Cultures in Mind: Quality, Values, Standards, and Practices in ECEC in Denmark and the United States

Since 2002, university students from the United States have had the opportunity to enroll in practicum experiences in Denmark while studying abroad. The dilemmas raised by the American students in practicum in Denmark provide a unique window through which to view pedagogical practices from different cultural perspectives. The students are able to observe and experience critical aspects of daily life in Danish institutions for children and staff from within the institutions themselves. By looking through the lenses of a different ECEC tradition (the U.S. preschool tradition) as “cultural outsiders,” the students provide us with a cross-cultural dialogue about educational practices. They take us into critical dialogs about overall cultural questions concerning the goals of early childhood, and how each of the choices made (by governments, institutions, staff) bring us closer to or further away from our goals. These discussions reflect the larger question about education: “Do we measure what we value, or do we value what we measure?,”Instead of one universal answer to the question, “What is good education?,” the importance of asking the question instead comes from the explicit discussions that we (professionals, or even society in general) have about our values, standards, and practices.