Preparing and supporting professionals working with infants and toddlers

Introduction

The education and care of infants and toddlers involve both an individual and collective ongoing commitment towards their rights and, relatedly, towards the rights of the professionals who accompany and support children’s everyday experiences. This Special Issue (SI) is dedicated to educators who undertake this relevant, specialised and emotional endeavour. Specifically, this issue focuses on initial and continuing professional preparation and support for those working with infants and toddlers, as well as on systems and processes that support and develop their daily practices.

In constructing this SI, we have been helped enormously by the scholarly assessments of progress in researching pedagogy with infants and toddlers set out in four prior SIs published in the last twelve years. The first of these was organised by Sylvie Rayna and Ferre Laevers (Rayna and Laevers 2011) with the title ‘Understanding children from 0 to 3 years of age and its implications for education. What’s new on the babies’ side? Origins and evolution’. The authors acknowledged that a focus on children from birth to three meant working with the most dominated people (infants, toddlers, practitioners and mothers) and underlined the need for a process of empowerment and emancipation of the birth-3 field. Furthermore, the possibilities brought about by research initiatives were stressed, with articles contributing to the debate around rigorous research tools and ethical positions in this sector. The special issue presented a collection of articles that brought powerful evidence and insights into an agentic image of the child, the centrality of interactions and relationships, the relevance of practitioners’ professional qualifications and accompaniment, and the critical role of infant–toddler pedagogy.

In 2012, the SI ‘Professional Issues in Work with Babies and Toddlers’ was published in this Journal. The editorial by Pamela Oberhuemer (2012) acknowledged the diversity in theoretical frameworks, research foci and research methodologies across the SI. The articles in this SI focused predominantly on studies carried out in continuing professional education, stressing core processes such as collegial dialogue, critical professional reflection among professionals, relationship-building between children and caregivers, systematic documentation and analysis of children’s experiences, as well as co-constructive and participatory approaches to supporting professional development and everyday practices with infants and toddlers.

Susan Recchia and Minsun Shin (Recchia and Shin 2016) guest edited the SI ‘Preparing early childhood teachers for infant care and education’ that added to the previous contributions in arguing for deliberate, specialised and meaningful preparation of teachers for working with infants, toddlers and their families. Despite the diversity across the articles in this SI, the authors identified common themes, such as the lack of adequate preparation in early childhood teacher education, the need for integrating more meaningful experiences with infants, toddlers and families into professional preparation and the importance of family–professional partnerships (p. 261).

More recently, Sheila Degotardi, Jools Page and Jayne White (Degotardi and White 2017) took the lead in organising a SI entitled ‘(Re)conceptualising relationships in infant-toddler pedagogy’ rooted in, as argued by the authors, ‘the intersectionality between relationships, as pedagogies, and very young children, as learners’ (p. 355). Deriving from diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, this SI brings together studies that contribute to the understanding and enactment of relational pedagogies in infant–toddler settings. The articles in the SI clearly elucidate the complex, subtle and nonlinear nature of relationships with infants and toddlers and constitute, in our view, an authoritative source for international debate about this central issue.

Each of these SIs has offered invaluable summary accounts of the progress that has been made in exploring pedagogical questions relating to infants and toddlers, and each has included an agenda for continuing or new lines of research that may be required. In the light of these reviews, it seems to us that the irrefutable importance of professionals’ preparation and support for this pedagogic work cannot possibly be addressed without taking into account more fundamental questions concerning what exactly professionals are being prepared for. We see the first of these questions as being about the role and functions of an early years setting in any individual, cultural and policy context. A second question concerns differing conceptions of infants and toddlers, specifically whether they are seen as agentic in constructing their own social world or whether they are seen as vulnerable, dependent, and reliant on adults. These differing conceptions give rise to quite different understandings of the kinds of interactions that are prioritised and formed. A third question concerns the paradox of why work with infants and toddlers so often continues to be undervalued and low status, despite the massive evidence about the importance of early years and of the systems in which the child lives. In our view, such a positioning denies the complexity of working in this sector and undermines the development of specialised professional preparation and support. We further develop these three questions in the sections that follow.

What are the roles and functions of an early years setting?

The role and functions of early years settings has been the subject of critical discussion in the literature for at least three decades.

The so-called dual socialisation debate (Dencik 1989) was briefly stated as the potential of seeing the early years setting not as modelled on family life (a single model of socialisation occurring in both family and setting) but of seeing the setting as offering a completely different kind of social space for children from birth to three years old (thus dual socialisations). Peter Moss, Gunilla Dahlberg, and Alan Pence (Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999) have illustrated this vividly with their conception of the young child, including babies and toddlers, and the complementary role of different social spaces:

it is not to be understood as a substitute home. Young children – both under three and over three years of age – are seen as able to manage, and indeed to desire and thrive on relationships with small groups of other children and adults, without risking either their own well-being or their relationship with their parents. Not only is there no need to try in some way to provide a substitute home, but the benefit from attending an early childhood institution, comes from it not being a home. If offers something quite different, but quite complementary, so the child gets, so to speak, the best of two environments

(Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999, 81)

The importance and value of peer relationships for infants and toddlers within the early childhood institution is in complete contrast to the emphasis on emotional attachments with adults within the family. Nevertheless, emotional attachment between nursery practitioners and infants and toddlers, and the growth of trust, dependency and independence that is seen as developing from them, is a central feature of much international policy and curriculum guidance on work with infants and toddlers.

It should be of no surprise therefore that the different roles and priorities accorded to nurseries in different national and cultural contexts, and the different conceptions of infants and toddlers, their agencies and their vulnerabilities, held by different theorists, have led to sharp differences in pedagogic practices. A recent study of pedagogic work with one year olds in four different countries (Hong Kong, the USA, New Zealand and England) (Cooper et al. 2022) concluded:

Our collective reflections and multilayered dialogue have led us to acknowledge meaningful pedagogy with very young children as a culturally specific phenomenon.

(Cooper et al. 2022, 21)

This seems to us to be a very welcome and inclusive acknowledgment of how important the views and aspirations of local communities and stakeholders are in deciding on the purpose of early years settings and in shaping pedagogic practices and the professional preparation and support necessary to sustain those practices. It is an invaluable counterforce to the globalisation and standardisation of pedagogic approaches. Yet, it also implies that we must consider how the different cultures participating in an early years setting—for example, the different cultures of families and of practitioners—are negotiated and navigated. As Pamela Oberhumer drew out in the Editorial to her SI, referring to the work of Sacha Powell and Kathy Goouch, there are competing discourses about ‘what matters’ in pedagogic practice with some discourses more privileged than others. In a vividly titled paper ‘Whose hand rocks the cradle’, Powell and Goouch (2012) documented the struggles of infant and toddler pedagogues as they sought to navigate the priorities and practices arising from their own training which conflicted with those of policy makers and regulators, and sometimes, with those of families.

How are infants and toddlers conceptualised—the ‘competent, agentic’ child versus the ‘fragile, vulnerable’ child?

The second major question concerns different conceptions about the nature and capacities of the young child. The pioneering work of Elinor Goldschmied is paramount in acknowledging infants and toddlers as persons with rights to experiences that contribute to their wellbeing and development. Indeed, this powerful vision and status of children up to the age of three is fully stated in the title of the book that she co-authored with Sonia Jackson (Goldschmied and Jackson 2004): ‘People under Three’! Loris Malaguzzi (1994) also fiercely advocated for an image of the child, from birth, as a citizen with rights, curious, creative, competent in experiencing the world and in communicating through one hundred languages. This entails a public declaration of a capable child who should be taken seriously and whose potential should not be betrayed (Fochi 2015). For Malaguzzi, among the things he referred to as ‘unbearables’, was the dissemination of images in which the child is annihilated by their depiction of fragility, poorness and imperfection. He stressed the need to be aware of the image of the child that is held because of its influence on the actions, relations and proposals that are developed with and for children.

Despite the inclusive and equitable directions that are opened by such conceptions, an endemic scepticism about infants’ and toddlers’ capabilities (Araújo 2017) has been identified in the literature (e.g. Brownlee et al. 2000; Salamon and Harrison 2015). This tendency is often associated with images of deficit, limitation and invisibility.

A particularly noteworthy contribution on this topic is Marjatta Kalliala’s work in Finland. The author calls for a rejection of this polarised conceptual view of the child (weak or strong) and to recognise that each child (like all of us) has both aspects. She highlights the need to be alert to the possibility that an assumption that all children are simply strong and capable may risk resulting in whole groups of children, who may not necessarily be able to ensure their voices are heard, being inadvertently silenced (Kalliala 2014).

To confront and revise the conceptions that professionals often hold about infants and toddlers requires the creation of opportunities for theory, research and experience to engage in dialogue and for diverse rationales to be negotiated (Zeichner 2010). The creation of collaborative forums (Quiñones, Li, and Ridgway 2018), for example, offers very promising possibilities for discussion and reflection around these conceptions and their relations with pedagogical practices. As Rayna and Laevers conclude on raising the status of babies and toddlers:

In the end one realises how much the implementation of children’s rights will be dependent on the capacity of the adult to overcome the gap between the common sense views on babies and toddlers and what really goes on while they interact with the world.

(Rayna and Laevers 2011, 170)

Acknowledging the paradox … Why do we still need to confront the low status and lack of specialised preparation associated with work with infants and toddlers?

Many researchers and professionals have asked why, despite these assertions of values and rights and the advocacy that has accompanied them, and despite the distinct bodies of evidence from disciplines as far apart as neuroscience and psychoanalytic research that converge on the crucial nature of early experience and its lifelong impact, provision for these youngest citizens remains low status and underfunded. Havnes (2018) argues that early childhood teachers are the weak element in two hierarchies, the governance hierarchy and the epistemological hierarchy. Evidence is clear in recognising that this scenario is even more critical for professionals working with children from birth to three. Indeed, according to Chu (2016), infant–toddler professionals have the least education, the lowest pay and status and the highest turnover of all professionals working in ECEC, which contributes to creating an ‘invisible neglect of infants’ (p. 266). In the study carried out by Goouch and Powell (Goouch and Powell 2013) in the UK, educators described themselves as ‘being unimportant, invisible’ (p. 82). Reporting from Brazil, Maria Carmén Barbosa (2010) points to the invisibility of babies and toddlers in the political and pedagogical realms, in social discourse and in research.

Macrosystemic tendencies are crucial in understanding this paradox, including the nature of caring work in societies and its low status across the life span whether in early years work, nursing, social work, care of the elderly or mental health work. Also, playing a role in perpetuating these tendencies are the social and political systems that position ‘caring’ work in highly gendered ways and as economically unproductive, except to the extent that it releases adults to work in the labour market. As a consequence, ECEC services for children from birth to three became particularly vulnerable to two tendencies identified by Vandenbroeck, Peeters, Urban and Lazzari (Vandenbroeck et al. 2016): familiarisation (representing the growing number of childcare places organised by childminders or family daycare providers) and marketisation (meaning the encouragement towards private initiatives, with less or no funding from states).

Professional preparation and continuous support for educators—our questions and concerns

The three questions raised above open up this Special Edition and are enough to justify our interest in addressing the professional preparation and support for professionals working in the infant–toddler field. However, other issues inform of this focus, related to the highly specialised nature of this preparation and support.

Firstly, the affective professional work (Quiñones, Li, and Ridgway 2021) of infant–toddler educators has its own specialised emotional pedagogy (Elfer and Wilson 2023), the demands of which are addressed in several articles of this volume, both in preservice and in-service initiatives.

Secondly, forming relationships with babies and toddlers is emotionally and professionally complex. This work is often positioned as simple ‘care’ work, where specific preparation (critically informed by explicit reference to cultural values and research evidence) is not needed, in contrast with more important ‘education’ work, where professional training and preparation is needed.

It can seem as if the relationship made between a practitioner and a baby or young child happens almost automatically, in a ‘taken-for-granted’ way and is not complex (a view robustly contested by Sheila Degotardi, Jools Page, and Jayne White (Degotardi and White 2017)), or sometimes problematic in practice. In this view, the relationship can seem as if it is little more than a precondition for early education to occur. As is well established in the literature, there is wide acceptance that care and education cannot be separated and that from the point of view of the child, these separate descriptors of their interactions with others are meaningless. However, the separate words ‘care’ and ‘education’ remain in adult discourse and each carries a whole constellation of values and meanings. The activity of ‘care’ still seems to be understood as little more than protecting a child from harm and carries values of being a basic, low-status task compared to the much more complex activity of ‘educating’. We would join Rayna and Laevers (2011), Oberhuemer (2012), Recchia and Shin (2016), Degotardi and White (2017) in rejecting that view of care work as simple and straightforward. We would position it instead as vital in facilitating infants’ and toddlers’ feelings of safety and security and their capacity to explore and interact with others. However, we would also see it as complex and requiring sophisticated reflection on the detailed dynamics of conducting intimate interactions with another human being where the personal and the professional are in a continual interplay.

Thirdly, the pedagogical strategies for managing this complex work can seem as if they amount to little more than the development of career path routes, progressing from working with children from birth to three to higher status/higher paid work with older children or strategies of support to avoid burnout. These strategies of support often seem to resemble a lifebuoy thrown to practitioners to avoid them being overwhelmed by the intensity of caring interactions with other people’s babies and young children, in a sector with high staff turnover as practitioners leave the profession altogether. Again, the earlier SIs have highlighted how we might think differently about the nature of the profession and the demands it makes on the educators engaging in it. For example, is it reasonable to expect a practitioner working with infants and toddlers to be highly emotionally receptive to their communication of feelings, to be thoughtful about the babies’ and toddlers’ unique needs, and attentive to their thoughts and ideas, when the practitioners' own experience may be that very little attention is paid to their own feelings, needs, thoughts and ideas?

These concerns raise critical questions about the kind of initial preparation that is needed for those who work with children under three and about how that work is supported and sustained.

A call for attention to the professional preparation and support provided for infant–toddler educators

This SI builds on previous SIs concerning infants and toddlers by focusing attention specifically on the preparation and support of professionals working with this age group. We want to acknowledge the encouraging reception of our call for papers, resulting in a high volume of submissions: 49 abstracts from 25 countries. The selected proposals have considered core criteria, including the adherence to the themes proposed by the guest editors:

1. Mapping and debating qualification requirements for pedagogic work with infants and toddlers in a local, national and international perspective;

2. Initial professional studies, including practicum/placement experiences and mentoring practices;

3. Infant and toddler pedagogy(ies) in initial professional studies and professional development initiatives;

4. Transition from initial professional studies to the early childhood profession;

5. Patterns of emotional work with infants and toddlers, its place on initial professional studies and processes for supporting practitioners with the demands of this work;

6. Models and practices for facilitating continuous professional reflection in work with infants and toddlers;

7. Principles, values and practices of observation with infants and toddlers in initial professional studies.

Moreover, we sought to welcome a diversity of geographies and a balance of contributions from well-established and young researchers in the field. This resulted in a collection of 15 articles that will be aggregated and presented under themes that were selected as priorities for this SI.

