Even before going to school education is central to children’s lives (OECD, 2021). In Germany, this can be concluded from the expansion of institutional early childhood education and care (ECEC) offers and the risen number of educators in the past years: Today, 93 % of the 3- to 6-year-olds visit kindergarten (German education report, 2020). However, institutional offers are often more expensive than family-based offers generally leading to the fact that families with lower incomes have lesser chances to advance their children’s development in high-quality settings or at least have lesser chances to profit from it in the long run (Kuger & Peter, 2019). Moreover, educational ambitions and care need to be balanced continuously with regard to individual preferences depending on, for example, social origin (Vincent & Ball, 2006). Considering the heterogeneity that results from this balancing as being intertwined with social inequality (Solga et al., 2009) educational inequalities in ECEC potentially (re-)produce (Nienhaus, 2018). This potential risk is not insignificant given the fact that the qualifications and attitudes of educators have remained more or less the same despite the above-mentioned expansion. In this regard the legal framing of educational efforts in kindergarten via education plans may be seen as a chance to compensate for educational inequalities (German education report, 2020) in the way that educationally relevant skills are promoted (Conference of the German Ministries of Youth & Culture, 2004). Considering long-term studies on children’s skills and quality in ECEC like the US study of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, 2001) or the British study on the effective provision of preschool education (EPPE, Sylva et al., 2010) advancing social-emotional skills (SES) is important to pave the way to success at school. 

This in mind my research project, which I would like to present in my paper, focuses the question of whether and to what extent the implementation of education plans in ECEC compensates for educational inequalities (German education report, 2020; Conference of the German ministries of youth & culture, 2004). To do so, I aim to show in my project how education plans in German kindergarten interrelate with educational inequalities in early childhood focusing on children’s SES. Assuming a shared interest in children’s development (Frindte et al., 2016) the possible (re-)production of educational inequalities mentioned above becomes evident in “hubs” or “interfaces”, i.e. situations in which parents, educators and children are directly or indirectly linked to each other because they deal with children’s skills showing differing or even contradictory orientations towards education (Nienhaus, 2018). These orientations may be based on implicit ascriptions to social origin, e.g. when a preschool teacher talks about “tired children” not being able to do long walks into the woods because they are not used to do similar excursions with their parents (Nienhaus, 2019). Since deficits in children’s SES, i.e. unfavorable or even deviant behavior, increase in German ECEC (Klipker et al., 2018), the (compensatory) promotion of basic skills (Scheithauer et al., 2019) is of great importance, e.g. in activities that foster children’s collective and perseverant behavior (Nienhaus, 2019). This in mind I lay special emphasis on ascriptions and positionings resulting from the above-mentioned underlying or hidden assumptions that add to or help to reduce educational inequalities in ECEC. In this regard I focus social origin as a determinant of social inequality (Solga et al., 2009), but also look for possible interactions with other influencing factors like gender, migration background, physical or mental disabilities (Beyer, 2013).

To get a comprehensive understanding of how educational inequalities in early childhood start to (re-)produce or reduce I work on three studies on different social levels based on qualitative multi-level analysis (Hummrich & Kramer, 2018). In the first study, I conducted interviews with representatives of ECEC providers in rural and urban areas (regional level). The interview transcripts are analyzed qualitatively based on deductively and inductively generated categories (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2020) to get to know the providers’ views on educational aims and SES in early childhood based on their specific tasks in ECEC. In the second study, I conducted interviews with parents and educators in kindergartens in different regions (milieu level). Here educators’ tasks as well as parents’ and educators’ views on educational aims and SES of kindergarten children are in focus. In the third study, which is directly linked to the second study, I participated in parent-educator meetings between the interviewed educators and parents on their children’s SES in kindergarten before the children’s transition to primary school (interaction level). The interview/meeting transcripts of both the second and third study are also analyzed qualitatively based on deductively and inductively generated categories (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2020) to get to know how parents and educators understand and deal with educational aims. Moreover, I plan to relate these understandings and ways of dealing with educational aims to each other with regard to (non-)fit relations of actor-specific perceptions of education.

The interviews with representatives of ECEC providers I conducted for the first study show that SES is not always understood as an educational subarea, is often not focused on in ECEC practice, contains a certain complexity or vagueness, and cannot be tied to clear support measures. The latter aspect also illustrates that the promotion of SES is particularly difficult in educationally relevant sub skills, such as impulse control and dealing with uncertainty, because there are already family-related, sociocultural differences in these skills (Nienhaus, 2021b; Bittlingmayer & Bauer, 2008). These difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that representatives of ECEC providers show not only professionalism, but also prejudice (Nienhaus, 2021a). If the aspect of prejudice is considered in more detail, it becomes apparent that a wide variety of determinants of social inequality (Solga et al., 2009) are invoked when it comes to SES as an educational subfield (Nienhaus, 2021b). This points to problems in the reduction of educational inequalities via the implementation of education plans, because how educational inequalities can be compensated in ECEC remains unclear, except that reference is made to compensatory support (Nienhaus, 2021a; Meyer, 2017). Contributing to critical inequality research with my paper, I would like to reconstruct divergent perceptions of education and the role of SES in a comparative or contrastive way. On the example of extracts of interviews/meetings with representatives of ECEC providers, parents and educators I furthermore like to discuss frictions in the implementation of education plans in ECEC practice (Nienhaus, 2021b). Assuming that a focus on education can also lead to the creation or overemphasis of educational inequalities, I would like to conclude my paper with a critical discussion of the question of whether the implementation of education plans in ECEC to compensate for educational inequalities can be meaningful at all.

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