care (Council of the European Union, 2019; Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care, 2014). Linking quality to evaluation has been a central topic of the work undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the field of education and early childhood education and care over the past two decades. This has taken a specific form, connecting a rather technical and managerial language of quality with standardised and largely decontextualised assessment and standardised testing. The approach taken by the OECD has been widely criticised by some authors who point out that it deflects attention from children and educators’ experiences in divers contexts to largely meaningless ranking and comparison of countries (Alexander, 2012; Auld & Morris, 2016; Ball, 2012; Carr et al., 2016; Morris, 2016; Moss et al., 2016; Moss & Urban, 2010, 2017, 2018, 2020; Pence, 2017; Urban, 2015; Urban & Swadener, 2016). As authors have pointed out consistently, introducing and using such particular language of evaluation (Dahlberg et al., 2007) is a political choice and paradigmatic position, to which alternatives exist and can be constructed. The problem arises when such positionings remain undeclared, own vantage points are assumed to be shared by all, and the existence of alternative paradigms is ignored.

Responding to the brief given to us by the Nordic Council of Ministers we situate our study within the existing paradigm of quality of ECEC as something to be aspired to, and evaluation as one critical tool for achieving the goal. We are, however, aware that the questions of what goes on in ECEC settings, in interactions between individuals, groups and institutions in that space, can–and should!–be investigated and understood in many other ways as well, that are beyond the scope of this study. Alternative paradigmatic positions could include, for instance, the exploration of early childhood education as local experiments in democracy and shared meaning making, as intergenerational encounter in the face of existential crises facing humanity, as spaces for onto-epistemological engagement with many different funds of knowledge or as radical challenge to neoliberal individualism and creative realisation of the common good.

In the report, we have organised our responses according to the four sets of questions. We have presented our findings with a double focus on a) current developments in each of the participating countries and b) on overarching elements that may constitute a Nordic approach to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. The findings presented in the previous sections of the report are based on a rich body of qualitative data comprising of documents and recorded conversations with partners in five countries and at various levels of the ECEC system.

At this point we think it is pertinent to turn to some overarching conclusions we think we can draw from our findings, and from the more specific responses to the four sets of research questions in the previous sections. They refer to the existence of a Nordic model, its characteristics, and the way it is situated in its specific context.

The Nordic model

Our findings point to the conclusion that there is indeed an approach to early childhood education and care, and more specifically to evaluating the quality of practice, that transcends the practices and policies in the five participating countries and can be described as Nordic.

The document analysis points to the existence of a Nordic model. In the documents reviewed (academic articles, reports, and regulations) the existence of a Nordic approach is stated by authors from Nordic and other backgrounds. In the documents, the existence of such a model is usually defined in opposition to other approaches (i.e., the Anglo-Saxon perspective). In the documents, especially in the academic literature and international reports, the Nordic model is associated with: universal services, holistic approaches to ECEC, the ECEC as a means of counteracting social inequality, children’s and families’ participation, some level of local or institutional decision-making, unstructured learning environments, value-led education, and systemic approaches to evaluation and assessment.

The analysis of the documents also suggests that elements of the Nordic model coexist with elements from other approaches. This is discussed in the academic literature on the topic and can also be found in the regulations. A growing emphasis on evaluation and assessment seems to be present in most Nordic countries, which can be seen, for instance, in the creation of national evaluation agencies, the introduction of individual development plans, and the exploration of standardised instruments such as ECERS. This may suggest the presence of elements from other models. However, since evaluation in most Nordic countries is a municipal competence, this point will require further analysis.

The findings from the interviews indicate that there is a shared understanding of how evaluation and assessment are presented in the legislation and guidance documents. This is evident in the different kind of interviews across the countries. This shared understanding is present in the findings concerning values and principles of the ECEC. This seems to confirm the portrayal of a Nordic model based on common values such as well-being, child-centredness, play, learning, professionalism, and reducing inequalities.

However, what presents itself under the umbrella of this Nordic model is complex, diverse, and by no means uniform. Despite the differences between the ECEC systems, significant similarities exist across the Nordic countries in relation to values, policies, and practices, and not everything that takes place in ECEC in the Nordic countries can be linked to the Nordic model as there are other coexisting influences.

The similarities, we found, centre around the value base that underpins every-day pedagogical practice as well as policy making in the ECEC space. One of the key messages from all our participants is that the central locus where quality is produced, assessed, and evaluated is indeed the concrete daily interaction with young children. It is in these pedagogical relationships where quality becomes visible, not in specific assessment events, set in scene to produce test results or other forms of decontextualised data.

Everyday pedagogical practice as the centre of quality points to the value that is attributed to early childhood educators (early childhood teachers, pedagogues) as the ones that are central to enacting and assuring quality in their interactions with children, individually and in groups. This, in turn, is only possible because of the trust other actors at policy level (the system) put in early childhood educators who are seen as competent, autonomous, professional, and ethical actors.

