There is an urgent need to think through the underlying tacit assumptions in this field carefully, before uncritically plunging into empirical research that routinely obscures more than it reveals.
Take the recent Office of National Statistics research, for example. Does a mechanistic, outcomes-obsessed approach yield any useful information about early-childhood environments? When 'measurable outcomes' are driving decisions about how we care and relate with young children, wisdom routinely gets sidelined - and with no guarantee that such outcomes data is remotely capable of 'capturing' the qualities of experience that make a difference to young children. Such empirical research also uncritically assumes that measurable 'achievement' at ever younger ages is necessarily developmentally appropriate.
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