Professional development for praxis transformation in early childhood education and care: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Despite the extensive international overview of in-service professional development in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), the majority of studies concentrate on short-term training programmes or workshops. The existing scientific literature suggests that these approaches have either minimal or no impact on effective ECEC transformation. Nevertheless, there is a growing global interest in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) approaches situated in the real professional context as a new avenue for praxeological processes. A systematic review of English-language empirical research published between 2018 and 2022 was conducted to identify the features and impacts of CPD approaches that have a significant influence on the transformation of ECEC practices and contexts. The synthesis and analysis of 17 studies yielded thought-provoking findings regarding the approaches, the transformation of ECEC praxis, as well as children and practitioners’ learning. This systematic review is a pioneering endeavour in identifying and synthesising empirical studies that facilitate a more in-depth understanding of the connection between effective CPD and praxis transformation in ECEC.

KEYWORDS:

• Continuous professional development
• in-service teacher education
• pedagogical praxis
• praxeological transformation
• participatory professional learning

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, I. P.), through a PhD Scholarship (SFRH/BD/146235/2019), with the support of CIEC (Research Centre on Child Studies at the University of Minho, Portugal).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia: [Grant Number SFRH/BD/146235/2019].