Characteristics of the local context of the Nordic model

The systemic characteristic of what we identify as the Nordic model is reflected in the importance given to the local sites of interaction and engagement with quality. The document analysis (regulations) show that the role of municipalities is particularly prominent in the context of our study, reflecting how the Nordic model is embedded in wider societal structures in the Nordic countries, and closely connected to local democracy.

A constituting element of the Nordic model is that children’s well-being comes across as the core of the purpose of early childhood education; an orientation that is shared widely, by actors at all levels of the ECEC system.

Further to this shared orientation towards children’s wellbeing, and the shared value of local enactment of quality, we find a shared understanding that the focus of evaluation is on the learning environment and the systemic interactions between individuals, institutions, and agencies in the ECEC system, rather than on assessing (testing) individual children.

These values are reflected at the level of national ECEC governance, which is understood as having responsibility for enabling the emergence of quality ECEC experiences for all children. National structures and agencies assume their responsibility by recognising the central role played by actors at local/municipal level.

The findings of the interviews must therefore be nuanced by including a discussion of the local context of the ECEC. In all the Nordic countries the municipalities play a major role in governing the local ECEC-institutions. The informants discuss how the delegation of responsibility to the municipality level influences the evaluation and assessment in local ECEC-settings. The informants pointed at this variation from their respective perspectives, i.e. ministry, research, and ECEC-institutions. This may indicate that the variations are not so much country specific, but rather linked to local contexts. For example, a municipality in Iceland and a municipality in Norway may have more in common with each other regarding evaluation and assessment than they have with other municipalities in their respective countries. In this manner evaluation and assessment is situated in the Nordic model of local governance of ECEC. The interviews seem to reflect close cooperation between the Nordic countries regarding evaluation and assessment in the legislation and guidance documents. Furthermore, the informants perceived research conducted in one of the countries as highly relevant for, and easily applicable to the other Nordic countries. However, the interviews do indicate that research and tools for evaluation and assessment from countries outside of the Nordic context, are relevant. This means that the governance of the ECEC-sectors on the various levels is influenced by many factors, i.e. the focus on learning is not only a result of integrating the ECEC in the education sector, but also a result of impulses from a wider international discourse.

The Nordic model as an imaginary of early childhood education and care

As a further conclusion–and invitation to further discussion–we propose that the Nordic that underpins the approaches to ECEC documented in our study can and should not primarily be understood as a geographical concept, located in five countries only. It is more helpful, we suggest, to approach our understanding of a Nordic model as a concept with implications that are bound by values, interests, and politics that surround and transcend early childhood education and care.

One question arising from such a view is, for instance, whether the apparent dichotomy of the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon models (as brought to the debate by authors including Moss, Bennett and others) could be understood as a construct brought to the table with specific objectives in mind. In what way, for instance, can the introduction of a Nordic approach be seen as a conduit–a discursive tool–created by authors from within the dominant English language context, for the purpose of giving shape to the critique of their own context? Such a reading, then, might link the English language debate about what constitutes a Nordic model to other concepts that have entered the anglophone debate on early childhood education and care, including, for instance, the concept of social pedagogy (i.e., Cameron & Moss, 2020). It might also lead into a critical debate on how other, non-Nordic value based pedagogical approaches have been used to formulate resistance and alternatives to existing mainstream ECEC practices and policies in the ‘anglosphere’. Moving forward it will be important, we suggest, to critically interrogate the implications of such strategic uses of concepts and terms. Could, for instance, the proliferation of the Nordic in the ECEC discourse contribute to its decontextualization, as it has, arguably, in the case of Reggio Emilia? If that is the case, what are the implications of such an interpretation for the recognition (or NOT) of other possible ‘models’ that are not dominated by English language and its surrounding socio-cultural/political assumptions?

Concluding suggestions

The role of the local in Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care has emerged as crucial from our study. Considering this, we suggest that further comparative studies should pay much closer attention to the municipal arena of producing, interpreting, evaluating, and assuring quality in ECEC. This has consequences for how we conceive and design comparison that reaches beyond the national level. We have touched the surface of this but were limited in the scope (i.e., time and resources) of this project.

We suggest that rather than shifting the focus from the national (i.e., country comparison) to the micro-level (local processes) it will be important to design studies that investigate the relationship between the local and the central (i.e., levels of government) as a defining element of evaluation in ECEC systems. One question arising for the international debate on evaluation and assessment is how much the approaches promoted by influential international actors (i.e., OECD) are shaped by undisclosed assumptions about the role and power of central government (a key feature in the UK, for example). What are the implications for designing large-scale international tools if local democracy and decision making are recognised?