The first three articles focus on qualification requirements for pedagogic work with infants and toddlers. In relation to the infant and toddler workforce challenges, Hasina Ebrahim’s research in South Africa highlights the need for a high-quality workforce for children from birth to three. Ebrahim’s research aims to analyse practitioners’, managers’, trainers’ and researchers’ perspectives on the sustainability of the infant–toddler workforce. Their findings showed the marginalisation of the infant–toddler workforce; one participant reporting ‘baby and toddler education is a largely unfamiliar terrain’. In relation to the importance of professionals understanding infant and toddler competencies, the author discusses valuing infant and toddlers’ agency, communication and sociability. Appropriate mentoring and coaching to support the development of infant–toddler education and care for this group includes pedagogical love, care, kindness, protection and critical thinking.

The second article of this section, authored by Tik Sze Carrey Siu, Maria Cooper and Mary Benson Mcmullen, aims to present country-specific narratives on the professional preparation of infant–toddler teachers at university-based programmes in Hong Kong, China, Aotearoa New Zealand and the USA. By using a comparative qualitative descriptive design with dialogic deliberation, the authors present robust data on the role of country-specific values, pedagogical elements, curriculum focus and teaching practicum expectations on the preparation of teachers in the three countries. Similarities are identified across countries, including the recognition of the importance of the first years of life and the need for qualified teachers. The study acknowledges that professional preparation programmes are embedded in cultural values and norms and suggests that they have been influenced by expectations of cultural continuity in practices with infants and toddlers.

The study by F. Raewyn Penman and Bridgette Redder is based on evidence that highlights the importance of age-specific qualifications for working with infants and toddlers. The study addresses an online specialist infant and toddler learning and development postgraduate diploma qualification which is multi-disciplinary and aligned with a holistic view of wellbeing, learning and development in the early years. The findings show a positive perceived impact of the online course on teachers’ identity and pedagogy, with asynchronous online delivery, teacher–educator availability and multi-disciplinary perspectives as aspects that were valued by the participants. Particularly relevant for this SI is the teacher educators’ acknowledgement of the need to critically approach their own practice, reflecting on the programme’s limits and possibilities and anticipating future directions. Indeed, the preparation of teacher educators and mentors constitutes a cornerstone to (re)think about the quality and relevance of initiatives for preparing professionals in this specific sector.

The three articles in this section highlight that offering qualifications for the 0–3 sector is paramount, but that the level of qualification is not enough. Indeed, these papers raise very relevant questions around infant–toddler pedagogy and curriculum, and the alignment of qualification requirements with the specific professionalism needed for working with infants and toddlers.

The next group of five papers, each examining the formation and professional development of the infant and toddler pedagogue, give further insight into the debate about the competent/agentic or fragile/vulnerable conception of children under three and the complexity of pedagogic relationships with this age group. Katarzyna Gajek’s ‘The Process of Becoming a Nursery Caregiver: The Interactive Perspective provides a vivid documentation of the factors which influence the formation of practitioners in birth to three centres in Poland. She shows the significance of their own early childhood experiences within their families and their embodied learning in this earliest context, a context which might be described as a first practicum experience. Gajek offers the example of the dilemma of managing emotional closeness and distance in relationships with infants and toddlers and their families. She refers to children’s needs to be alone at times, as well as to be emotionally close at others. In this way, she highlights the pedagogue’s complex task of understanding personal motivations and needs and their influence on professional actions.

In the next paper, Maria Cooper, Gloria Quiñones, Andi Salamon and Tina Stratigos present a discussion on ‘preservice teachers being ‘stirred in’ to unfamiliar practices with infants and toddlers’ which also speaks to this complexity, using the theory of practice architecture. The article offers a detailed analysis of a young child, Victor, having his nappy changed by a student practitioner during her practicum. The paper draws out from this short, but highly intimate and personal interaction between the child, student and mentor, the details of care and respect expressed through the nuances of touch, timing, and tone of voice. The authors refer to the process of the student’s learning as being ‘stirred in’. They use this metaphor to signal the gradualness of this learning. They also show the significance and subtlety of vital fine details for both child and student teacher, details that recall Elinor Goldschmied’s reference to ‘minute particulars’ (Goldschmied and Jackson 2004).

