Quality early childhood education and care – the role of attitudes and dispositions in professional development

ABSTRACT

The early childhood workforce is routinely demonstrated as being central to the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Frequently, discussions of quality focus on structural features of training, such as level and duration. However, the literature demonstrates that quality extends beyond the structural and that early childhood practitioners identify knowledge that is not from qualifications, referring instead to less tangible attitudes that are often seen as innate for guiding their work with children. Drawing on empirical research in three European countries (UK, Hungary and Italy), this paper considers the attitudes that those at the start of their professional development identify for ECEC and where and how they develop them. The findings highlight how attitudes are bound by socio-cultural understandings of ECEC, with a post-structuralist perspective highlighting the importance of bringing to the fore the tacit attitudinal knowledge that is assumed to exist for guiding quality ECEC.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education and care
• quality
• attitudes
• knowledge
• post-structuralist