Unnoticed Professional Competence in Day Care Work

Abstract

This article presents a double perspective on social educators’ professional competence: It discusses how everyday life in day care centres (preschools) is dependent on professional competences that can be conceived as “unnoticed.” These aspects of professional competence are embedded in routines, experiences and embodied forms of knowledge. However, it may be discussed whether these competences are under pressure from increased demands for documentation, standardization and evaluation of children’s learning outcomes. The article will briefly outline this development in the day care sector, followed by a discussion of unnoticed professional competence and the related notion of gestural knowledge. The double perspective on social educators’ professional competences will be illuminated by empirical examples from a research project involving social educators from two day care centres in Denmark.

The Professional Project among Danish Kindergarten Teachers: Its Nature and Consequences in the Current Context

“…Generally, the purposive learning activities are seen and valued while the non-purposive activities slip from the kindergarten teachers' perspective, according to both Plum and Togsverd. This finding is in line with Ahrenkiel et al (2012) findings on kindergarten teachers' unnoticed professionalism.…”

“…This part of kindergarten teachers' professionalism seems to be increasingly unnoticed, marginalised, and left to uneducated pedagogic assistants to perform, as also pointed out by Plum (2011Plum ( , 2013, and Ahrenkiel et al (2012 this partly as a consequence of the female professional project among kindergarten teachers in which a new type of work and status is envisaged. However, the marginalisation of care work cannot be explained solely by (some) kindergarten teachers' quest of professionalism; I also see it as a consequence of academisation and processes related to the ongoing transformation of the welfare state.…”

“…From a point of departure in critical theory, Ahrenkiel, Nielsen, Schmidt, Sommer and Warring (2012) have analysed the new focus on purposive learning as part of a more general trend in which neoliberalism damages public sector institutions and introduces new meanings and purposes in line with market rationality. They describe how new policies split up work routines in kindergartens in order to document, evaluate and price different activities (Ahrenkiel et al, 2012, pp.…”

Unconscious and unnoticed professional practice within an outstanding school for children and young people with complex learning difficulties and disabilities

“…Ahrenkiel et al . (, p. 7) argue ‘that important aspects of professional competence are part of daily practices and embedded in routines, experiences, shared repertoire etc.’. These practices can be characterised in terms of the variety of different types of knowledge involved.…”

Welfare Professions in Transition

“…Part of it focus on dilemmas and strains introduced by the clash of rationalities-contradictions between, for example, economic rationality and care rationality-experienced by welfare professionals, or on the strategies developed by the professionals to develop a meaningful work and to make ends meet (see, e.g., Waerness, 1984;Vabø, 2007;Dybbroe, 2008;Baadsgaard, 2012). Other parts highlight how welfare professions' ethos, identity, and work are transformed by different forms of standardization that may cause fragmentation of work, but may also define and redefine the professional universe and its key concepts (see, e.g., Kamp, 2012;Tufte, 2013;Ahrenkiel et al, 2013). Transition in professional identities is also in focus when studying implications of changes of relation between professionals and clients.…”