For increasing numbers of Australian children, childcare is part of their everyday experiences. The marketisation and corporatisation of education have been under discussion for some time, particularly in relation to schooling. There has been comparatively little public scrutiny of how this trend might impact on, and shape Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). This article explores the existing and potential impacts of privatisation and corporatisation of ECEC in terms of how these constrain and are reshaping the vision and the practice of what is done for children in the prior-to-school sector.

This article proposes utilising the theory of practice architectures to uncover and make explicit the beliefs and implicit theories of early childhood educators, as well as to examine the conditions out of which they have emerged. The beliefs and implicit theories of early childhood educators influence many early childhood practices and play a significant role in guiding the pedagogical experiences of children. Aimed at identifying elements of practice that constrain and enable praxis, the theory of practice architectures has been effectively applied in tertiary, secondary and primary education, but has had limited use in early childhood education contexts. The article explores its potential for helping educators better articulate their practices and applies the theory to examine a number of discursive, material and social influences that shape (and are shaped by) early childhood practice. Implications for early childhood educators' praxis are framed in the context of contemporary challenges of early childhood education.

How a community constructs the notion of childhood and the child is fundamentally implicated in the practices and policies of that community. This article explores the positioning of the child in historical, contemporary and emerging trends in the provision and practices of Australian early childhood education and care. It argues that if left uncontested, emerging contemporary constructions have the potential to normalise policies, practices and pedagogies derived from a commercialised view of childhood. Drawing on the experiences and practices of early childhood pedagogues and policy actors both in Australia and overseas the authors posit an alternative construction of the child as citizen and the possibility of the early childhood field as a site for the practice of democracy.

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Since the 1990s, neo-liberal economics has profoundly altered the nature and delivery of early childhood education and care in both Australia and New Zealand through the creation of childcare markets. Accompanying the rise of the market has been a discourse of childcare as a commodity – a commodity marketed and sold to its consumers (read parents) as a private benefit. The stratifying impact of neo-liberalism in education policy has been argued by numerous scholars of education. Arguably, in both Australia and New Zealand, early childhood education and care is more commodified and subject to the market than any other area of education. Thus, the authors consider whether early childhood education and care has shifted away from being understood as a social good, a site for social cohesion and democratic practice – all of which the authors consider to be implicated in a conceptualisation of belonging appropriate to the project of early childhood education and care. This article considers the impact of neo-liberal policies on early childhood education and care in Australia and New Zealand, especially in relation to understandings and manifestations of ‘belonging’. The authors trace the impact of neo-liberalism in early childhood education and care policy and examine the ways in which the discourse of early childhood education and care provision has changed, both in policy and in how the market makes its appeal to parents as consumers. The authors argue that appeals to narrowly defined, individualised self-interest and advancement threaten understandings of belonging based on social solidarity and interdependence.