Total Environment Assessment Model for Early Child Development

Total Environment Assessment Model
for Early Child Development
social, cultural, and economic—that maximize
nurturance, and equity of nurturant
experiences (though physical factors are less
emphasized).
Where relevant, chapters consider the
role played by civil society. In this regard, the
underlying notion of the framework is that
civil society groups are organized and act
upon every level of society (i.e. every sphere
of influence). Civil society is thus depicted as
traversing all environments.
Temporality is also incorporated in two
respects. Historical time, referring to the
gradual building-up and/or tearing down of
nurturant conditions (which is particularly
applicable to institutions, policies, and other
structural aspects of environments), is conceptualized
as connecting to all environments
- this represents the change in structural
features of environments and contingent
changes in other (intersecting) environments.
Further, changes in the child over her/his life
course are represented by the growing person
in the central (individual) sphere of influence.
The purpose of team-ecd is to frame
aspects of environments that are universally
critical to providing nurturant experiences for
ecd. However, it is not the intent of teamecd
to suggest singularity in what might
characterize nurturance. Not withstanding
deference to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, the framework is based on the
notion that nurturance may be manifest in
many different ways, in different cultures and
different societies.
Thus within its universal approach,
team-ecd provides support for application
of general principles of nurturance for ecd to
local contexts and realities. Having made that
commitment explicit, it is still the position of
the authors that the value of local knowledge
should be entrenched from the outset of this
work.
Introduction
and Overview
17