Towards a New Vision of Quality Early Childhood Education

In this paper, I demonstrate the insufficiency of developmental knowledge as the framework of early childhood education quality. For this purpose, I analyse two documents that currently govern the practice of Indonesian early childhood education, the early childhood education standard and early childhood education Curriculum 2013 (the latest Indonesian curriculum), focusing on their sections on developmental indicators and learning outcomes. Drawing on critical policy analysis scholarship, I argue that an over-reliance on developmental knowledge to frame the notion of quality is insufficient and problematic. Its presence has led to the absence of learning contents and outcomes that represent Indonesia's national identity, disconnected the policy notion of quality early childhood education from the transformative vision of education in general, as well as obscured the vision of technological advance that supposedly is a core ingredient of the notion of quality early childhood education.