Future Directions for work in Early Childhood Education and Care

1
Future Directions for work inEarly Childhood
Education and Care

• Peter Moss
• Thomas Coram Research Unit
• Institute of Education University of London

2
Themes

• Current condition of the ECEC workforce
• Why?
• The case for change
• Future directions

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Current condition of the ECEC workforce

• Split systems
• childcare (often provided as a private
  commodity for working parents)
• early education (as universal public good)
• family support (targeted)
• Split structures
• Provision
• Funding
• Workforce

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Split workforce and hierarchical

• Pay Qualifications
• (Per hour) (Degree upper
• 
  secondary)
• Teacher 14.41 96
• Childcare worker 5.95 35
• Family day carer 5.00 19
• (UK Labour Force survey 2001-5)

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Current condition of the ECEC workforce

• The situation of staff and levels of training
  in ECEC across the countries covered is mixed,
  with acceptable professional education standards
  being recorded in the Nordic countries but only
  in early education in most other
  countries...Levels of in-service training vary
  greatly across countries and between the
  education and child care sectors
• (OECD Starting Strong II)

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Current conditionof the ECEC workforce

• Some exceptions integrated system, integrated
  ECEC graduate profession
• Nordic countries
• New Zealand
• Slovenia
• ??Spain

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Why?Current understandings

• What is our image of
• Young children immature, undeveloped
• EC services substitute home?a place for applying
  human technologies to achieve predetermined
  outcomes
• Parents paying consumers of childcare
• EC workers as substitute mother?
• low level technician

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Why?Paradigm

• an overarching system of ideas, values and
  beliefs by which people see and organize the
  world in a coherent way
• ECEC situated in particular paradigm -
  positivistic/modernisticwith particular values
  and beliefs

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Paradigm

• Values
• certainty and mastery linearity and
  predetermined outcomes objectivity and
  universality
• Beliefs
• ability of science to reveal the worlds true
  nature
• one right answer for every question
• EC workers can be trained in right answers
• low level technicians

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The case for change

• Equality why should young children have a less
  qualified workforce?
• Quality in services A strong link exists
  between the training and support of staff
  including appropriate pay and conditions and
  the quality of ECEC services (OECD Starting
  Strong II)
• Quality in employment Need to promote quality
  of employment, social policy and industrial
  employmentto improve human and social capital
  (EC Integrated guidelines for growth and jobs)
• The work demands it new understandings require a
  better educated and more integrated workforce

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New understandings

• EC institution as a
• public space/forum - citizens (young old) meet
• a place of many, many possibilities
• a place of ethical and democratic practice
  democracy as a fundamental value
• EC worker as a
• democratic and reflective professional
• critical thinking, researcher experimenter
• co-constructor of meaning, identity, values
  always in relation with others

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Many possibilities

• Collective production of knowledges, values and
  identities
• Collective researching, e.g. childrens learning
  processes, outcomes
• Building solidarity and offering support
• Cultural sustainability and renewal
• Economic development and activity
• Promoting gender and other equalities
• Practice of democracy and active citizenship
• ???
• Some predetermined - some not

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Democracy as afundamental value

• Democracy forms the foundation of the
  pre-school. For this reason, all pre-school
  activity should be carried out in accordance with
  fundamental democratic values
• Swedish pre-school curriculum

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Democratic and reflectiveprofessional

• Competencies
• Communicative (in many languages)
• Contextualised judgement
• Analytic and reflective
• Connect personal and professional
• Connect theories and practice
• Work with diversity and complexity
• Cross-professional and team work

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Democratic and reflective professional

• Values
• Dialogue and democracy
• Researching and experimenting
• Listening, openness to otherness
• Uncertainty and provisionality
• Subjectivity
• Border crossing and curious
• Multiple perspectives

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Dialogue

• Dialogue is of absolute importance. It is an
  idea of dialogue not as an exchange but as a
  process of transformation where you lose
  absolutely the possibility of controlling the
  final result. And it goes to infinity, it goes
  to the universe, you can get lost. And for human
  beings nowadays, and for women particularly, to
  get lost is a possibility and a risk
• Carlina Rinaldi, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

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Researching

• Research can and should take place as much in
  the classroom and by teachers as in the
  university and by academicsThe word
  research, in this sense, leaves the scientific
  laboratories, thus ceasing to be a privilege of
  the few (in universities and other designated
  places) to become the stance, the attitude with
  which teachers approach the sense and meaning of
  life
• Carlina Rinaldi, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

