The present article is a synthesis of a research project carried out together by OECD and UNESCO in 2001, on the development and implementation of integrated and coordinated services for early childhood education and care - ECEC - in a systemic perspective. The project underlined issues related to both developed and developing countries, and proposed a new approach for an integrated system of ECEC. This model resulted from a shift on the paradigm that considered that the care and education of the small children should be an exclusive attribution of the family to one that postulated that it should be a task shared with society at large. This model was built on the legitimation of out-of-home child socialization, making the upbringing process to become both a public and a private concern. The research pointed out the implications of this model for policy and programme implementation and identified convergent and divergent tendencies among the countries analyzed. It also called attention to the main challenges and pitfalls that emerge in the path towards the elaboration of an integrate policy, at the same time coherent and consistent.
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION; CHILD CARE; PUBLIC POLICIES; EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH