Researching professional recognition in a pre-school setting: a critical realist approach

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a critical realist approach can add to our understanding of professional recognition of educators in a pre-school setting. Recognition is a function of personal achievement and social arrangement, and is understood through examining those subjective conditions and objective structures as observed in the field of practice or as articulated by the actors involved. Through in-depth interviews, we provoked early childhood educators to deliberate on their lived experiences of professional recognition vis-à-vis policy expectations and institutional practices. In doing so, we identified interactive forces that influence professional recognition in a pre-school context. We argue that a stratified view of reality and epistemic relativism espoused by critical realists offers valuable theoretical insights for exploring teacher professional recognition. Finally, drawing on our empirical data and latest literature, we outline four points of reflection regarding the analytical advantages of critical realism.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical realism
• professional recognition
• stratified reality
• theoretical redescription
• early childhood educator
• early childhood Education and Care
• Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tebeje Molla http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6848-3091

Andrea Nolan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3519-6317

Notes

1 The Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector consists of five main services: Preschool -offering an educational programme to children usually in the year before they start formal schooling, Long Day Care – offering all-day care for children aged from birth to 5 years, Occasional Care – short periods of care for children aged birth to 5 years when required offered in a variety of community settings, Family Day Care – care usually offered to young children in the Family Day Carer’s home, and Outside School Hours Care – care offered to children of school age before and after school hours at schools or other community venues. The Long Day Care (LDC) services are the largest ECEC providers, and in 2016, the services employed over half of the total workforce in the sector (DET 2017). Although the term Long Day Care is still in use, starting from 2018, it has been subsumed under a new service category, namely Centre-based Day Care, which includes Occasional Care services. (see https://www.education.gov.au/child-care-provider-handbook/types-eligible-child-care-services).

2 On 10 January 2017, in his appearance on The Project TV show (Channel 10), David Leyonhjelm, Federal Senator from New South Wales, characterized the role of childcare workers as merely ‘wiping noses and stopping the kids from killing each other’. His remarks triggered widespread public outcry, for details see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-12/childcare-workers-open-letter-to-david-leyonhjelm/8178296