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For nearly 50 years, the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) has been integral to the IOE (Institute of Education), UCL's Faculty of Education and Society (University College London, UK). This article is written from the perspectives of four researchers who have served in the TCRU's formative years and over its lifetime. It chronicles the TCRU's history and meaning, situating these reflections within the wider and much changed context of academia, politics and society. It begins with an overview of the TCRU's origins as a dedicated government-funded research unit in 1973, the rationale and aims of its founder and first director, Jack Tizard, and the TCRU's subsequent evolution, and its work in the fields of childhood, families and children's services. This is followed by a consideration of some important features of the TCRU, which have created its distinct identity, for example multidisciplinarity, working with mixed methods, international collaborations, a convivial and collegiate environment and a continuing capacity to generate new ideas and directions for research. The article also reflects on some of the challenges faced by the TCRU and how it has responded to them. The article concludes by considering whether there is still a place today for a dedicated, university-based social research unit with a long-term and strategic orientation.

This article explores possible relationships between education and social pedagogy. It begins by examining in more detail the theory and practice of social pedagogy, and the profession of social pedagogue widely known in Continental Europe but much less so in the Anglophone world. It then explores some different meanings of education, before considering in more detail the concept of "Bildung" and its potential for interconnecting education and social pedagogy. It is argued that the relationship between social pedagogy and education depends on the meaning attached to education; and the article ends by considering some implications -- for schools, other settings for children and young people, and for their workforces -- of choosing a close relationship between education and social pedagogy

Over the last 30 years, neo-liberalism has permeated early childhood, as all other aspects of life. Having introduced what neo-liberalism is, the article looks at some of its effects on early childhood education and care, including markets, imaginaries and governance. It argues that though neo-liberalism is a powerful force, it is resistible and replaceable -- and that now is the time to be developing alternatives to existing policies, grounding them in ideas that contest neo-liberalism.

Between 1996-1998, England, Scotland and Sweden moved responsibility for all early childhood education and care (ECEC) and school-age childcare (SACC) services from welfare into education. Following an earlier study researching these reforms up to 2003, this article examines and compares subsequent developments and consequences of the initial reform, from 2003-2017. These differed widely. Sweden succeeded in achieving further integration and better access to services, while services in England and Scotland remained divided and fragmented. England's attempt at major reform did not survive political change; while Scotland's more ambitious universalist approach was constrained by lack of appropriate devolved powers and a clear vision of how ECEC and SACC might fit into the education agenda. Undue dominance of the school and the teaching profession posed risks in all three countries. The article considers possible reasons for the differing responses to a common policy change, including the different histories of ECEC and SACC prior to transfer, processes of subsequent policy development, and the effects of differing welfare regimes and path dependency.

The COVID-19 crisis calls for a transformation of education and schools, with the crisis having shown the many roles and purposes they do and can serve. But, the article argues, in the process of transformation there is another valuable experience to draw on: the 'Every Child Matters' policy agenda of the Labour government, including the concept of the extended school. Drawing on research into this ambitious programme, the article considers the potential of this image of the school, a rich image that has been wilfully neglected by governments since 2010.

This colloquium brings information about a second cycle of OECD's International Early Learning and Well-being Study (IELS) to the early childhood community, and offers a further critique of the approach to comparative research that the IELS embodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting and finishing with the words of Sally Lubeck, one of the founders of RECE, this article locates early childhood education, all education, in conditions of polycrisis, conditions that are extremely dangerous but offer a glimmer of hope by making transformative change more possible. The article argues that such change calls for re-thinking, re-conceptualising and re-forming (early childhood) education; and, with a focus on the systemic crisis of neoliberalism, explores what this might mean, starting from a re-politicisation of early childhood education, all education, leading to political questions and political choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the fourth colloquium for "Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood" on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, and marks the recent publication by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of reports on the first round of this study. In it, the authors discuss what the results tell us, what they do not and what might come next. They conclude by supporting the need for comparative studies of early childhood education, but argue that the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study is not the way to go.

In this colloquium, the authors provide an update on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's proposal for an International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, the 'first wave' of which is now being implemented in three countries: England, Estonia and the USA. The authors argue that as the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study progresses, its superficiality and pointlessness become more apparent. They also locate the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study in a 'global web of measurement' centred on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, whose aim appears to be the reduction of education to a purely technical exercise of producing common outcomes measured by common indicators, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development acting as the global arbiter, assessor and governor of education. They call on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and its partners to start engaging with legitimate concerns and criticisms.