Reconciling Caring and Market Imperatives in Global Early Childhood Education and Care Practice

A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Globally, early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners face the unique challenge of balancing market-driven demands with caregiving imperatives, navigating these competing rationalities in complex and multifaceted ways. This study systematically reviews 32 empirical accounts from academic scholarship to answer the question: how do early childhood practitioners balance the market imperative with the imperative to care? Educator efforts are dimensionalized according to three levels of professional engagement: micro- (interpersonal, caring-learning interactions), meso- (organizational and community-level engagement), and macro- (collective or national systems of provisioning and governance). Grounded in the concept of discursive governance, the discussion examines how market and caregiving imperatives are negotiated at both interpersonal and structural levels within ECEC. The findings highlight how educators prioritize care when resisting commodification pressures, illustrating the relational nature of teaching and learning and the importance of stakeholder governance for meaningful early learning experiences. Embracing the complexity and multiplicity of these negotiation efforts is crucial for advancing equitable ECEC experiences, recognizing that education depends on the balancing of both economic and social imperatives to sustain social reproduction and cohesion in liberal market economies.