What does it mean to be an early childhood educator? Negotiating professionalism during practicum placements in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

ABSTRACT

Professionalism is not defined a priori, but rather within a professional community, in the immediate contexts where professionals interact. It is a situated phenomenon that cannot be accounted for without the voices of members of the professional community. In this article, I discuss professionalism through the perspectives of early childhood (EC) teacher educators during practicum placements. Placements are a microcosm that offers a forum for discussing and researching processes in situ within the professional community. The article draws on 11 in-depth interviews and 150 hours of participant observation in a Teacher Education Institute in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Results show EC teacher educators construct and (re)negotiate professionalism through discourses and practices of assertion and resistance banalisation, schoolification and fordification of early childhood education. Results show that professionalism unfolds from collective and individual practical wisdom, a sensitivity and awareness of particular situations that is tacit and embodied in the most experienced.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education and care
• early childhood educators
• early childhood professionalism
• early childhood teachers education
• practical wisdom

Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank Prof. Mathias Urban and Dr Lorena Fernández Fastuca for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

ORCID

Jennifer Guevara http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2581-5102

Notes

1 The escuelas normales were secondary level institutions where training for primary school teachers was offered.

2 It is a popular dance game in Argentina.

3 Local expression meaning you are in a compromised and critical situation.

4 In Spanish, manos en la cola, broche en la boca, and pasticola en la cola either rhyme or have a certain musicality to them.

5 In fact, there is a famous text in ECE in Argentina (Kantor 1988) that relates the use of this phrase to the last military dictatorship (1976–1983). The author argues that getting rid of those manners is an essential part of democratising ECE.