Last of my Kind, by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

Don’t forget to download and read this excellent work: urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978...

That is a very kind thing to say, thank you!

In the conclusion, we critically reflect on our own role in taking on this commissioned work, the importance that policy makers involve academics already at the design stage of the tender/commissioned work, and the importance of methodological pluralism.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Blindspot 5: The various forms of publication bias.

Countries known for extensive provision of ECEC were overrepresented. This means that the evidence base for the revision of the Barcelona targets might be the weakest for those countries that might be furthest away from achieving them.

Blindspot 4: The focus on individual-level rather than macro-level outcomes.

Reform studies focus on individual-level outcomes, which facilitates causal inference but overlooks higher-order outcomes and thus the relationship between ECEC and important societal developments.

Blindspot 3: The focus on short-term outcomes.

Many studies in the ECEC reform database examined the immediate and short-term effects of policy changes. Only a few reform studies included in the database have examined how long it takes for implemented policy reforms to have an effect.

Blindspot 2: The limited focus on reducing inequality in the use and benefits of ECEC.

Yet, reform studies are silent on the degree of cross-country inequality in ECEC use. Consequently, which aspects of ECEC policy lead to an increase or decrease in inequality in ECEC use remains unknown.

Blindspot 1: The context-specific nature of reform studies.

Focusing on excluding ‘confounding’, reform studies generally focus on a single country, and are less able to explain how to increase effectiveness depends on its interplay with other institutional and structural conditions.

Our commissioned focus was very much on reform studies. The value of such studies to isolate the causal effect is indisputable, but a tradeoff is that these reforms studies tend to be empirically narrow.

We kept wondering: “What are we missing?”.

So, we reflected on five blindspots:

At breakneck speed, with a very short deadline, we delivered the work, and a report (available here: data.europa.eu/doi/10.2838/...)

The report has interesting findings, we think, and demonstrated again how important the accessibility, affordability and quality of childcare policies are.

It started out as a report commissioned report by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (@ec.europa.eu). We created a database of ECEC reform studies, in preparation of the revised Barcelona Targets (on childcare).