Transcript No Slide Title

Future Directions
for work in
Early Childhood
Education and Care
Peter Moss
Thomas Coram Research Unit
Institute of Education University of London
Themes
•
•
•
•
Current condition of the ECEC workforce
Why?
The case for change
Future directions
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
Split workforce –
and hierarchical
Pay
(Per hour)
Teacher
Childcare worker
Family day carer
Qualifications
(Degree + upper
secondary)
£14.41
96%
£ 5.95
35%
£ 5.00
19%
(UK Labour Force survey 2001-5)
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)
Current condition
of the ECEC workforce
Some exceptions – integrated system, integrated
ECEC graduate profession:
• Nordic countries
• New Zealand
• Slovenia
• ??Spain
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
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/modernistic…with particular
values and beliefs
Paradigm
Values:
• certainty and mastery; linearity and predetermined
outcomes; objectivity and universality
Beliefs:
• ability of science to reveal the world’s true nature
• one right answer for every question
EC workers can be trained in right answers –
low level technicians
The case for change
1. Equality: why should young children have a less
qualified workforce?
2. 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)
3. Quality in employment: Need to promote “quality
– of employment, social policy and industrial
employment…to improve human and social capital”
(EC Integrated guidelines for growth and jobs)
4. The work demands it: new understandings require
a better educated and more integrated workforce
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
Many possibilities
• Collective production of knowledges, values and
identities
• Collective researching, e.g. children’s 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
Democracy as a
fundamental value
“Democracy forms the foundation of the preschool. For this reason, all pre-school activity
should be carried out in accordance with
fundamental democratic values”
Swedish pre-school curriculum
Democratic and reflective
professional
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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
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
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
Researching
“Research can and should take place as much in
the classroom and by teachers as in the
university and by ‘academics’…The 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
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
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 choose…but also
respect and dialogue with those choosing other
paradigmatic position
‘Postmodern’ paradigm
“[The postmodern paradigm] values what the
paradigm of modernity finds problematic:
complexity and multiplicity, subjectivity and
context, provisionality and uncertainty…This
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
Future directions for
ECEC 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 &
structures…towards a democratic reflective
ECEC professional
Future directions
Systemic 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 @ upper secondary level
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)
Future directions
•
•
•
•
2. Continuous Professional
Development for all
Pedagogical documentation
Pedagogical support (pedagogistas)
Higher degrees
Formal research
Pedagogical
documentation
Practice and learning processes:
• made visible
• subject to dialogue, reflection, interpretation – coconstructing 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
everyone’…being able to discuss real, concrete things
– not just theories or words” (Alfredo Hoyuelos)
Future directions
3.Adequate public funding
• Well qualified workforce requires sustained
public funding of services; parents cannot pay
• Public expenditure on ECEC services:
Denmark=2% of GDP; Sweden=1.7%
UK=0.5%; US=0.4%
• Fund services directly
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
services’…welcome to ‘education in its
broadest sense’ (social pedagogy) & multipurpose ‘children’s centres’
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?
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
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/bringing_politics_into_the_nurs
ery
Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia. London:
RoutledgeFalmer