Getting beyond the problem with quality

Abstract

SUMMARY The article artues that the concept of quality is neither neutral nor objective, but permeated by values and socially constructed within the project of modernity. It embodies a modernist belief in the possibility of definitive and universal criteria that will offer certainty and order; it has no place for complexity, values, diversity, subjectivity, indeterminacy and multiple perspectives. Quality is only one way of evaluating early childhood services and their pedagogical work; its current prominence is due in part to the growing influence of new managerialism. Other choices exist for evaluation, and the article outlines one of these, the concept of meaning making; situated within a postmodern perspective, this concept foregrounds provisionality, multiplicity and subjectivity. Getting 'beyond the problem of quality' does not mean reworking the concept of quality: rather it turns out to mean that we have a choice, with ethical and political dimensions, about whether or not to work with that particular concept.