Unpacking the mechanisms shaping perceptions of quality in early childhood education research and practice as illuminated by cross-cultural conversations between practitioners from Britain and Jamaica

Globally, attempts to develop standards and improve educational outcomes have largely been the impetus behind early childhood education reform efforts. Notwithstanding the difficulty in achieving this, decisions driving such efforts have predominantly revolved around providing ‘quality’ and have been in response to questions surrounding; What can we do better? What does it look like? and What do we do next? These questions are important for both researchers and practitioners because, as Schweisfurth (2014, p.260) notes, the global quality imperative has often been ‘addressed obliquely and couched in terms of its outcomes rather than its processes’, shifting the focus of research towards evidence-based practice that uses cause and effect models and quantitative impact measurement (Stewart-Brown et al., 2011; NICE, 2014; Nesta, 2018).