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Uncertainty

• Uncertainty is a quality that you can offer,
  not only a limitation. ..You have to really
  change your being, to recognise doubt and
  uncertainty, to recognise your limits as a
  resource, as a place of encounter, as a quality.
  Which means that you accept that you are
  unfinished, in a state of permanent change, and
  your identity is in the dialogue.
• Carlina Rinaldi, In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

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Multiple perspectives

• Recognise importance of paradigm different
  paradigms?different perspectives
• Increasing ECEC research and practice within
  postmodern paradigm invisible in policy
• Decide which paradigm to choosebut also respect
  and dialogue with those choosing other
  paradigmatic position

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Postmodern paradigm

• The postmodern paradigm values what the
  paradigm of modernity finds problematic
  complexity and multiplicity, subjectivity and
  context, provisionality and uncertaintyThis
  paradigm recognises that any phenomenon early
  childhood education and care, for example - has
  multiple meanings, any knowledge is perspectival,
  all experience is subject to interpretation.
• Gunilla Dahlberg Peter Moss

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Future directions forECEC workforce

• No change not desirable, not sustainable
• Incremental change (e.g. graduate leadership,
  gradual rise in non-graduate qualification
  levels) not desirable, ?sustainable
• Major systemic change in understandings
  structurestowards a democratic reflective ECEC
  professional

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Future directionsSystemic change

• 1.Restructure workforce around a graduate
• 0-6 profession
• What profession? Early years teacher
  Pedagogue??
• What proportion? 50-60(DK, SW) ?100 (NZ)
• What level? Bachelors or Masters?
• Others? Qualified _at_ upper secondary level

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How specialised?

1. 0-6 specialist separate education and identity
   (e.g. NZ)
2. Educator of children young people with 0-6
   identity part generic education, part specialist
   (e.g. Sweden)
3. 0 to 100 worker mainly generic education, some
   specialisation (e.g. Denmark)

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Future directions

• 2. Continuous Professional
• Development for all
• Pedagogical documentation
• Pedagogical support (pedagogistas)
• Higher degrees
• Formal research

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Pedagogical documentation

• Practice and learning processes
• made visible
• subject to dialogue, reflection, interpretation
  co-constructing meaning
• for evaluation, researching, planning, CPD
• An extraordinary tool for dialogue, for
  exchange, for sharing. For Malaguzzi it means the
  possibility to discuss and to dialogue
  everything with everyonebeing able to discuss
  real, concrete things not just theories or
  words (Alfredo Hoyuelos)

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Future directions

• 3.Adequate public funding
• Well qualified workforce requires sustained
  public funding of services parents cannot pay
• Public expenditure on ECEC services
• Denmark2 of GDP Sweden1.7
• UK0.5 US0.4
• Fund services directly

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Future directions

• 4. Farewell to childcare
• Care workforce always devalued and
  disadvantaged
• Care is important as an ethic in all services
  but not as a basis for organising services
• Farewell to childcare childcare
  serviceswelcome to education in its broadest
  sense (social pedagogy) multi-purpose
  childrens centres

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Providers

• Mixed economy of providers communes, not for
  profit (many kinds)??for profit
• Can for profit providers
• Adopt democracy as a fundamental value?
• Provide EC services as public spaces?
• Work collaboratively?
• Make a profit?

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In conclusion

• The early childhood worker needs to be more
  attentive to creating possibilities than pursuing
  predefined goals to be removed from the
  fallacy of certainties, assuming instead
  responsibility to choose, experiment, discuss,
  reflect and change, focusing on the organisation
  of opportunities rather than the anxiety of
  pursuing outcomes, and maintaining in her work
  the pleasure of amazement and wonder.
• Aldo Fortunati,The Education of Young Children as
  a Community Project

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• Cameron, C. and Moss, P. (2007) Care Work in
  Europe Current Understandings and Future
  Directions. London Routledge
• Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. and Pence, A. (2007, 2nd
  ed) Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education
  and Care. London Routledge
• Dahlberg, G. and Moss, P. (2005) Ethics and
  Politics in Early Childhood Education. London
  Routledge
• Fortunati,A. (2006) The Education of Young
  Children as a Community Project (English version
  available from Children in Scotland, 5 Shandwick
  Place, Edinburgh EH2 4RG)
• Moss, P. (2007) Bringing politics into the
  nursery. http//www.bernardvanleer.org/news/2007/b
  ringing_politics_into_the_nursery
• Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio
  Emilia. London RoutledgeFalmer