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In this set of independent papers, all our contributors discuss aspects of professional practice, from initial teacher education to continuing professional development, and from multi-agency early childhood services to more formal educational provision. All the studies reported here seek to explore professional practice in order to improve it, while three of the papers are particularly concerned with issues of inclusion. As usual, despite regional differences, we have identified similar concerns and perspectives across countries and continents – including, in this issue, papers from Canada, Croatia, Germany and the UK, as well as a cross-country study which includes two African locations.
In the cross-country study, Debra Harwood and Mary-Louise Vanderlee (Canada) have collaborated with Audrey Klopper (South Africa) and Ajike Osanyin (Nigeria) to explore educators’ understandings of professionalism. In analysing their interviews with 25 early childhood educators, they employ the concept of ‘presence’ to describe the attentive and ethical care which most educators in all three countries see as fundamental to their professional role – a ‘commonality of experiences’ as the authors put it. The most conspicuous variation in the educators’ views, not surprisingly, was the greater focus on academic, rather than socio-emotional, aspects shown by the primary school teachers in the sample of participants. All three countries have recently re-structured their qualifications systems for early childhood educators, and the article emphasises the importance of understanding educators’ meaning-making processes as they construct their professional identity in a changing environment.
Lizzie Cotton’s study of early years practitioners ‘working together’ across roles and settings in an inner-London neighbourhood brings out further contrasts between different professional roles and environments. The collaboration she describes succeeded in enabling poorly qualified and highly qualified educators to communicate and learn from and about each other as they developed a joint project on water play among the preschool and school settings in a very poor area of London. But Cotton draws attention to the barriers to collaboration which arise from the very unequal working conditions that exist in different forms of provision, and the very unequal power wielded by different participants. On the one hand, many of the project’s goals were not fully realised; on the other hand, she shows that the experience of learning by means of a shared and social process has enabled the group to find value in the project, and to persist in planning future collaborative work.
In our first article from Croatia, Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić and Lidija Vujičić report on their evaluation of a new module in the training of kindergarten teachers at the University of Rijeka. The module introduces students to Positive Psychology, an approach that focuses on the strengths and well-being of children and families rather than on their weaknesses and deficits. The views of 49 students on the course were gathered by means of questionnaires, and showed that a large majority were enthusiastic about the approach, and saw it as an asset in their preparation to work in Croatian kindergartens. The authors argue that as well as promoting social and emotional development in the individual, this approach can also promote broader improvements in citizenship across society.
The following three papers are concerned more directly with inclusion. Katja Gramelt reports on the introduction of a ‘skill enhancement programme’ for early childhood educators in Germany, based on the Anti-Bias Curriculum approach. Derman-Sparks’s Anti-Bias Curriculum was originally developed in the 1980s for use in the USA, but has since been adopted in other countries including South Africa in the 1990s, and Germany during the last decade. The German NGO, Kinderwelten, has transformed it into a type of professional development for early childhood educators, and Gramelt’s study explores the gradual transformation in attitudes which is described by those involved in the programme. Participants learn to examine and challenge their own perspectives, and to adopt the viewpoint of others, through a process of self-reflection. Gramelt concludes that the programme’s value lies in ‘giving educators confidence in their professionalism regarding dealing with diversity’.
Educators’ attitudes to disability and inclusion are the subject of the fifth paper, by Colleen Thornton and Kathryn Underwood from Canada. The authors discuss different conceptualisations of the nature of disability, and argue, with Reindal, that disability can be understood as ‘a form of oppression produced through the interplay of the individual and her or his social environment’. The participants in their small-scale study talked freely about the ways they understood disability and the impact that their views had on their own classroom practice – once again, educators working in school classrooms seem to encounter more barriers to developing flexible and inclusive practices than those working in preschools, although they have the benefit of better qualifications, pay and conditions. The authors emphasise the importance of educators understanding their own role in ensuring inclusive practice, rather than seeing exclusion as deriving from the child or the system.
A quite different ‘disadvantaged’ group is involved in the research paper by Carol Potter, Gary Walker and Bev Keen, which reports on a Fathers Transition Project that was launched in a poor neighbourhood in the North of England. Based on evidence that father–child relationships can have a powerful and lasting influence on children’s development, the researchers sought to engage the fathers of children who were about to make the transition from preschool to school in a series of activities and events. The project’s approach was explicitly ‘gender-differentiated’, recognising that male caregivers may have different needs and preferences from mothers and female caregivers. The subsequent evaluation suggested that this had been a productive approach: the fathers who were interviewed were unanimous in describing their enjoyment of the activities, and the positive impact on their relationships with their children. Staff at the children’s schools also reported a pleasing level of involvement among fathers who had participated in the project. Although the numbers were very small – fathers as a group remain more difficult to involve in services than mothers – the outcomes of the project suggest that this is essential work in communities with high levels of disadvantage, including unemployment.
For our final paper we have chosen to reprint a short but provocative paper which has appeared in the ‘Reflections’ section of the TACTYC website. Carla Solvason reflects on her ongoing experience of teaching ‘research methods’ to early childhood students in an English university, in preparation for writing their undergraduate dissertation. Solvason argues that research and its methods are being presented to students as a rarefied academic field rather than as a continuation of their everyday knowledge and skills as reflective practitioners. As a result, students are unable to link the research endeavour with their previous learning and to draw on all their existing strengths and wisdom. In an era when the expansion of early childhood training programmes in every country has multiplied the number of small-scale research projects being undertaken, we anticipate that Solvason’s thoughts will resonate with many readers.
This issue is the first in Volume 33, which will be the first volume of the journal to include four issues. We are delighted that our publisher, Taylor & Francis, and our parent organisation, TACTYC, have encouraged us to make this move, which has benefits for everyone: for readers, who will receive more frequent copies of the journal, and for authors, who will not have to wait quite so long to see their accepted articles in print. The new timing should enable us to include special issues twice a year, in June and December, leaving the March and September issues open for collections of independent papers. Our next special issue (June 2013) will focus on Continuing Professional Development.