Recognizing Early Childhood Education as a Human Right in International Law

There is incontrovertible evidence that early learning opportunities shape long-term development and health. Nevertheless, early childhood care and education (ECCE) is not expressly mentioned as part of the right to education in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This paper argues that the right to education can nevertheless be regarded as including ECCE. We examine the treaties, General Comments, and 264 Concluding Observations by relevant UN monitoring bodies, covering 152 countries from 2015 to 2020, to determine whether the right to ECCE is regarded as part of States' obligations and the content of the duty. These demonstrate consistently that States must provide affordable, accessible, quality, inclusive ECCE, with adequate resources. We argue that monitoring committees should draw these obligations together in one General Comment, thereby improving States' accountability and guiding the delivery of ECCE

Collaborative Teaching across the Disciplines: Psychology Meets Feminist Theory and Literary Studies

ABSTRACT This essay, co-written by a visiting Psychology professor and a tenured English professor at a small liberal arts college, examines our experience teaching a collaborative class-unit of separate classes in Feminist Theory and Psychology of Gender. Despite personal commitments to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural scholarship, faculty obligations to a home discipline and even student commitment to disciplinary methodologies create particular difficulties for feminist teaching. This essay details a practical experiment within institutional parameters to create a truly cross-disciplinary experience for students. Student responses to the unit, obstacles to interdisciplinary work, instructorsââ¬â¢ reflections, and future directions for collaborative cross-disciplinary work are detailed

Role of pediatricians, pediatric associations, and academic departments in ensuring optimal early childhood development globally: Position paper of the international pediatric association

Early childhood (birth-8 years), particularly the first 3 years, is the most critical time in development because of the highly sensitive developing brain. Providing appropriate developmental care (i.e., nurturing care, as defined by the World Health Organization [WHO]) during early childhood is key to ensuring a child\u27s holistic development. Pediatricians are expected to play a critical role in supporting early childhood development (ECD) through providing developmental services such as developmental monitoring, anticipatory guidance, screening, and referral to medical and/or community-based services when delay is identified. Pediatricians are also expected to serve as advocates within their clinics and communities for improved delivery of ECD services, such as advocating for increasing funding for ECD initiatives, increasing insurance coverage of ECD services, and working to increase other pediatricians\u27 awareness of the principles of ECD and how to deliver developmental services. However, this does not always occur. Typically, pediatricians\u27 training and practice emphasizes treating disease rather than enhancing ECD. Pediatricians are further hindered by a lack of uniformity across nations in guidelines for developmental monitoring and screening. In this article, we present the vision of the International Pediatric Association (IPA) of the roles that pediatricians, academic departments, medical training programs, and pediatric associations should fulfill to help support ECD, including raising ECD to higher levels of priority in routine pediatric care. First, we present the challenges that face these goals in supporting ECD. We then propose, with supportive literature, strategies and resources to overcome these challenges in collaboration with local and international stakeholders, including the IPA, the WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank