Dealing with uncertainty: challenges and possibilities for the early childhood profession

ABSTRACT

In many countries, strategies to further develop services and institutions for the education and care of young children are linked to a discourse on professionalism. Ambitious policy goals, it is argued, can only be achieved by a skilled and qualified workforce whose practice is guided by a professional body of knowledge. This article argues that the prevailing conceptualisation of the early childhood professional is constructed out of a particular, hierarchical mode of producing and applying expert knowledge that is not necessarily appropriate to professional practice in the field of early childhood education. However, it is highly effective and contributes to forming a professional habitus that contradicts the relational core of early childhood practice. Drawing on the conceptual framework of hermeneutics, the article explores an alternative paradigm of a relational, systemic professionalism that embraces openness and uncertainty, and encourages co‐construction of professional knowledges and practices. Research, in this frame of thinking, is understood as a dialogic activity of asking critical questions and creating understandings across differences, rather than producing evidence to direct practice.

RÉSUMÉ: Dans de nombreux pays, les stratégies pour développer plus avant les services et institutions d’accueil et d’éducation de la petite enfance sont liées à un débat sur le professionnalisme. Une politique ambitieuse, dit‐on, ne peut réussir que grâce à une force de travail compétente et qualifiée dont les pratiques sont guidées par un corps de connaissances professionnelles. Cet article défend l’idée que la conception dominante du professionnel de la petite enfance est construite à partir d’un mode de production et d’application de connaissances expertes, particulier et hiérarchique, qui n’est pas obligatoirement approprié à la pratique professionnelle dans le champ de l’éducation préscolaire. Elle est toutefois effective et contribue à former l’habitus professionnel, entrant en contradiction avec la dimension relationnelle centrale de la pratique auprès des jeunes enfants.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: In vielen Ländern werden derzeit Strategien zu Ausbau und Weiterentwicklung der Institutionen und Angebote für die Bildung, Betreuung und Erziehung junger Kinder mit einem Diskurs zur Professionalität in diesem Feld verknüpft. Die anspruchsvollen politischen Ziele können nur verwirklicht werden, so die Argumentation, mithilfe gut ausgebildeter und qualifizierter Fachkräfte, deren Praxis von einer professionellen Wissensbasis geleitet wird. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass vorherrschende Konzeptualisierungen des professionellen Frühpädagogen aus einem besonderen, hierarchischen Modus der Erzeugung und Anwendung von Expertenwissen heraus konstruiert sind; einem Modus der dem professionellen Handeln im Feld nicht notwendigerweise angemessen ist. Ungeachtet dessen ist er höchst wirksam und trägt zur Herausbildung eines professionellen Habitus bei, der im Widerspruch zu dem auf wechselseitigen Beziehungen aufgebauten Kern frühpädagogischer Praxis steht. Ausgehend von einem hermeneutischen Denkansatz erörtert der Beitrag ein alternatives Paradigma einer systemischen Professionalität, die Offenheit und Unsicherheit begrüßt, ernst nimmt und zur Ko‐Konstruktion von professionellem Wissen und Praktiken ermutigt. Forschung wird in diesem Denkansatz als dialogische Praxis und als zentrales Merkmal einer systemischen Professionalität verstanden. Sie ermöglicht, kritische Fragen zu bearbeiten und trägt dazu bei, Verstehen über Differenz zu erzeugen, statt Faktenwissen für die Anwendung in der Praxis.

RESUMEN: En muchos países, las estrategias para continuar desarrollando los servicios e instituciones para la educación y el cuidado de los niños menores, están enlazadas con un discurso sobre profesionalismo. Metas políticas ambiciosas, se argumenta, pueden ser logradas solamente por una fuerza de trabajo hábil y calificada, cuya práctica es guiada por un cuerpo de conocimiento profesional. Este articulo argumenta que la conceptualizacion prevaleciente de la profesionalización pre‐escolar esta construida por un modo particular y jerárquico de producir y aplicar conocimientos de expertos, que no es necesariamente apropiada a las practicas profesionales del campo de la educación pre‐escolar. En todo caso, esta es altamente efectiva y contribuye a formar hábitos que contradicen el corazón relacional de la práctica pre‐escolar. Basado en un marco de referencia de hermenéutico, el artículo explora un paradigma alternativo, de un profesionalismo relacional y sistémico que abarca la actitud abierta y la incertidumbre, y que fomenta la co‐construcción del conocimiento y de las prácticas profesionales. La investigación, en este marco de pensamiento, es entendida como una actividad dialogica de hacer preguntas criticas y crear comprensiones entre diferencias, más que de producir evidencias directas para la práctica.

