Passion, Paradox and Professionalism in Early Years Education

Professional Knowledges for Early Childhood Education and Care

“…Professionalization agendas are contentious; they include debates on what constitutes a profession and whether ECEC is a recognized profession (Brock, 2006;Moyles, 2001;Osgood, 2006), revealing a tension between perspectives focused on standardization and models that enable professional autonomy based on professional judgment (Young & Muller, 2014). Michel Vandenbroeck and his colleagues Jan Peeters and Maria Bouverne-De Bie (2013) explore how understandings of professionalism and working in ECEC became technocratic, underpinned by a concept of the entrepreneurial self; their work reflects Osgood's (2004Osgood's ( , 2006 critiques of masculine and rational approaches to professionalism in ECEC.…”

Play-based pedagogy under threat? A small-scale study of teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions of pedagogical discontinuity in the transition to primary school

“…This led to play being at the periphery of children's learning experience in Year 1 whereby play was implemented as an incentive for children to finish formal learning. The conflicting educational objectives between the EYFS and Year 1 can mean teachers' professional expertise and judgement are suppressed by the constraints placed on schools to deliver prescribed educational outcomes (Athola et al 2012;Moyles 2001). Howard (2002) and Ball (2003) suggested that this dilemma can have a detrimental effect as the requirements of the curriculum can appear to disempower practitioners.…”

Recognising, Valuing and Celebrating Practitioner Research

“…However, practitioner research might be seen as an ideal methodology that responds to the pressures of these contextual features and might usefully contribute to the need to build a more nuanced repertoire of pedagogical practice (Mitchell and Cubey, 2003), the creation of conceptual resources for building local community and pedagogical adaptive leadership capacity (Skattebol and Arthur, 2014;Woodrow, 2011), a better understanding and recognition of the relational and emotional dimensions of early childhood work (Taggart, 2011), practitioners' willingness to research their own practice (Newman and Mowbray, 2012), and harnessing the well documented 'passion' that characterises practitioners' engagement in the field (Moyles, 2001;Osgood, 2010;Pardo and Woodrow, 2014). At the same time, there is what might be characterised as a current flourishing of research in the early childhood field, particularly within post-colonial, post-structural and post-humanist theoretical frameworks.…”