Early Education for All: Celebrating Diversity and Seeking Inclusion

EECERA believes that every young learner matters equally. Yet, despite significant progress in improving participation in quality early education and learning, millions of young children worldwide continue to be excluded from education for reasons which might include gender, sexual orientation, ethnic or social origin, language, religion, nationality, economic condition or ability. Poverty, location, gender, language, disability, ethnicity, religion, migration or displacement status are among factors that continue to dictate and limit opportunities. Inclusive education works to identify all barriers to education and remove them and covers everything from system development and policy shifts to evolving curricula and pedagogic practices.

Global crises have made some inequalities more visible, widening existing disparities and creating new inequalities and exclusion in education, particularly for marginalised and disadvantaged groups. Steady progress has been made over time but the pace is not enough to achieve Early Education for All. There is an urgent need to think and act collectively to transform existing education systems and promote those that that respect diverse needs, abilities and characteristics and eliminate all forms of discrimination in the learning environment. This requires the development and implementation of inclusive policies and practices which reach excluded and marginalized groups and provides them with quality education that has inclusive curricula, pedagogy and learning at their heart. Our work at EECERA in this area is guided by the 1981 UNESCO Sundberg Declaration, the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1990 UNESCO World Declaration on Education for All, the 2015 UNICEF Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the Education 2030 Framework for Action, each of which emphasize inclusion and equity as the foundation for quality education.

This conference will acknowledge and celebrate visible and less visible diversity and take the view that all children can learn and that every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs. It seeks to foreground how exclusionary policies and practices can be challenged and new practices developed to ensure each child’s needs are taken into account so that all learners participate and achieve together. It sets out to share understandings of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of exclusion and inclusion in its broadest sense. We are very interested in how inclusion might work in different cultures and communities and with regard to children with different characteristics.

At EECERA 2025 in Bratislava, Slovakia we seek to provide a forum foregrounding inclusion for critical reflection and dialogue through exploring these questions:

  • Which children are excluded, how does this happen and how might this be changed?
  • What constitutes inclusive early education and how is this culturally located?
  • What possibilities do we have to embed inclusive policies and practices within all early education systems and settings?

 

Conference Strands

  • Values and Value Education
  • Culture, Community and Society
  • ECEC Contexts, Transition and Practices
  • Play and Learning
  • Supporting Families in Early Years Settings
  • Innovative / Alternative Approaches
  • Sustainability in ECE
  • Parent Partnership in Early Years Settings
  • Professionalism and Pedagogues / Educators Role
  • National Curricula in ECEC
  • Paradigms, Theories and Methodologies for Working with Young Children
  • National and International Research in ECEC
  • The Present and the Future of Child-centred Practice
  • The Child and Local Community
  • Quality Early Childhood Education
  • The Relationship of Home Learning Environment and Local Community
  • Children’s Policy
  • The Role of Families’ Cultural and Social Traditions