Professionalization, Leadership and Management in the Early Years

Linda Miller, Carrie Cable, Linda Miller, Carrie Cable

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781446259771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

With the rapid change experienced by the Early Years Workforce over recent times, this book considers what constitutes professionalization in the sector, and what this means in practice. Bringing a critical perspective to the developing knowledge and understanding of early years practitioners at various stages of their professional development, it draws attention to key themes and issues.

Chapters are written by leading authorities, and provide case studies, question and discussion points to facilitate critical thinking.

Topics covered include:

- constructions of professional identities

- men in the early years

- multi-disciplinary working in the early years

- professionalization in the nursery

- early childhood leadership and policy

Written in an accessible style and relevant to all levels of early years courses, the book is highly relevant to those studying at Masters level, and has staggered levels of Further Reading, that encourage reflection and progression.

CHAPTER 1

THE CHANGING FACE OF PROFESSIONALISM IN THE EARLY YEARS

Linda Miller and Carrie Cable

Overview

This book has given space to a group of academics, trainers of early years practitioners and researchers to present a collection of individual perspectives on professionalism, leadership and management in the early years. Many of the chapters in the book present demanding and stimulating ideas and views on the professionalization of the early years workforce which we hope will challenge and unsettle you and encourage you to engage in a dialogue about the nature of professionalism, as Dalli and Urban envisage ‘… professionalism can be understood as a discourse as much as a phenomenon: as something that is constantly under reconstruction’ (Dalli and Urban, 2008: 132).

We hope the book will help you to reflect upon your current thinking and practice and your developing professionalism in new and critical ways. A number of chapters openly contest policy reforms and public discourses in particular geographical and cultural contexts and as Osgood (2006) says, the cost of not doing this is just too high. In this introductory chapter, we offer an overview of the growth of professionalism in the early years over the last decade and identify some key emerging themes, many of which are raised in the ensuing chapters. In this chapter, we outline the structure of the book and its rationale. Throughout the book, the terms early years and early childhood education and care are used interchangeably to reflect the international contributions. ‘Early years’ is a term more commonly used in the United Kingdom (UK) to reflect the bringing together of both care and education under one policy umbrella. Early years education and care is generally used in Europe and beyond and reflects the historical and separate development of early childhood services under a two-tier organization of services emphasizing childcare for the youngest children (up to age 3) and ‘pre-primary education’ for the 3–6 year olds (OECD, 2006). In this book, we take the view that the early years/early childhood field should be seen as ‘educational’ but with a care component and that it should be impossible to educate without caring, or care without developing and promoting children’s learning. We also use the term ‘she’ when referring to individuals of both genders, which seems appropriate in a book which is about a heavily feminized workforce.

The growth of professionalism in the early years

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As this book shows, the professionalization of those who work, lead and manage in early years settings has been on an upward trajectory for at least the last decade, both nationally and internationally. The growth of early years professionalism has had different starting points and has followed different paths within the countries covered in the chapters in this book. Individuals are also on a continuum of professional development and will vary at any point in time in relation to their professional knowledge, understanding and skills. The range and variety of spaces they are working in, the cultural, geographical and policy context of their work, working relationships and pedagogic practices will define, limit or expand opportunities for the development of their professionalism.

A recent Google search of ‘professionalism in the early years’ gave rise to 1,780,000 hits – reflecting the raft of initiatives, books, journal articles and policy documents published in the last decade or so, both in the UK and internationally. We begin by looking back at some selected publications which also document this growth.

In 1998, Abbott and Pugh’s book Training to Work in the Early Years brought together both developments and concerns about early years training in the UK and internationally and documented some of the then new routes to training such as Early Childhood Studies Degrees and National Vocational Qualifications. A chapter by Oberheumer (1998) detailed the European perspective. In the final chapter, a ‘climbing frame of qualifications’ was envisaged (p. 149) offering a training route to higher levels of qualifications and increased access to professional development for the early years workforce.

In 2003, as part of a literature review of aspects of predominantly British-based and recent early years research, members of the British Educational Research Association Special Interest Group, including one of the editors of this book (Linda Miller), undertook responsibility for reviewing a selection of the literature on adult roles, training and professionalism. This part of the review concluded that:

• there was no national database identifying the nature of early years settings
• there was a plethora of occupational names that were not useful in identifying workplace roles
• the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority was attempting to classify occupational roles
• a series of surveys organized by the Early Years National Training Organisation was beginning to compile information on occupational roles
• there was a paucity of evidence about links between adult training, professionalism and children’s learning.

A decade on, Miller and Cable (2008) sought to update the position of early years workers and document the tremendous policy changes and ‘workforce reform’ that had taken place and the opportunities for achieving professional qualifications, both in the UK and internationally. The title of the book Professionalism in the Early Years reflects the conceptual shift that has taken place since the publication of Abbott and Pugh’s book a decade before and also mirrors government policies on ‘reforming’ and professionalizing the early years workforce in England and in other countries. However, alongside this reform process critical voices were emerging (Miller, 2008). Critics of the reform process challenged those involved in the teaching and training of early years workers to rethink this emerging construction of professionalism which they saw as being constrained by technological practices (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005) and underpinned by the ‘regulatory gaze’ of government (Osgood, 2006: 3). However, more recently Simpson (2010: 12) has added to the debate, using data from a study of Early Years Professionals (EYPs) in England, arguing that they have a ‘bounded agency’ and a ‘reflexive professionalism’ which is ‘mediated by reflexivity over circumstances that were potentially enabling or restrictive’.

