S. Powell

Orchestrating professional development for baby room practitioners: Raising the stakes in new dialogic encounters

This article has emerged from a research and development project, The Baby Room, which was designed to examine how babies are cared for in daycare settings. Within the project, a form of professional development was created which designated a central space for dialogic encounter, primarily to enable the baby room practitioners who participated in the project to begin to theorize their practice. Findings indicate that those working with babies frequently feel isolated and neglected in relation to support for their practice, that the practitioners had a very low sense of self-worth in relation to their work, low self-confidence and an inability or a reluctance to articulate their own understandings of their practice. Significantly we also found that many of the practitioners were not routinely, incidentally or intuitively talking to the babies in their care, nor were they aware of the importance of doing so. While it is difficult to provide robust research evidence to demonstrate any close causal connections between the lack of professional talk, the evident low self-worth of the practitioners and talk experiences with babies, the study does indicate that there may be distinct connections between practitioners’ professional knowledge and understanding, their confidence, opportunities for professional talk experience and their perceptions of the need to develop talk encounters with babies. This article describes the background and rationale for the project work, ranges over some key issues in relation to talk, and the importance of professional dialogic encounters for those working with babies, and it indicates the rich potential this may have for positive talk outcomes in baby room practice.

Whose hand rocks the cradle? Parallel discourses in the baby room

This article explores the practice narratives of a group of 25 caregivers who work with babies in daycare settings in England and seeks to illustrate awareness of, resistance to and compliance with powerful discourses. It is argued that multiple voices exert an influence over baby room practice, disempowering the caregivers and reducing their capacity to practise in ways that meet the ‘babies’ best interests’. Yet there may also be ways in which they collude in their own oppression. Opportunities to engage in professional dialogue, reflection and critique as a means of conscientizaçāo (conscientization or ‘dialogic cultural action’ as described by Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed [London: Penguin, 1970], 141) are rare. When offered, these may simultaneously increase participants’ awareness of discourses of performativity and inadequacy and heighten feelings of powerlessness, but may also offer a space in which to nourish professional knowledge and understanding and the self-confidence to challenge and resist privileged voices that sustain a hegemony.

Building communities: Teachers researching literacy lives

In the light of wide recognition that the traffic between home and school is traditionally one-way, this article reports on a deliberately counter-cultural project that involved teachers in researching children’s everyday literacy practices and ‘funds of knowledge’ (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) over a year. Eighteen primary teachers from 10 schools in five local authorities in England were involved; this article focuses on two of the practitioners’ experiences. Drawing on a wide range of data, it is argued that the project challenged teachers’ perceptions and beliefs about children and families, prompting dispositional shifts and new understandings of difference and diversity. However, creating responsive curricula that connected to the lived social realities of the children represented a considerable professional challenge. The article highlights the affordances of collaborative research partnerships, and argues that considerable time, space and support is needed in order for teachers to appreciate and understand children’s and families’ funds of knowledge and blur the boundaries between home and school.

Hide And Seek: Values In Early Childhood Education And Care

ABSTRACT Early childhood education and care settings in England and the people who work in them constitute an important sphere of influence, shaping young childrens characters and values. But the values and dispositions expected of the early years workforce are missing from statutory policy documentation despite its clear requirement that practitioners will espouse and promote particular ‘universal’ values in their work. The expectations for young childrens achievement by the age of five also reveal a complex approach combining a structuralist and postmodern duality of individualistic and collectivist values. These present challenges and dilemmas for the sector.

Towards Mentoring as Feminist Praxis in Early Childhood Education and Care in England.

