The manifestation of practice-based continuous professional development in ECEC: qualitative insights from an Abecedarian initiative in Denmark

ABSTRACT

The potential for professional development initiatives to improve quality in ECEC is an area of increasing international interest. This article presents insights from an ethnography into the manifestation of a two-year practice-based continuous professional development initiative (Educational Quality in Daycare: EQD) informed by the Abecedarian approach to adult–child interactions, involving nine municipalities across Denmark. Detailed qualitative data draws attention to factors influencing learning processes, closely following the participation of three municipalities within the initiative. This highlights implications of their organisation of this participation for practitioners’ engagement, where the levels of managerial support available, the establishment of propitious cultures of reflection and the development of professional practices and identities are found to be closely linked. The article contributes to existing literature by considering the implications of the situated organisation of systemic practice-based continuous professional development initiatives, emphasising the importance of attention to facilitation of cultures of reflection.

KEYWORDS:

• Continuous professional development
• systemic
• practice-based
• Abecedarian
• reflection

Acknowledgements

We would also like to thank Professor Joseph Sparling, and Kimberly Meunier, the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and the Abecedarian Education Foundation for permitting and supporting translation of the Abecedarian approach to a Danish Context. Thank you to Kamilla Gumede, manager at TrygFondens Centre for Child Research for supporting the innovative PD ideas behind the pilot project. A special appreciation to Lone Boisen and the team from Tryg-Fondens-Centre for Child Research. Thanks in particular to the municipalities participating in the detailed ethnographic study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Statistics Denmark. 2015, www.statistikbanken.dk, Tables PAS11 and BEF5. Retrieved from http//.www. statistikbanken

2 ‘Den styrkede pædagogiske læreplan’ (Ministry of Children and Education, 2020).

3 The second author was responsible for the design and operationalisation of the EQD initiative, with the first author undertaking the ethnography.

4 All names are anonymised

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to the TrygFondens’ Centre for Child Research for funding the 2015 Pilot study and to TrygFonden for funding the scaled-up project 2019–2023.