This movement towards professionalism and the accompanying critiques forms the basis for the notion of ‘a critical ecology of the profession’ (Dalli, 2007, unpaged). The use of the term ‘ecology’ relates to the type of contexts or environments within which a practitioner works and the influence of micro and macro level factors, which in turn create possibilities for the types of practice that can take place. According to Dalli, the use of the term ‘a critical ecology of the profession’ is intended to suggest that a questioning approach to how professionals might act in these different geographical, physical and cultural contexts is critical in developing our understanding. In other words, the early childhood community needs to stand back and adopt a critical approach to all constructions of professionalism and consider context-specific factors.

Since 2004, a group of academics, researchers and trainers of practitioners (including the editors of this book) located within the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) have, through research project ‘A Day in the Life of an Early Years Practitioner’ (Miller et al., forthcoming), sought to explore what it means to act professionally in different contexts. Researchers worked with an individual practitioner, each working in an early childhood setting in one of six countries (Australia, England, Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Sweden) to explore practitioner notions of professionalism. This included:

• perceptions of what being a ‘professional’ in early childhood means – including practitioners’ self perceptions and external perspectives
• common features of practice in each context.

The ‘Day in the Life’ project is a collection of free-standing but related case studies and does not and cannot provide comparative data across countries and cultures. However, some common themes have been identified, including the complexity and diversity of working professionally with young children and the ways in which government agendas set the context for ‘feeling and acting professionally’. These themes and others are expanded upon in the chapters in this book.

In England, the development of professionalism has been confused and confounded by the creation of a new role which includes professional in its title – the Early Years Professional (see Chapters 2 and 7) – which raises questions about whether those who do not have this title or another accepted title such as ‘teacher’ are therefore deemed not to be ‘professionals’. Moss (2008) takes up the argument about this contradictory position, supporting the vision of a professional workforce but one which recognizes core workers as professionals as well as leaders. Writing in an Australian context, Fenech and Sumsion (2007: 119) also urge a note of caution in relation to the professionalization of the workforce and warn of the ‘othering’ of less qualified or non-accredited practitioners.

On a related theme, Oberheumer and Scheryer (2008) have documented and mapped some of the current changes taking place across 27 European countries in the professionalization strategies for work in early childhood provision, including qualification profiles across and within these countries. Issues raised by this study include whether traditional demarcation lines between early childhood workers will remain; for example, between the role of the primary school teacher and the early years pedagogues. Oberheumer’s and Scheryer’s research reveals no agreement across Europe on the competence requirements for working with young children up to the age of school entry and therefore no common understanding of what ‘professionalism’ in the early years means. The researchers raise questions about whether there will be a common consensus about the type of professional we want in early childhood work – a ‘democratic professional’ that values reciprocal relationships and alliances and places children, families and communities at the centre of their work or a ‘technical expert’ focused on prescribed routes and outcomes.

The chapters in this book contribute and add to this growing debate. In Part 1, the chapters are concerned mainly with the professional identities of early years practitioners and in Part 2, they look towards a new professionalism.

Part 1: Leading, managing and new professional identities

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The chapters in this section are concerned with the developing professional identities of early years practitioners, whether as the core workers envisaged by Peter Moss (2008) or as leaders and managers in early years settings.

In Chapter 2, Mary Whalley notes that leadership and management are terms often used interchangeably which she sees as unhelpful. In the chapter, she clarifies the different emphases of the two roles of leader and manager as change agents in relation to early years provision and explores the distinctive and distinguishing features of these key roles. She considers the Early Years Professional role in England in leading practice and the challenges facing those professionals leading organizations such as Integrated Children’s Centres, which require working in a multi-professional context. She also considers the contribution of research, theory and influences from Europe and beyond to a new understanding of professionalism.

Christine Woodrow in Chapter 3 tracks some emerging and worrying policy trends in early childhood provision in Australia and considers their impact on discourses of professionalism and on early childhood practitioners. Through three ‘cases’ of recent policy directions or policy outcome, she analyses and discusses the implications for professional identity. She raises concerns about the significant growth in market-led provision, increased regulation and accountability and contradictions within the Australian early childhood reform agenda. She describes the impact this is having on the professional identities of the early childhood workforce, their practices and their relationships with children and parents. Woodrow points to disturbing parallels with England where she contends simplistic solutions have been sought to achieve complex outcomes and where short-term policies have sought to bring about rapid growth and change, both in terms of increased provision and in expanding and ‘professionalizing’ the workforce. The collapse of a large corporate childcare company in Australia sounds warning bells about the privatization of early childhood provision as a means of achieving substantial growth. Whilst welcoming increased political interest in early childhood provision, Woodrow questions how dominant policy discourses might constrain, affirm or expand understandings of professionalism and perspectives on professional identity. She argues for multiple professional identities and discusses the notion of ‘networked leadership’ and the need to resource new leadership roles to sustain this changing agenda.

Chapter 4 considers early years policy and provision in Northern Ireland, where despite policy initiatives which reflect the strategy in England, early childhood services are provided through a ‘split system’ of care and education which continues to differentiate between the traditional childcare and education sectors. Dorothy McMillan and Glenda Walsh explore the notion of early years professionalism within such a context and pose the question, ‘What is to be done?’ They note that it is necessary to cha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the editors and contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The changing face of professionalism in the early years
• Part 1 Leading, Managing and New Professional Identitie
• Part 2 Towards a New Professionalism in the Early Years
• Index