Institutes for Early Education Research: A New Type of Organized Knowledge Transfer and Production between Pedagogical Concepts and Scientific Discourse

Since the late 20th century, educational systems globally have been subject to heightened political and scientific scrutiny. In addition to systems of continuous education and school education, one of the primary subjects of this newfound interest in education are systems of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), which were constituted as a central part of shaping modern knowledge economies. In the wake of this development, political governance opened new pathways for scientific institutions to establish themselves as influential forces in shaping ECEC, resulting in a situation where pedagogical practice and discourse were increasingly shaped by external scientific stimuli and political needs.

From a global perspective, a crucial element of this trend was the establishment of a new type of research institution we characterize as 'Institutes for Early Education Research' (IEERs). In contrast to 'classical' – i.e., academic – modes of organized scientific knowledge production, these research institutes are situated as an intermediary layer between political governance and pedagogical practice. While adopting the rhetoric and appeal of scientific discourse and knowledge production, IEERs shape ECEC systems through the dissemination of programmatic and practice-oriented guidelines loosely connected to fields of scientific knowledge. Consequently, IEERs have established themselves as an organizational landscape whose power to shape pedagogical practice and discourse through knowledge transfer surpasses political directive competency.

Our contribution will reconstruct this organizational landscape analysing the ambiguous discursive effects, ruptures, and struggles for positions of expertise evoked by IEER knowledge production and transfer in ECEC. Using the case of Germany, we map and situate the identified institutions in the context of their political and organizational environments. Then we identify the specificity of their production of scientific knowledge, i.e., the specific type of discourse these institutions produce. Lastly, we reconstruct the transfer of these discourses through an empirical analysis of ECEC curricula.