Early Childhood Care and Education in Kenya‪.‬

Recent years have seen a global endeavor to prioritize early childhood care and education as a foundation for later learning and development, as evidenced by the Global Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in the 21st Century (Association for Childhood Education International/World Organization for Early Childhood, 1999). Such efforts are a response to a variety of complex social issues and economic trends. These forces, which are referred to here as "complex family stressors," include, but are not limited to, societal changes due to industrialization, the increased number of women with young children entering the labor force, families with two working parents, a rise in the number of single parents, and the demise of traditional systems of child care and extended family support systems (Driscoll & Nagel, 2002; Graves, Gargiulo, & Sluder, 1996). This article will provide an overview of early childhood care and education (ECCE) in Kenya. Specific emphasis is placed on the historical development of ECCE, the administrative organization, the collaboration among various agencies in Kenya, ECCE curriculum, and teachers' professional training. A relatively young profession in Kenya, ECCE has experienced tremendous growth at all levels.