Eleni Katsiada, Maria Hatzigianni and Elini Sotiropoulou report on the role of placements and practicums in the formation of practitioners working with babies and toddlers in Greece. The practicum can be completed in Greece or in another country through the Erasmus+ programme. In this context, the researchers have investigated graduates’ experiences of practicums taken abroad and their views on how well their programme of studies in Greece and their practicum elsewhere equipped them for their professional role. The findings of these researchers support the critical role that practicums play, especially those taken in a different national and professional context. International differences of policy and pedagogy, and the roots of these differences were productive of learning. They facilitated the critical reflection of students about the complexities of practice and strengthened students’ self-confidence to engage with dilemmas and uncertainties.

The article by Sara Barros Araújo, Susana Esteves, and Margarida Marta discusses the contribution of heuristic play in initial professional education. The authors deploy Elinor Goldschmied’s principles of pedagogy with infant and toddler ‘students’ in relation to the design of the practicum for adult students. Particularly important here is the emotional and organisational context for the students’ learning and the principle of a non-directive approach. These allowed the student to explore and discover, encouraged to exercise their own agency and creativity in confronting the inevitable dilemmas and uncertainties that arise in all pedagogy. Perhaps one of the most exciting and far-reaching findings of this study is the contribution of students’ reflective diaries compared to more formal practicum reports. These findings show how the diaries made visible the ‘difficulties, anguishes, and fears’, that, alongside joys and satisfactions, are an inevitable part of pedagogy, but that are also so often concealed from professional reflection as, in some way, shameful.

Finally in this group of five papers, the article by Anna Lees and Carolyn Brennan follows the premise that early childhood teacher preparation programs should contribute to efforts of decolonisation, questioning practices of age segregation and exclusion of infant–toddlers from pre-service initiatives. The study explored teacher candidates’ understanding of how an infant/toddler practicum (ITP) was relevant to their teaching practice. The results show the positive impact of the practicum experience on teacher candidates’ understandings of the continuum of child development, new insights into infants and toddlers as whole people with agency, the relevance of observation, and the value of individual relationships with children and with families. While the (temporal) limits of these pre-service field experiences are identified, they are also perceived as a promising contribution for what the authors call ‘just, sustainable and thriving futures’.

These five articles converge in providing detailed case studies of patterns of formation of the infant–toddler pedagogue which are also touched on in other articles in this SI. They each provide, in differing national and social contexts, illustrations of the complexity of this formation process because of the complexity of the relational task for which pedagogues working with infants and toddlers are being prepared. In this respect, they are in line with the message of previous SIs on birth to three that work with this age group needs conceptualising (and reconceptualising) and cannot rely on watered down pedagogies developed for work with older children. They push the boundaries of the field too in highlighting specific examples of affective elements of professional formation for this work. They serve to challenge the denigrating attitudes of societies to work with babies and toddlers. They do this by illustrating the inherent complexity of the work as developing pedagogues integrate their own early childhoods, personal histories, theoretical learning, and practical experience.

The next two papers in this SI focus a lens on pedagogic attention to the role of emotion in any holistic view of interactions and relationships with infants and toddlers. Robyn Dolby, Belinda Friezer, Eilish Hughes, Jools Page and Vickie Meade introduce a professional development model called Baby Playspace Learning and its contribution to enabling emotional responsiveness from educators to carers, their infants, and infant peers. The paper focuses on two transitions at the beginning of the day, the first being the child’s transition from the carer to their educator, and the second being when the infant is enabled to move from closeness and security with their educator to more separate exploration, engaging in interactions with others in the nursery and the activities available. However, although many infants and toddlers may enjoy and flourish in nursery, these authors are attentive to the more painful feelings that transitions can entail. They refer to the understandable human tendency to avoid or ‘distance oneself’ from such feelings and the potential role of Baby Playspace in offering antidotes to that risk.

