Passion, Paradox and Professionalism in Early Years Education

Moyles, Janet

doi:10.1080/09575140120057167

Cited by 34 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…(525) Her account seems to accurately describe the position of the ECEC workforce. The currently still dominant version of ECEC professionalism which emanated from Labour government policy has been criticised for imposing a centrally defined agenda which is deeply inscribed by performativity and managerialism (Moyles 2001;Osgood 2006;Urban 2008). Moss (2006) for example argues that autonomy in the workplace for all ECEC practitioners has been much reduced by the introduction of EYFS curriculum framework and the regulatory regime of which it is part, to the extent that the carer is repositioned as a 'technician'.…”

Section: Professionals Professionalism and Ecec Reviewedmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students, professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’

Vincent

Braun

2011

Journal of Education Policy

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This paper reports on research from a small-scale project investigating the vocational training of students in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England. We draw on data from interviews with 42 students and five tutors in order to explore the students' understandings of professionalism in early years. In the paper, we discuss first, the then Labour Government's drive to 'professionalise' the workforce and second, critically analyse the concept of professionalism, drawing on sociological literature. We then turn to the data, and argue that students' understandings of professionalism are limited to generic understandings of 'professional' behaviour (reliability, politeness, punctuality and so on). The idea of their occupation being a repository of a particular knowledge and skills set is undercut by the students' emphasis on work with young children being largely a matter of 'common sense'. Our fourth point is to highlight the processes by which students are inducted into a respectable and responsible carer identity, as illustrated by an emphasis on clothes and appearance. We conclude that the version of professionalism offered to students training at this level is highly constrained, and discuss the implications of this.

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Section: Professionals Professionalism and Ecec Reviewedmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students, professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’

Vincent

Braun

2011

Journal of Education Policy

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“…Bagdi and Vacca 2005;Moyles 2001) have drawn from their studies with early years practitioners as they suggest that early years work demands strong feelings towards supporting children.…”

Section: Advantages Of Field Experiencementioning

confidence: 98%

Pre-service teachers' reflections during field experience

Al-Hassan

Al‐Barakat

Al-Hassan³

2012

Journal of Education for Teaching

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This research study investigates pre-service teachers' perceptions of their field experience in kindergartens and schools in Jordan. A total of 57 pre-service early years teachers wrote weekly reflective journals describing and commenting on their experiences during placement in kindergartens and elementary schools. Three major themes emerged from the journals: descriptive narratives of pre-service teachers' field experience, the difficulties they faced, and the advantages of their experience. In light of the study findings, some suggestions are introduced to improve field training programmes. It is also concluded that journal writing can be used in teacher education as a learning tool that enhances pre-service teachers' learning and professional development.

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“…Other research with practitioners has identified that they describe their role in terms of a feel and an ethos (Cottle and Alexander 2012) and an ethic of care (Osgood 2006). There has been a long-standing emphasis on the importance of a caring disposition and the capacity for emotional commitment, often referred to as 'passion', when working with children (Moyles 2001;Osgood 2010). In the context of professional development for initial and continuing members of the early years workforce, there is a risk of assuming that, if people have found their way on to an early childhood course, they very likely already have certain general dispositions, inherent and enduring qualities of mind and character that mean they are well suited to the early years workforce.…”

Section: Qualifications In the Early Years Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes and the early years workforce

Georgeson

Campbell‐Barr

2015

Early Years

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EDITORIALAttitudes and the early years workforce Introduction Our motivation in putting out a call for papers for this special issue came from working with colleagues from UK, Italy and Hungary on a small research project involving our own higher education institutions, in which we compared staff and students' perceptions of the attitudes needed to work with young children (Georgeson et al. 2015;Campbell Barr, Georgeson, and Varga, forthcoming). This project had been prompted by an interest in the role of workforce development and the European Reference Framework on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, which defines competences as 'a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context' (European Commission 2007, 3). These three aspects of competences are also well established in the research literature on teacher education (for example Collinson, Killeavy, and Stephenson 1999;Darling-Hammond 2005). They appear under headings such as content knowledge, pedagogical skill and appropriate dispositions and attitudes, and frequently form the basis of teachers' professional standards and associated qualifications.We began to notice some fluidity in the use of the terms 'disposition' and 'attitude' to refer to individual characteristics, both in our own data and in policy and research. Often these two terms appear together as 'dispositions and attitudes' and are not distinguished from each other; instead they tend to be used as a sort of useful basket of general mental qualities that teacher/practitioners might need in their work, alongside knowledge and skills. In those cases where the two words are explicitly defined, there is a tendency to use them to represent different levels of mental orientation. Definitions of 'disposition' often refer to a broader more enduring tendency to behave in a particular way when responding in a variety of situations (for example -a nervous disposition would be associated with showing nervousness in differing contexts over time). Definitions of 'attitude' on the other hand often refer to elements of a system of beliefs about ideas, things and people in the world that have different components (emotional, motivational, intellectual and evaluative) and are differentially open to change. Lilian Katz, in the course of her work on the importance of the development of positive dispositions to learning in early childhood education, offers helpful definitions of both dispositions and attitudes that highlight the breadth and stability of dispositions and the directionality and specificity of attitudes:

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Passion, Paradox and Professionalism in Early Years Education

Cited by 34 publications

References 9 publications

‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students, professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’

‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students, professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’

Pre-service teachers' reflections during field experience

Attitudes and the early years workforce

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