Discourses of Professionalism in Family Day Care

Abstract

Family day care in Australia is currently undergoing rapid 'professionalisation' within a national reform agenda that seeks to raise and standardise early childhood service quality. Included within this reform is a requirement that all family day care workers obtain formal qualifications and that workers are referred to as 'educators' rather than 'carers'. This study drew on focus groups and interviews with family day care workers, management, government and industry representatives collected as part of a larger study into family day care workers' capacity to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing. Our analysis identified three discourses of professionalisation within family day care that provide important insights into the sector at a time of significant change. Management promoted workers as 'educators' aligned with a neo-liberal, masculine understanding of professionalism and the objective measures used to assess service quality. This discourse excluded what 'carers' felt were important, subjective and maternal aspects of their service delivery. To reconcile these discursive extremes, some workers took up a discourse that emphasised the requirements of their 'job' and the standards of professionalism required by management. In conclusion, we contend that the take-up of educational discourses in family day care produce and reproduce tensions between 'women's work' and 'masculine professionalism' that undermine the sector's attempts to increase their status and recognition.

Is the Care–Education Dichotomy Behind Us?: Should It Be?

“…The care component of early childhood work is often positioned by wider society as akin to mothering, and this positioning 'has been viewed as the major stumbling block in the road towards raising both "quality" and "status"' (O'Connell, 2011, p. 781). In Australia a similar positioning is seen in the arguments around the caring work associated with family day care (Cook, Davis, Williamson, Harrison & Sims, 2013). This link with mothering provides a motivation to exclude care work from early childhood, as it is an impediment to professionalisation.…”

The framing of Australian childcare policy problems and their solutions

“…Our analysis has shown that in recent history, the most successful strategy for revaluing women’s caring work in Australia has been to align ECEC workforce problems with the facets of neoliberal thinking that value investments in the early education of the next generation of workers (Osgood, 2006). However, the deployment of ‘professionalisation’ as a strategy in this context remains contentious, as it is argued that this jettisons claims for women’s work to be recognised on its own terms, and instead ties ECEC work into masculine conceptions of quality assurance, measurement and standardisation (Boyd, 2013; Cook et al, 2013; Moss, 2006; Osgood, 2006). In any case, current approaches that serve either to align with neoliberal future-worker-investment discourses or enshrine ECEC as women’s work will not achieve a re-imagination of the value of care, as they do not address the ‘excuses’ (Tronto, 2013) afforded to middle-class parents that legitimate their abdication of their responsibilities for care on the basis of their labour market engagement.…”

“…Across a range of developed countries, the ECEC sector has moved to reconstruct its practice as requiring specialised knowledge and skills (Harwood, et al, 2012; Taggart, 2011). This reconstruction positions ECEC work as of educational benefit to children and, as such, reframes ECEC workers as educators (Cook et al, 2013; Osgood, 2006).…”

“…When the logic of neoliberalism is applied to ECEC work, uneasy tensions are produced, which focus on how an understanding and valuation of caring as professional is made possible only through the lens of economic relations. As several researchers have noted (Boyd, 2013; Cook et al, 2013; Moss, 2006; Osgood, 2006), the professionalisation of ECEC work produces tensions between detached, standardised, technical processes and the fluid, personal and situated nature and practice of caring. As Osgood (2006: 8) suggests in relation to UK ECEC policy reform, ‘in neo-liberal discourses there is little room for emotionality or such feminine characteristics that are seemingly unquantifiable or auditable’.…”

Implicit theories and naïve beliefs: Using the theory of practice architectures to deconstruct the practices of early childhood educators

“…From this perspective, being a ‘caregiver’ potentially constrains the possibilities of the role and identity of ECEs as qualified and knowledgeable education professionals. On the other hand, moves in Australia to ‘professionalise’ ECE by adopting the term ‘educator’ rather than ‘carer’ in Family Day Care contexts, for example, have been challenged (Cook et al, 2013). This example highlights Broström’s (2006) reflection on the importance of the way the concept of care is defined.…”