One type of influence is one that doesn’t make a big announcement. It doesn’t come from viral headlines or press conferences. It develops gradually, study by study, citation by citation, until one day a government minister of education in Seoul or Santiago is writing a policy brief and, almost without thinking, looks for the same source. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, is becoming more and more of that source, and its research findings are now genuinely hard to ignore in discussions about what young children deserve on a global scale.
Years later, the organization’s flagship sustainability project still has impressive numbers. A study that was carried out between 2009 and 2014 involved over 13,000 teachers, over 44,000 children from birth to age eight, and data from 28 countries. It was unique not only because of the scale but also because of the approach. Adults were not surveyed by researchers regarding children. They conducted in-person interviews with the kids, structured conversations based on their own words and experiences, and used that information to inform their conclusions. The outcome was empirical data demonstrating that young children are far more aware of environmental responsibility than the majority of adults believe. The fact that the discovery included receipts made it difficult to accept.
Formal consultative status with the UN and UNESCO is one of the things that most academic institutions secretly envy, contributing to the reach of OMEP’s research. On the surface, this designation may sound bureaucratic, but in reality, it means that the organization’s findings won’t have to battle their way into intergovernmental discussions through committee presentations and journal paywalls. They’re in the room already. On technical advisory groups, executive members participate. The Tashkent Declaration and the UNESCO-UNICEF Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education are two important policy documents that incorporate research. That close proximity to power is structural rather than coincidental.
It’s also important to note that the organization has purposefully avoided applying a one-size-fits-all strategy to three distinct regional policy environments. Teacher training frameworks in Europe have been impacted by OMEP’s Education for Sustainable Development rating tools in ways that feel more integrated than imported. Position papers on public, state-guaranteed early childhood systems have entered legislative discussions where privatization pressures are genuine and controversial in Latin America, where the work has become more overtly political. Discussions about curriculum reform in Stockholm and disputes over school funding models in Bogotá may cite no other single research body at the same time. Play-based learning and social-emotional development have become more important in the Asia-Pacific area, and national early learning standards in a number of nations are based on OMEP findings when determining the actual layout of classrooms.
However, influence is not sustained by datasets alone. There’s a feeling that OMEP recognized early on that research that isn’t translated into a useful format tends to collect dust. Launched in 2017 and currently in its eighth issue, the organization’s Theory into Practice journal was created with the express purpose of bridging that gap. Rather than being a traditional academic publication, it is a virtual community of practice where educators and researchers discuss classroom realities in relation to international pedagogical frameworks. It is published in several languages, free, and subject to peer review. For the time being, it seems to keep the research grounded rather than abstract, though it’s unclear if that model scales indefinitely.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the most vocal participants in discussions about education policy are rarely the ones paying close attention. Conversely, OMEP established its credibility by sitting in close proximity to children, recording what they truly said, and then making it impossible to reject that evidence. A non-governmental organization established in 1948 became arguably the most cited reference point in a field that governments are only now starting to take seriously thanks to the combination of methodological seriousness and institutional access across three very different continents.
