Professionalism in Early Childhood Education and Care

Convenors:

Antje Rothe, Catholic University of Applied Sciences Berlin (KHSB), Germany
Mary Moloney, Mary Immaculate College, Ireland
Marianne Fenech, University of Sydney, Australia

Purpose

This SIG is grounded in our commitment to children’s right to quality early education and care (ECEC) from birth to school age. It is widely known that early childhood teachers and educators are fundamental to achieving this right, yet they remain on the periphery of the education continuum, lacking professional recognition, status, and remuneration commensurate to the complexity and unique contexts in in which they work.

Globally there is a recruitment and retention crisis in ECEC that links directly to a lack of professional status and recognition.

While well intentioned, government efforts to professionalise the ECEC workforce tend to focus on external demands and accountability criteria involving multiple governing bodies. This top-down approach can be at the expense of professionalism from within, where teachers and educators exercise professional autonomy and judgement, drawing from an expert knowledge base.

Under these conditions, the Professionalism SIG is intended to be a place for ‘shared thinking’ and creating synergies rather than producing universally valid outcomes. The SIG also provides a forum to discuss, debate, and identify actions to redress these challenges.  (Revised, November, 2024)

Report

Click here to view the 2019 report (pdf) Margaret Sims, Antje Rothe, Mary Moloney
Click here to view the 2018 report (pdf) Margaret Sims, Antje Rothe, Mary Moloney and Cynthia Buettner
Click here to view the 2017-18 report (pdf) Margaret Sims and Cynthia Buettner
Click here to view the 2011-12 report (pdf) Carmen Dalli and Mathias Urban

News & Events

Early childhood teachers’ professionalism and quality

At the Brighton P-SIG and conference Marianne spoke about Australian research which she is leading that is focused on building a well-prepared, quality ECT workforce. This research involves exploring questions such as,

• What is distinct about the professional practice of ECTs – what they do and how they do it? How is this different to the professional practice of vocationally-qualified educators?
• How might the quality of an ECT’s practice be assessed?
• How does ‘professionalism’ vary by ECT quality? Are quality ECTs more intrinsically professionally driven and less reliant on top-down professional accountabilities?
• Do we (in some countries) have unrealistic expectations of the scope of an ECT’s practice? Should the professional practice of ECTs be confined to pedagogy and curriculum?
• How can teacher education programs best prepare ECTs to work from a professionalism-within foundation?

Marianne is keen to hear your thoughts on these provocations. If you would like to share your perspectives and learn from what other members have to say, contact Marianne at marianne.fenech@sydney.edu.au

P-SIG communication:

Antje, Mary, and Marianne are keen to keep the conversations that started at Brighton going. We can keep providing updates, but we have also been thinking about how we might facilitate SIG members communicating with each other. Some SIGs use Facebook while one uses X (formerly Twitter). EECERA has suggested that we could set up our own blog. What are your thoughts on this? If you have some ideas and are able to take responsibility for facilitating communication between members, we’d love to hear from you!

Report from EECERA 2024:  It has been a fantastic EECERA conference this year – thank you and all involved for all the work and organisation. We felt very welcomed and inspired.

Also, we enjoyed an enriching discussion at the EECERA conference this year.  Here is a summary of our meeting which we would like to share with you:  

Professionalism SIG Meeting Minutes 32nd EECERA Conference Brighton

For information on upcoming SIG meetings please contact the convenors.