Equality of Opportunities, Divergent Conceptualisations and their Implications for Early Childhood Care and Education Policies

This article aims to explore the relations between equality of opportunity and early childhood. By referring to the work of contemporary philosophers, i.e. R awls, S en, D workin, C ohen and R oemer, we argue for different possible interpretations, based on political discussions, concerning how to operationalize equality of opportunities. We represent these diverging options on a continuum, ranging from R esponsibility‐oriented E quality of O pportunity ( REOp ) and C ircumstances‐oriented E quality of O pportunity ( CEOp ). We then analyse how early childhood care and education policies can be constructed in relation to these conceptualisations and argue that the CEOp is a more plausible interpretative framework to operationalize equality of opportunity in early childhood.