The article by Valeria Scacchi examines the current professional learning and development (PLD) of educators working in settings in the UK (with children 0–3) and Italy (with children 0–5), through the development of case studies. Drawing on professionals’ perspectives, the cases depicted similar scenarios: lack of opportunities for PLD, an ambivalent professional identity negatively affected by low profile and limited recognition, and an emotionally demanding profession. The educators shared the need for diversified PLD opportunities, emphasising, among other things, the importance of sharing and discussing their practices. It is hoped that the results of the study will add to the debate on reconceptualising PLD for educators working with children under 3, with flexible and tailored opportunities playing a central role in their preparation and identity construction. In terms of further work and debate, we would draw attention to how Scacchi’s research aligns with that of Dolby, and her colleagues, in their shared emphasis on the intense emotional demands of working with infants and toddlers and the opportunities for reflection and support that this requires.

Reflective practices have been a core aspect of this current issue. For example, video reflection as a visual tool enables the inclusion of diverse perspectives about infant and toddler education and care. The article by Caroline Guard aims to conceptualise the voices of babies using the video interaction dialogue model with early years educators in England to propose a new model, Video Interaction Dialogue. This model presents a visual methodology for educators’ reflection and considerations of babies’ voices. In this reflective dialogue process, educators foreground the importance and value of their professional roles and the awareness of babies’ voice and agency in their everyday interactions. In her research, Guard discovered how video processes increased the educator’s knowledge of babies, such as how they communicate, and encouraged them to value their professional role.

Continuing with the importance of reflection, the article by Minsun Shin and Susan Recchia, from the USA, suggests that engaging with critical reflection enables student teachers to think deeper about their practices. In their research, student teachers used interactive journaling as a method to reflect, with mentors, about infant–toddler pedagogical practices. Through this process of reflection, student teachers were able to critically reflect on their taken-for granted assumptions about working with infants and families.

Nicola Kemp and Jo Josephidou address the critical role of owners/managers of settings in developing outdoor pedagogy for infants and toddlers, amidst the pervasive influence of a neoliberal agenda in the English context. Drawing on critical pedagogy and on Paulo Freire’s powerful idea of conscientização, the authors explore the acts of resistance and disruption of leaders in creating pedagogic spaces (cultural, physical and reflective spaces for practitioners) for enhancing outdoor possibilities for infants and toddlers. The article brings potent insights into the vital role of leadership in encouraging continuous reflective professional development. Through critical debates around hegemonic tendencies, the study unveils core processes that, ultimately, are at the heart of a much needed transformation of (outdoor) spaces, and represents a message of hope for children and professionals.

In relation to collaborative models that facilitate continuous professional reflection, Jochen Devlieghere, Lobke Kombergen and Michel Vadenbroeck, from Belgium, present a discussion on the role of pedagogical coaches. Pedagogical coaches were introduced to improve the quality of pedagogy in childcare services and as an important dimension for continuous professional development. Their findings suggest confusion and ambiguity in their role. In their discussions with educators (childcare workers), the authors discovered the importance of embedding their role into the everyday culture of the centres.

The paper by Brecht Peleman, Hester Hulpia and Lisandre Bergeron-Morin adds to the contributions on the critical role of collaborative processes for expanding the knowledge base and reflection processes of professionals working with multilingual infants, toddlers and their parents. Specifically, their study focuses on the contemporary challenges faced by Flemish infant–toddler professionals in approaching multilingualism, in a context of reported uncertainty and lack of experience. The article details the co-constructive process, involving 29 tutors, of developing a toolkit for supporting professionals. Particularly relevant are the results on the role of the tutors in facilitating reflexivity about multilingualism, facilitating discussion about sensitive topics and strengthening collegiality.

Our concluding words go to the authors that made a contribution to this SI. They deserve our immense appreciation and thanks for their scholarship and their commitment to honouring infants and toddlers through the attention and respect for the professionals who daily interact with our youngest citizens.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.