Professionalisation and the role of the professional in early years

The sense of purpose inherent within early years practice (Osgood, 2006, p. 9; Taggart, 2016, p. 9; Traunter, 2019, p. 5),  develops from the “attitude, ideology and passion” (Brock, 2006, p. 1) of educators who, beyond commercial gain, influence the profession’s societal value (Katz, 1995 in Osgood, 2006, p. 8). When considering the professionalisation and the role of the early years professional, a number of academics present these attributes as vital to continuing development (Taggart, 2016). Other perspectives are prominent, namely those from government policymakers and those from early year’s educators, and for this reason the interests of all three parties will be considered within the context of early years professionalisation, and the role of professionals within this field.

Underlying professionalisation (or professionalism) are two general concepts: that it specialised and requires knowledge, skill and talent; and that it cannot be “standardised” (Friedson, 2007, p. 17) or “commodified” (Abbott, 1991, p. 22 in Friedson, 2007, p. 17). Sociologists generalise these concepts as professional bodies take many guises, for example, doctors are within a self-regulated profession, while engineers are semi-autonomous. With this in mind, it is worth reviewing the Department of Education’s (England) aim to drive the professionalisation of early years by improving educators’ basic skills and creating uniformity of provision (DoE, 2013, p. 6) through sector standardisation. This is to safeguard the nation’s neoliberal agenda to “…compete in the global race.” (DoE, 2013, p. 6).

It is a narrative where political design, through credentialism, controls the status of early years educators by creating occupational closure. It negates experience, talent and expertise from divergent roles, backgrounds and skillsets, in preference of educational inflation to promote ‘quality’ early years education, where practitioners become “preoccupied with assessment, accreditation, targets, accountability and performativity in attempts to demonstrate professional competence.” (Osgood, 2006, p. 9).

The policies outlined within “More Great Childcare” (DoE, 2013) and the “Early Years Workforce Strategy” (DoE, 2017) to ensure “the service offered is the best it can be” (DoE, 2017, p. 4) run contra to aforementioned concepts defining professions and lead practitioners to be “…increasingly re-envisioned as technicians.” (Moss, 2006,.p. 7). This could be seen as a form of de-professionalisation favouring a workforce of technical operators rather than:

workers with specialised knowledge and the ability to provide society with especially important services…[workers who] organise and control their own work, without directives from management or the influence of free markets. (Eliot Freidson, 2007, p. 1).

These “important services” include the qualitative attributes some academic sources seek to preserve to ensure appropriate professionalisation of the sector (Woodrow, 2007, p. 241). These attributes include a “culture of care characterised by affectivity, altruism, self-sacrifice and conscientiousness” (Osgood, 2006, p. 8), as well as the “attitudes and values, ideology and beliefs…code of ethics, autonomy…commitment, enjoyment and passion” (Brock, 2006, p. 2) of practitioners.

Being qualitative these explicit traits are resistant to standardisation and if policy-led professionalisation prevailed their desirability would depreciate. In defence of these attributes academics speak of rallying “the voices of those working in the field.” (Brock, 2013, p. 33); using academic research “to give early years educators a voice” (Brock, 2013, p. 51), concluding that there is “…a clear need for a research agenda exploring issues of professional roles and identity.” (Woodrow, 2007, p. 241) on behalf of early years practitioners. With this, academic researchers appear to take on the role of protector and liberator of the professionalisation of early years practice, leaving the role of the early years professional to that of subject matter.

Although this is dissimilar to the status of occupational technician by government-led policy constraint, influential involvement of academic researchers also creates a regime of control. This  type of control reduces the role of professional practitioners to that of “technicians of behaviour” (Foucault, 1978, p. 294 in Osgood, 2006, p. 7), creating distrust in the value of practitioners’ own research as well as their capability for self determination. It creates scenarios where practitioners resign themselves to the role of disenfranchised test subjects, surrendering their work for external analysis and determination, a status lamented by Carla Rinaldi, “But can you find a university teacher who can learn from a practitioner? Very rarely!”(Rinaldi, 2006, p 151). Further, autonomy in research and experimentation is considered a key trait for professionalisation by both Friedson (2007, p. 108), and as a “technician of evaluation” (Shapiro, 2002, p. 4) within the Foucauldian concept of the professional.

