ECOS EVENTS

Sept 21st | Communicating for Change with Nat Kendall-Taylor

In this special ECOS session, Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of FrameWorks Institute, drew on research on framing and cultural mindsets to explore how communicators can move beyond messages that may inadvertently reinforce fatalism, individualism or other unproductive mindsets.

Monday September 21st, 2026 | Online

15:00-16:00 CET 

How We Communicate About Early Childhood Matters: A special ECOS session with Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of FrameWorks Institute 


The Early Childhood field has no shortage of evidence, research or solutions. Yet having the knowledge is one thing; getting people to understand it, care about it and see a role for themselves in creating change is another. 

So, what happens when we rethink how we communicate? 

This was at the heart of ECOS's latest thought leadership event, Communicating for Change, with Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of the FrameWorks Institute. FrameWorks works with researchers, advocates and organisations to understand how people think about social issues and how communication can build public understanding and support for change. 

The conversation built on ECOS's earlier event, Breaking through: What it will take to put early childhood at the center, which explored the gap between the wealth of knowledge in early childhood and the attention the field receives. This time, the focus turned to a related question: how can the way we communicate help close that gap? 

Here are five important questions Kendall-Taylor raised and on which he provided food for thought: 

1. What if more evidence isn't the answer? 

For a research-driven field, it can be tempting to think that more evidence will eventually speak for itself. 

But people don't receive information with a blank slate. They interpret it through existing cultural understandings and assumptions. Kendall-Taylor argued that evidence is most effective when it has a clear role within a wider story, such as showing the scale of a problem or demonstrating that a solution is possible. 

The question is not simply “What evidence do we have?”, but “What do we want this evidence to help people understand?” 

2. Could correcting a myth make it stick? 

Myth-versus-fact communication seems like a straightforward way to tackle misinformation. But research showed that repeatedly mentioning a misconception can make it more familiar, easier to remember, and attributable to the wrong source. 

That raises a different question for communicators: what do we want people to remember? 

Rather than repeatedly restating the misconception, Kendall-Taylor suggested focusing on the explanation we want people to take away and repeating that instead. 

3. Can urgency discourage action? 

Early Childhood organisations have good reason to communicate urgency. The challenges facing children, families and systems are serious. 

But when communication describes a huge problem without showing a way forward, it can contribute to fatalism, i.e., the sense that the problem is simply too big to change. 

Kendall-Taylor introduced efficacy as an important part of the balance, as well as the importance of agency: people need to understand why an issue matters, while also seeing that change is possible. 

During the Q&A, Mihaela Ionescu, Programme Director at ISSA, asked whether the field should tell more of the positive story it already has, including progress, solutions and examples of change that often receive less attention. 

The answer was not to replace difficult stories with positive ones, but to connect urgency with possibility. 

4. What mindset is your message activating? 

Kendall-Taylor also explored how cultural mindsets can shape the way people understand social issues. 

He highlighted individualism, which can place the focus on personal choices and responsibility; fatalism, which can make problems seem too large or entrenched to solve; and otherism, which can frame society as competing groups rather than a shared community. 

But it’s not a matter of these mindsets being “right” or “wrong.” The question is what they make easier to see, and what they make harder to see. 

What does your message invite people to notice? 

5. Does a field full of many actors need one voice — or a shared story? 

The conversation ultimately returned to a challenge facing the early childhood field more broadly: how can many different voices contribute to a stronger shared understanding? 

Drawing on FrameWorks Institute's long-term work in early childhood in the United States, Kendall-Taylor described how the field once communicated through what he called a “cacophony” of different messages. 

Over time, different actors began reinforcing a common underlying story across research, advocacy, organising and media. Rather than everyone saying exactly the same thing, their messages created what Kendall-Taylor called a “surround sound” effect. 

For a field as diverse as early childhood, perhaps the goal is not one voice, but many voices that reinforce each other rather than compete with one another. 

Continuing the conversation

These questions point to a bigger idea: communication is not simply about sharing information. The way we frame an issue can shape what people see as the problem, which solutions they consider possible and whether they believe change can happen. 

The conversation will continue at the ISSA Conference 2026 in Lisbon, with Moira O'Neil, Kendall-Taylor's colleague at the FrameWorks Institute, taking the discussion further for framing the collective learning emerging from the conference.  

Watch the full conversation with Nat Kendall-Taylor to explore these ideas, the research behind them and what they could mean for how we communicate about early childhood.