The Personal is Professional: Professionalism and the Birth to Threes Practitioner

Manning-Morton, Julia

doi:10.2304/ciec.2006.7.1.42

Cited by 100 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…While an ethic of care is at the heart of all teaching, such a focus should not exclude an emphasis on facilitating learning and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills (Noddings, 1984). Manning-Morton (2006) noted that child care policies should ensure that there is a workforce of teachers who understand young children as active learners who have autonomy and agency. Such a focus on improving child care quality requires well-designed professional training.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Greater emphasis in professional training for work in child care settings should be placed on exploring expectations and beliefs that child care workers hold about their role and how that role is instrumental in supporting early learning. Responsiveness (i.e., function of care) is a core of practice with very young children (McMullen, 1999: Manning-Morton, 2006). Yet, increasingly, it is recognized that the quality of early learning opportunities (i.e., function of education) that are available is also very important in order that cognitive development is enhanced (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Working with toddlers in child care: Practitioners’ beliefs about their role

Berthelsen¹,

Brownlee²

2007

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This exploratory research analyzes child care workers' beliefs about the nature of their practice in center-based child care programs. Twenty-one female child care workers who worked with toddlers (aged 1 to 3 years) participated in the research. The participants were videoed in their practice and later interviewed about how good practice in child care could be described. In the interview, the video of participants' practice was also reviewed to discuss salient videoed events to elicit further evidence about the nature and structure of beliefs that informed practice. The focus of the data analysis was to ascertain how affective, cognitive and executive functions of teaching in child care were represented in the practitioners' beliefs and how well those beliefs were integrated into a relational structure. As expected, child care workers held a strong affective (care) perspective in how they described good practice in working with toddlers. There was less evidence that they believed that good practice involved a cognitive (educational) function or an executive function (overarching principles that guided decision-making in practice). Greater emphasis in professional training for work in child care settings should be placed on exploring expectations and beliefs that child care workers hold about their role and how that role is instrumental in supporting early learning. Responsiveness (i.e., function of care) is a core of practice with very young children (McMullen, 1999: Manning-Morton, 2006). Yet, increasingly, it is recognized that the quality of early learning opportunities (i.e., function of education) that are available is also very important in order that cognitive development is enhanced (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2002). If beliefs are held by child care workers in toddler programs that their work is about early education, as well as care, then such beliefs are likely to ensure higher quality of practice.Policy and practice in early childhood services are framed by distinctions made between care and education (Braumer, Gordic, & Zigler, 2004). Care and education continue to be viewed as separate functions in early childhood services because of the historical divide in many western countries by which child care services are provided under welfare, family, and employment policies while other early childhood services, such as preschools, are more likely to be funded under education policies (Moss, 2006;Penn, 1999). Such a distinction is accepted in the community as a legitimate division which maintains perceptions that child care services do not provide early education (Lakoff & Grady, 1998). For example, child care employees are called workers rather than teachers and instead of providing education they provide care (Nall Bales, 1998). Thus, a dominant social frame about child care is that it is a service to meet parents' work-related needs rather than having potential benefits for children.Australian government policy with respect to child care is constructed on the basis that workrelated reasons are paren...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with toddlers in child care: Practitioners’ beliefs about their role

Berthelsen¹,

Brownlee²

2007

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A word of caution is necessary here, as too strong an emphasis on education may lead to better qualified and more highly paid teachers being associated with the decidedly feminized conception of LDC work (Sumsion, 2005). Thus EC educators need to consider how they publicize the nature of their work to create a viable alternative version of the LDC profession which is seen as 'critically reflexive', 'boundary crossing' and 'proudly distinct' within the community (Manning-Morton, 2006;Osgood, 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Retaining Early Childcare Educators

Jovanovic

2012

Gender Work & Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Following recent discussion about power differentials in training and CPD (Colley, 2006;Manning-Morton, 2006;Osgood, 2006), the model adopts action research principles, which have their roots in both the systematic gathering of information (research) and the use and control of this information by practitioners to inform and change their own practice (action) (Robson, 1993;Cohen et al, 2000;Noffke & Somekh, 2005).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nurseries and emotional well‐being: evaluating an emotionally containing model of professional development

Elfer

Dearnley

2007

Early Years

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite official endorsement of attachment principles in nursery work, these are often not translated into nursery practice. One possible reason for this is that staff training does not sufficiently address the personal implications and anxieties that children's attachments may entail for practitioners. Working from a psychoanalytic perspective on organisational functioning and group learning, this paper describes action research with a group of nursery heads who participated in a professional development programme designed specifically to explore emotional experience in professional work. The positive evaluations of the programme by heads and their staff are described including examples of experiential learning and of increased staff awareness about, and responsiveness to, the emotional experience of children. However, the research also concluded that sustained effectiveness of the model is likely to be dependent on an ongoing culture of attention to the emotional experience of nursery staff within nursery umbrella organisations.

show abstract

The Personal is Professional: Professionalism and the Birth to Threes Practitioner

Cited by 100 publications

References 14 publications

Working with toddlers in child care: Practitioners’ beliefs about their role

Working with toddlers in child care: Practitioners’ beliefs about their role

Retaining Early Childcare Educators

Nurseries and emotional well‐being: evaluating an emotionally containing model of professional development

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About