Further, there is evidence to demonstrate autonomous professionalisation is desired within early years practice, for example, the Reggio Emilia project’s refusal “to surrender research and experimentation to academics.” (Moss, 2018, p. 75), because “we want our research, as teachers, to be recognised.” (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 150-151). In considering autonomous research and decision-making on par to that of academic counterparts gives practitioners the voice of authority within early years education. This in turn allows for a democratic, sector-driven professionalisation of substance, because educators:

…would be promoted from being simply practitioners to being authors of pedagogical paths and processes. They would be able to contribute to overcoming…the arrogant idea of the continuing separation between theory and practice, culture and technique. Teachers would be able to stop seeing themselves, and being seen by others, as those who simply apply theories and decisions developed somewhere else. (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 77).

This narrative enables practitioners to develop their professionalisation from within; fostering purposeful relationships based on mutual values within an environment of shared governance.

With an autonomous entity early years professionalisation would slowly evolve from the qualities, intricacies and ideals indigenous to the profession. It is a brave non-linear approach to maturation focused on ‘becoming’ professional rather than ‘achieving’ professional status:

personal and professional development, like education, should not be seen as static or unchangeable qualities, achieved once and for all, but rather a process, an ongoing path. (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 108).

It is this understanding, after considering the interests of policymakers and academic researchers, that the best professionals to administer an appropriate professionalisation of early years practice are those working within: the experienced; the novice; the graduate; the skills specialist; the non-graduate; the active practical participants of the profession who together cross a spectrum of skills, expertise and passion. It is with this, and only with this, will the genuine role of the professional in early years be fully realised – for the benefit of the children they teach, for society as a whole and for themselves.

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Brock, A. (2006). Dimensions of early years professionalism – attitudes versus competences Reflection paper on Training Advancement and Co-operation in the Teaching of Young Children (TACTYC). Retrieved 4th December, 2019, from http:// www.tactyc.org.uk

Brock, A. (2013). How do Early Years Educators sustain and define their professionalism? A methodological approach to eliciting early years educators’ thinking. Forum Oświatowe, 1(48), 31-56. Retrieved from: http://forumoswiatowe.pl/index.php/czasopismo/article/view/83

Department of Education. (2013). More Great Childcare. Retrieved 30 November 2019 from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/219660/More_20Great_20Childcare_20v2.pdf

Department of Education. (2017). Early Years Workforce Strategy. Retrieved 30 November 2019 from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/596884/Workforce_strategy_02-03-2017.pdf

Freidson, E. (2007). Professionalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Moss, P. (2006). Structures, Understandings and Discourses: Possibilities for Re-Envisioning the Early Childhood Worker. Contemporary Issues In Early Childhood, 7(1), 30-41. doi: 10.2304/ciec.2006.7.1.30

Moss, P. (2019). Alternative narratives in early childhood. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Osgood, J. (2006). Deconstructing Professionalism in Early Childhood Education: Resisting the Regulatory Gaze. Contemporary Issues In Early Childhood, 7(1), 5-14. doi: 10.2304/ciec.2006.7.1.5

Rinaldi, C. (2006). In dialogue with Reggio Emilia. London: Routledge.

Shapiro, S. (2002). Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Reader/Workbook. Retrieved 30 November 2019 from http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/110/1/83-244-1-PB.pdf.

Taggart, G. (2016). Compassionate pedagogy: the ethics of care in early childhood professionalism. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 24(2), 173-185. doi: 10.1080/1350293x.2014.970847

Traunter, J. (2019). Reconceptualising early years teacher training: policy, professionalism and integrity. Education 3-13, 47(7), 831-841. doi: 10.1080/03004279.2019.1622498

Woodrow, C. (2007). W(H)Ither the Early Childhood Teacher: Tensions for Early Childhood Professional Identity between the Policy Landscape and the Politics of Teacher Regulation. Contemporary Issues In Early Childhood, 8(3), 233-243. doi: 10.2304/ciec.2007.8.3.233