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Is this field connected to care or education? Should care be implied by education,
rather than having them be mutually exclusive? Educational researchers focusing on
older learners call for education to be more caring (Noddings, 1992). Eisner (1991)
recommended that all teachers develop an ethic of caring and create a caring community.
Care embraces the roots of the field (Ferguson, 2004). The directional thrust has become
the combining of the two terms.
Suggested terms for the field include child care and early education or, with the
concern for which word is first, early education and child care or early care and
education or early education and care. These longer designations are verbose. According
to Caldwell (2004), “Most people would agree…that these terms are long and
cumbersome and have too many syllables” (p. 5). The term suggested by Caldwell to
counter the length and awkwardness of these labels is educare, but it too has yet to be
universally accepted and seems to signify a corporate branding that is inappropriate.
Moss (2000) examined the training of early childhood education and care workers
across six countries and found that fundamental to differences in terminology were basic
questions about early childhood education. What are the purposes of early childhood
institutions and the work they undertake? Different understandings of early childhood
institutions presume very different constructions of the young child, producing very
different understandings of the early childhood worker (Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999).
Such diverse understandings are reflected in various terminologies used to describe
groups of workers in different countries.
In the study by Moss (2000) three basic options for early childhood workers are
identified. The pedagogue, trained to work with children from birth to 6 or older in non-