We suggest that the findings of this research could inform a more in-depth discussion within and among the five participating countries about possible next steps towards comprehensive systemic evaluation of ECEC. This discussion would take further the initial doubts about the appropriateness of decontextualised, standardised approaches as exemplified by IELS. It could seek to engage and invest in processes to develop an alternative model to comparative ECEC systems evaluation, grounded in the values, principles, and democratic structures that underpin early childhood education and care in the Nordic countries. Other countries outside of the Nordic region could be invited to join the process. Together, the five Nordic countries would be able to exert considerable influence in the international debate on ECEC policy, in the context of the European Union as well as within the OECD.

Limitations of the Study

The findings on this report must be seen in the light of some limitations. While our two-tiered, parallel approach enabled us to generate a substantial amount of data, we want to be clear that any conclusions drawn will have to be read with a caveat: any finding presented in this study is the product of several layers of interpretation. Each document we reviewed was written by its author(s) with a particular intention, for a specific purpose, seeking to convey its message to a particular audience. These were then subject to another layer of interpretation: by us, the research team. In a similar way, the interviews record not simply factual information, but contextual interpretations by our interview partners, and messages they find important to convey to an international audience. In turn, their statements were then interpreted again by the research team. We believe this does not take away from the relevance of the findings. It is, however, necessary to point it out as it contributes to the limitations of this study. There are three major considerations in this study that should be addressed in future research.

First, it should be pointed out that the literature search revealed a significant number of relevant documents (including legislation, policy documents, reports, books, academic articles, theses and grey literature). However, considering the nature of the research brief given to us, and the limited resources of the project (12 months), the detailed analysis of a significant number of these documents is beyond the scope of this text. However, we anticipate returning to more detailed reviews of these documents in future publications.

Second, it should be considered that the literature review focuses exclusively on national regulations. This is a significant contribution, as it sheds light on the guidelines for evaluating and assessing the quality of ECEC in the Nordic countries. Nevertheless, one of the findings of this research is that, in recent decades, municipal governments have gained an increasingly important role in regulating ECEC. Therefore, to understand the full picture of ECEC quality evaluation and assessment in the participating countries, local regulation should be analysed. Better resourced future projects should include the study of regulations and guidelines at all government levels, including interviews, with particular attention paid to the municipal level.

Finally, it should be highlighted that due to the small sample size and the qualitative, hermeneutic research approach, findings from the interviews cannot be considered representative and any generalisation should be approached with caution. While generalisation should never be at the core of qualitative research, a larger and more varied sample (i.e., including local policy makers), in better resourced follow-up projects would certainly enrich the picture presented in this report.

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Appendices

Appendix I: Members of the Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Camilla Björklund
Göteborg Universitet

Professor Jóhanna Einarsdóttir
University of Iceland

Associate Professor Tomas Ellegaard
Roskilde University, Denmark and Danish Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care

Professor Paul Morris
UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

Professor Thomas Moser
University of South-Eastern Norway

Professor Emeritus Peter Moss
UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

Assistant Professor Maiju Paananen
Tampere University, Finland

Appendix II: Members of the Project Steering Group

Finland, Ministry of Education and Culture
Chair of the steering group: Tarja Kahiluoto, Senior Ministerial Adviser
Member: Kirsi Alila, Senior Ministerial Adviser
Deputy member: Mervi Eskelinen, Senior specialist

Denmark, Ministry of Children and Education
Member: Louise Solgaard Hvas, Head of section, Division for Early Childhood Education and Care at the Ministry for Children and Education of Denmark
Deputy member: Sofie Bøving Hansen; Head of section, Division for Early Childhood Education and Care at the Ministry for Children and Education of Denmark

Island, Ministry of Education, Science and Culture
Member: Björk Óttarsdóttir, Senior Adviser
Deputy member: Sigríður Lára Ásbergsdóttir, Senior Adviser / Deputy Director      

Norway, Ministry of Education and Research
Member: Tove Mogstad Slinde, Senior Adviser
Deputy member: Victoria Elise Olsen, Senior Adviser 

Sweden, Ministry of Education and Research
Member: Christer Tofténius, Senior Adviser
Deputy member: Anders Edin, Desk Officer

Appendix III: Literature review

Table 1. Literature review
Table extracted from Covidence, the software used to carry out the documentary analysis.

About this publication

Nordic Approaches to Evaluation and Assessment in Early Childhood Education and Care

Final Report

Mathias Urban, Elin Reikerås, Gunnar Magnus Eidsvåg, Jennifer Guevara, Janken Saegø and Carolina Semmoloni

ISBN 978-92-893-7273-2 (PDF)
ISBN 978-92-893-7274-9 (ONLINE)
http://dx.doi.org/10.6027/temanord2022-512

TemaNord 2022:512 
ISSN 0908-6692

© Nordic Council of Ministers 2022

Cover photo: Elisabeth Tønnessen

Published: 21/2/2022

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