Keywords:

• professionalism
• professional habitus
• knowledge
• evidence‐based practice
• hermeneutics
• critical thinking

Notes

1. Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, France, Norway and Sweden.

2. This distinction clearly shows in historical as well as in recent debates on early childhood, as Gill McGillivray demonstrates in her contribution to this issue.

3. In Germany, for example, early childhood curricula have been introduced at state level in recent years only. Some of them represent clear examples of the phenomenon discussed above: educational underachievement of groups of children growing up under precarious conditions is identified as a ‘problem’ which is to be ‘solved’ through application of effective methodology provided by ‘science’, and applied by ‘skilled’ practitioners.

4. For a detailed analysis of how even supposedly holistic and open frameworks can contribute to producing this particular neo‐liberal version of the universal child, see Iris Duhn’s excellent critique of Te Whāriki, the New Zealand early childhood curriculum (Duhn 2006).

5. For an extended critique of this particular paradigm, in which research knowledge is comprised of a scientific ‘grasp of the object’, see Schwandt (2004) and Taylor (2002).

6. I am referring to recent and ongoing studies, carried out in various contexts: Carmen Dalli’s work on professional ethics and identities in New Zealand (Dalli 2003); first findings of the international ‘Day in the Life of an Early Years Practitioner’ project, presented at the 2007 annual conference of EECERA; ‘Bildung: elementar’, a participatory curriculum development project in Germany (Urban 2005a; Urban and Murray 2005); and an international study on ‘Strategies for Change’ in ECEC systems (Urban 2007).

7. Bourdieu explains ‘habitus’ as ‘lex insita’(immanent law) (1977, 81), a system of dispositions through which certain behaviour is considered ‘natural’ among a community. These dispositions are constantly but unwittingly produced and reproduced by the members of the community: ‘actions and works are the product of a modus operandi of which he [the member; M.U.] is not the producer and has no conscious mastery, they contain an ‘objective intention’ … which always outruns his conscious intentions’ (Bourdieu 1977, 79).

8. Besides early childhood education, there are other examples of systems whose dynamics are highly sensitive to their initial conditions but seem to develop in unpredictable ways. The so‐called butterfly effect is one of them. In mathematics, the behaviour of these systems is referred to as deterministic chaos.

9. Obviously, this can be said of any professional practice that constitutes interactions with fellow human beings. There is a clear distinction, though, from technical practice, where a distinct action (e.g. pushing the ‘right’ button) produces a predictable result.

10. A notion that has been adopted, twenty years later, by Michel Vandenbroeck (1999, 30) as he writes about fostering children’s identities in rapidly changing societies.

11. I am using the term training reluctantly, and only because it is how education, preparation and continuous learning of early childhood practitioners are usually referred to. Training, as a particular concept of learning through instruction, repetitive practice, etc., is about acquiring skills to apply and deliver technologies. Training is about being taught how to do things right. Its connotations contradict the very essence of professional and educational practice as a transformative practice of mutual dependence and respect, co‐construction and shared meaning making between human beings.

12. Glenda MacNaughton, in her 2005 book titled Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies, explains that connecting the ‘critical’ to reflection is about directing the attention away from the individual and towards ‘the operation and effects of power relationships between people’. She describes critical reflection as ‘the process of questioning how power operates in the process of teaching and learning and then using that knowledge to transform oppressive or inequitable teaching and learning processes’ (7). MacNaughton provides excellent examples of critical questions for early childhood practitioners (MacNaughton 2003). My concern is, though, that this concept of critical reflection can unintentionally carry a risk of individualising the responsibility for developing critically reflective practice, thus imposing an enormous pressure on the individual practitioner.