Early Childhood Education and Care in Denmark: The contested issue of quality in children’s everyday lives

Most children in Denmark live large parts of their everyday life in childcare institutions. In this chapter, we explore how young children are active agents conducting their lives across different contexts. We investigate children’s perspectives on their participation in early childcare; a conflictual practice, currently exposed to multiple political aims and interest. In Denmark, the childcare system is anchored in a historical tradition emphasizing the informal and mutual relation between children and adults, the children’s rights to influence their everyday life and their right to “free-play”. However, currently childcare is increasingly considered a central arena for supporting young children enhancing their personal competences. Due to this, former traditions seem to be challenged by a current focus on professional methods and concepts in relations to enhancing quality, learning and early intervention in early childhood education. These political movements tend to foster a focus shift away from children’s engagements and contributions to an emphasis on isolated learning activities and learning indicators. In this chapter, we focus on the meanings of these policy movements and how they tend to reveal themselves as contradictory conditions in the everyday childcare practice for both children and professionals. By empirical examples, we wish to elaborate on children’s ways of conducting their common everyday life, together with co-participants in the contradictory social practice of early childcare. Analysis like these contribute to the discussions of childcare by leading our focus on quality and pedagogy in other directions than standardized indicators