The Free Preschool Year in Ireland: The Perspectives of Early Childhood Educators and Policymakers

This thesis explores the introduction of the Free Preschool Year (FPY) in Ireland from the early childhood \u27educators\u27 and \u27policymakers\u27 perspectives. Under the new FPY initiative introduced in 2010, all children between the ages of 3.2 - 4.7 are offered free preschool hours for a period of one year prior to their entrance into primary school. This research identified the need to study the introduction of FPY as research into this topic to date has been limited. The purpose of this research was to understand the rationale behind this new initiative as well as exploring the issues of \u27qualification requirements\u27, \u27professionalism\u27 and \u27quality\u27 within the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector in Ireland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 respondents (3 key policymakers and 8 educators) regarding core issues under study. Bearing in mind that FPY was introduced during the period of economic crisis in Ireland I have adopted the theory of \u27constructivist institutionalism\u27 as a guide to bring some insight into the issue of policymaking processes during economic crisis (Hay, 2006). Findings suggest that the policy ideas behind the introduction of FPY were driven by economic crisis, which suggests that other presented key objectives: saving childcare infrastructure, keeping people in employment as well as preventing the collapse of ECEC could only have been argued for during the economic crisis. One of the key findings in this research is that with the introduction of FPY and its concomitant qualification requirement/standardisation, the ECEC sector is becoming institutionalised and professionalised as a result of these new policy changes. Findings also suggest that \u27early education\u27 may have superseded \u27childcare\u27 in ECEC policy thinking. However, this attention towards preschooling may lead to decreased attention to ECEC service to children under 3.2 years. Some of the key challenges highlighted in this research were related to issues of quality, training, professional recognition and age category. Nonetheless, the findings in this research suggested that FPY policy has been highly welcomed by all the stakeholders as an important step towards ensuring equality of access, quality provision, qualification standardisation as well as professionalisation of the ECEC sector and its workforce in Ireland

An Examination of Concepts of School Readiness Among Parents and Educators in Ireland

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness as they are understood by early years educators and managers, primary school principals, junior infant teachers and parents of children participating in the first Free Preschool Year in Ireland. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving interviews, an online survey and “draw and tell” sessions with children. Representative samples of FPSY settings and primary schools were selected and an online survey based on the findings of the qualitative phase was sent to 500 pre-primary settings and 500 primary schools. In this study, the concept of school readiness as understood by parents of children availing of the FPSY, and early years educators and managers, emerged as a multi-faceted and complex concept, influenced by and entwined with a range of interrelated factors at macro (policy), meso (interrelationships) and micro (pre-primary and primary) levels. These factors included children’s social and emotional skills, dispositions, language development, self-help skills, appropriate classroom behaviour and pre-academic skills. School readiness was clearly located along a maturationist-environmentalist continuum where readiness was associated with a child’s age as well as external evidence of the acquisition of specific skills. Interview and survey participants articulated a range of school readiness indicators, with significant differences in some instances between the importance allocated to these indicators by individual participant groups