Following our contribution to a study of mentoring in seven European countries, we explored epistemological and ontological inconsistencies within mainstream mentoring systems and their regulated practice in England. We considered how feminist mentoring praxis can unsettle conceptualisations of mentoring relationships and challenge inequity in the early education systems and the practice of teaching young children. Predominantly female, early childhood educators suffer from low status in England, and their working lives may be controlled and policed through inequitable systems. On entering the workforce, trainees encounter a reductionist policy milieu where mentoring structures and normative assessment arrangements contribute to inequity. Mentors play pivotal roles in inducting trainees into their worlds of work with young children. Mentoring relationships can determine whether trainees accept the status quo. Principles derived from feminist praxis enable mentors to practise an ‘engaged pedagogy’, co-constructing knowledge, subverting hierarchies and contesting taken-for-granted aspects of policy and practice.

Mega-sporting events and children’s rights and interests – towards a better future.

Abstract The public subsidy of Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup hosting opportunities is invariably justified on the basis that they will secure a range of public good outcomes. Problematically, the information available inspires less confidence that these ambitions will be met and highlights how social costs and benefits are unevenly distributed. As a result, interest in the social dimension of hosting has grown, yet the knowledge to support responsive and evidence-based events policy remains relatively underdeveloped, particularly in relation to the specific needs and experiences of affected communities. The impact on children as a particularly stakeholder group reflects this context of recognition and knowledge gap. For example, while it is accepted that immovable deadlines and risk of reputational consequences raise a variety of social justice concerns throughout the event lifecycle, the nature and scale of these impacts on children is poorly understood and frequently mismanaged. Findings drawn from research commissioned by Terre des Hommes International Federation which explored the intersections between children’s rights and social justice concerns highlights how such initiatives present risks and opportunities that cannot be managed effectively until children are included within associated planning processes as a specific stakeholder group with distinct needs and interests.

Babyroom Workers: Care in Practice

What are we are asking of the young women employed in baby rooms in daycare settings? Globally, baby room workers find themselves in the unenviable position of having limited training, low status, poor pay and conditions but extraordinarily high levels of responsibility for babies for most of their waking (and sleeping) lives during the working week. Through a series of six research and development projects carried out between 2009 and 2015 in early years setting for under-3 year olds in England, evidence has emerged that baby room employees are concerned to increase and develop their knowledge but remain predominantly driven by the fulfilment of functional tasks. Using an interpretive, exploratory approach within a critical feminist paradigm, the projects identified the problematic expectations faced by people employed to ‘care’ for babies and young children within a policy context that devalues that care and accords baby room workers very little status in society. The chapter argues that the ‘value’ applied to babies and young children (and consequently to those who care for them) is currently not very high and the increased urgency to ‘professionalise’ childcare might be leading to an international side-stepping of the apparently contentious issues of affect, intimacy and nurturance, leading to uncertainty about the very nature of care for babies.

Politics and power in the babycare business – Structural aspects of childcare provision

Die Betreuung von Babys und Kleinkindern ist ein emotionsgeladenes Thema dessen sich seit Jahrzehnten Philanthropen, Eltern, Entscheidungstrager, Betreuer und Forscher annehmen. Da die Betreuung von Kleinkindern auserhalb der Familie in vielen Landern immer mehr kommerzialisiert wird, ruckt die moralische Auseinandersetzung oft in den Hintergrund und wird von einer mikro- und makrookonomischen Argumentation verdrangt, die sich uber wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse rechtfertigen will. Dadurch steht die neoliberale Sorge um die Finanzierbarkeit, Verfugbarkeit und die strukturellen Dimensionen der Angebotsqualitat fur Eltern im Vordergrund. Kleinkinder und ihre Betreuer werden zu Kunden und Dienstleistern, wobei die letzteren den Auswirkungen des dynamischen Marktes ausgesetzt sind und derer, welche die Macht haben, die Marktbedingungen zu diktieren: Politiker, Aufsichtsbehorden, Arbeitgeber und Kunden (Eltern). Dieses Kapitel geht der Frage nach, wie Macht und Machtausubung die Beziehung zwischen Kleinkindern und ihren Betreuern beeinflussen kann. Es grundet auf Forschungsarbeiten in privaten und staatlichen Kindertagesstatten im Sudosten Englands im Jahr 2008.