Just Recognition as Professional Practice in Norwegian Early Childhood Education: A Meta-Ethnographic Synthesis

Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) is increasingly shaped by cultural diversity, raising questions of justice regarding how children and parents, particularly those from refugee and other minority backgrounds, are recognised as equal participants in the institutional community. This article develops a conceptual framework of just recognition as professional practice through a meta-ethnographic synthesis of three qualitative studies conducted in Norwegian ECEC. The studies examine ECEC professionals’ constructions of diversity, refugee parents’ experiences, and negotiations within home–ECEC partnerships. Drawing on theories of recognition, participatory parity, and democratic equality, this article conceptualises diversity as recognition-in-relation and analyses how justice is enacted in everyday pedagogical and relational practices. The synthesis identifies three interlinked mechanisms, equality, adaptation, and reflexivity, through which recognition and misrecognition are produced across relational levels. While equality is often enacted as sameness, adaptation may be asymmetrically distributed, and reflexivity emerges as a crucial professional practice for rendering institutional norms visible and open to negotiation. This article argues that everyday pedagogical work and home–ECEC partnerships constitute key sites where the conditions for equal standing and participatory parity are either enabled or constrained. By shifting attention from inclusion as access to justice as enacted practice, the study contributes a relational and institutional framework for analysing cultural diversity in ECEC.