Valuable everyday encounters in early childhood education: narratives from professionals

Abstract

This article presents professionals' narratives about valuable encounters with young children in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The study aims to provide an in-depth perspective on how professionals talk about ethics in practice, and the values addressed in the narratives. Initially, professionals in Swedish ECE settings defined their understanding of a valuable encounter with a child and then used a digital app to self-register 10 such encounters during one day. After the self-registration, we interviewed the professionals and they told us about the encounters they had experienced. We identified three themes concerning who was the focus of the encounters: the professional, the child, or both reciprocally. By using a narrative approach and Nussbaum's ethical theoretical perspective, we show how different rationales were interwoven in the stories and that situated emotions were enacted and reflected. Finally, we noticed that many valuable encounters took place in 'in-between spaces'. They were not planned for or organised, but occurred spontaneously through professionals' sensitive employment of an ethics in practice.

Methodological development through critical reflections on a study focusing on daily valuable encounters in early childhood settings

“…We identified three themes concerning who was the focus in the definitions of the encounters: the professional, the child or both reciprocally. We also found that many encounters that the participants defined as valuable were not planned for or organised, but occurred spontaneously through the professionals' sensitive employment of an ethics in practice (Löfgren and Manni, 2020). This step worked without any problems and was key to our aim to explore the teachers' own qualitative definitions of daily valuable encounters in their educational practices.…”

“…In a previous article (Löfgren and Manni, 2020), we focused on some dilemmas within educare, and showed how Swedish ECE professionals find a balance between the different agendas of caring, learning and teaching in their daily encounters with children. Caring for children's well-being, together with establishing trust and good relations, has always been a central task, and is considered a foundation for children's learning by ECE professionals in Sweden and elsewhere (Hamre, 2014;Noddings, 2012).…”

“…In this background section, we first give a short introduction to our study concerning relational encounters within ECE (Löfgren and Manni, 2020). The main focus is then on the methods and methodological aspects of educational research in this setting, as well as reflection as an integral part of the education profession.…”

“…We share our experiences from a study in Swedish preschool and school-age educare, focusing on teachers' daily valuable encounters with children (Löfgren and Manni, 2020), and discuss methodological aspects and the pros and cons of a method we found to be valuable and important for further research in similar educational settings. Conducting research includes establishing mutual respect and trust between the researchers and participants in practice.…”