Our World from My Window: Understanding Complex Issues in ECD

Visit BGCafé to meet Sheldon Shaeffer, a frequent, eloquent, informative, and provocative leader in the World Forum community. He regularly contributes to BGCafé by helping us sort through some of the complex issues in early care and development. 

The world of early childhood is marked by a number of complex issues concerning who “young” children are, why young children deserve greater attention, and what can be done—and by whom—to ensure their optimal growth, development, and learning, especially for the most vulnerable children. The sheer complexity of these issues can make this world of early childhood a daunting one, for policy makers and practitioners alike, with many competing definitions, policy frameworks, and program priorities. The vision of “Our World from My Window” is the achievement of greater consensus around these issues among key early childhood stakeholders. Each post of this series will, therefore, attempt to both analyze and clarify these issues in terms of the challenges they present and possible solutions available to resolve these challenges.

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Episode 1: Issues in ECD
In the first column in this series, Sheldon Shaeffer clarifies the essential issues of conceptualizing early care and development of young children, including definitions, developmental stages and age range.

Episode 2: Transitions
Shaeffer shares his expertise about the impact of transitions on the development and learning of young children, offering a vision for creating transitions based on understanding the needs of the child.

Episode 3: School Drop-outs
The causes for children dropping out of school are shared, and myths about this issue and these children are exposed in Shaeffer’s presentation.

Sheldon Shaeffer has been the Asia and Pacific regional coordinator for the Global Leaders programme since 2011, and is currently chair of the board of directors of the Asia-Pacific Regional Network on Early Childhood. He was formerly chief of UNICEF’s global education programme in New York and director of UNESCO’s Asia and Pacific regional bureau for education. He has taught, conducted research, and worked in development programmes in Southeast Asia for over 50 years. His interests now focus on early childhood development and inclusion in education and learning.

To watch Sheldon’s series in BGCafé go to:

bonniesglobalcafe.worldforumfoundation.org/our-world-from-my-window/