Nathan Archer

Book Review: Critical and hopeful Early Childhood in the Anglosphere: systemic failings and transformative possibilities Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell, London, UCL Press, 2024. 260pp, hardback, £45, ISBN: 9781800082557; paperback, £25, ISBN: 9781800082540

Symposium presentation highlighting findings from a small scale qualitative enquiry.

Keynote presentation for TACTYC Annual Conference 2024

In this paper, we ponder the ecologies of spacetimematterings folded into resistance practices and their relationality with figurations of agency outside and beyond datafication agendas. Accountability cultures bound up with datafication have consequences that include a diminished agency for both children and educators. We take inspiration from the...

In 2019, the English government embarked upon revision to the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) document and to associated non-statutory guidance. At the time, concerns were raised that early childhood experts were insufficiently involved in drafting the document. Consequently, an Early Years Coalition of early childhood organisations...

Editorial for Special Issue

Following calls to 'bewilder' (Snaza 2013) the pioneers of early education , this article positions Montessori pedagogy as a 'desire path' that acts as resistance to normative policy-driven pathways in early childhood education and care. Desire paths are alternative tracks made aside from officially established walking routes. In this paper I think...

This paper forms one of a series of Working Papers published by the International Montessori Institute, Leeds Beckett University

Presentation at the Reconceptualising Early Childhood Education (RECE) conference

Keynote Presentation

In this paper we narrate how playful pedagogies can resist the single story of formalised learning discourses in early childhood education and care. According to Wood (2015), play is fundamental to learning and established in international literature. In addition, through international treaties, children have the right to play (OHCHR, 1989). Yet, i...

The early childhood workforce in England has experienced periods of policy attention and more recently policy neglect. During the past two decades (2000–2022) the extent of interest in workforce policy has fluctuated with episodes of investment followed by phases of disinvestment. Throughout this period, early childhood educators have been subjecte...

The BERA Research Commission 2019–2020 sought to explore how the four nations of the UK negotiate the tensions, impacts and democratic alternatives perceived and experienced in early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision as consequences of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2012). The principal features of GERM have thei...

The BERA Research Commission 2019–2020 sought to explore how the four nations of the UK negotiate the tensions, impacts and democratic alternatives perceived and experienced in early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision as consequences of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2012). The principal features of GERM have the...

Recent years have seen international and national policy intensification in early childhood education (ECE). This has manifested in multiple ways, including the design and implementation of increasingly prescriptive curricular policies. Against this backdrop some early educators are pushing back. Drawing on work from their recent enquiries and doct...

Recent years have seen international and national policy intensification in early childhood education (ECE). This has manifested in multiple ways including the design and implementation of increasingly prescriptive curricular policies. Against this backdrop some early educators are pushing back. Drawing on work from their recent enquiries and docto...

Neoliberal thinking has increasingly shaped global and national policy incursions in early childhood education. Research has highlighted the power effects of such policies with consequences for pedagogy, provision and the professional identities of educators. Less well understood are educator responses to these policies. Whilst literature offers so...

Report as part of the Nuffield Foundation series 'The Changing face of early childhood in Britain'

Report for the Sutton Trust About the Sutton Trust The Sutton Trust is a foundation which improves social mobility in the UK through evidence-based programmes, research and policy advocacy.

Nathan Archer explores the idea that an outcome-driven, accountability culture is shaping a limited and limiting research agenda. He calls for richer, more diverse perspectives.

In 2015, the British government implemented a national Baseline Assessment policy for children at the start of their Reception Year (aged 4–5 years) in England. Adding further assessment to the national Early Years Foundation Stage, the Baseline policy was predicated on reform for improved school accountability, with a focus on measurement of both...

A poster presentation based on research from the MA in Early Childhood Education at University of Sheffield 2015.