Description of conference theme:

The field of early childhood research draws on many disciplines in the pursuit of quality. Policy makers, too, increasingly look to multi-sector, multi-disciplinary solutions to the social and educational issues they face. Many practitioners find distinctions between 'education' services and 'care' services irrelevant in constructing appropriate environments and programmes for young children's development. In such multivariate conditions, can universal descriptions of a quality curriculum for young children be applied? How far, and in what ways, can policy and research inform, and be informed by, the concept of a quality curriculum? How far is an equitable, accessible curriculum for all a reality? As curriculum is increasingly defined is there scope for children to exert agency?

The EECERA 2004 conference featured the following presentations by keynote speakers (available in pdf):

Early childhood provisions in Malta: Equity through quality [2]
Dr Carmel Borg, University of Malta, Malta

The leading edge of learning: recognising children's successes as learners &em; Actual and possible selves [3]
Professor Margaret Carr, University of Waikato, New Zealand

The curriculum as means to raise the quality of early childhood education [4]
Professor Ferre Laevers, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium

Conceptualising the early childhood professional [5]
Pamela Oberhuemer, State Institute of Early Childhood Education and Research, Munich, Germany

Curriculum issues in national policy-making [6]
[See also the paper [7] based on this speech]
Dr John Bennett, OECD Directorate for Education, Paris, France

Making a difference in the lives of young children: Evidence from Project EPPE [8]
Professor Kathy Sylva, Oxford University, UK