Enhancing the professionality of early years educators: a model of support for professional development

This dissertation presents an intervention-based study that aimed to enable early years educators to develop and enact a particularly agential mode of professionality, helping them to negotiate the challenges and constraints inherent in their work with young children and their families. A non-positional approach to teacher leadership was adopted as a means to mobilise all those involved to participate in collaborative, collective and situated processes that impacted on their professional development. The ‘Making a difference in the early years programme’ provided a context-tailored strategy which, through reflective tasks and dialogic activities, supported educators with initiating and leading a collaborative development work process in their own settings. A critical action-based methodology was employed that emphasised context and researcher reflexivity amongst a cohort of 15 participants. Data was collected using a range of programme-based methods and artefacts, analysed deductively and inductively, and narrated critically to maintain coherence and convey chronology. The study outcomes indicate that early years educators may enact an extended professionality when the proper support is provided. At the individual level, this is enabled through a transformation in educators’ perspectives towards a self- empowered, agential mindset that leads them to act strategically to improve practice. However, these insights clarified the contribution of my research to the field of support for professional development in the early years sector. A model of support is proposed as an alternative to the technical-rationalist and transmissive approaches which dominate the provision of opportunities for professional development. The proposal reflects the following. First, the infrastructure surrounding support for professional development should be carefully considered. This positions participants and organisation leaders as vital, expert and generative co-producers rather than consumers of readymade professional development packages. Second, the focus of the provision of support should acknowledge the educator and her context as the starting point for professional learning, rather than preconceived content based on specifications of knowledge and skills. Third, facilitation of the programme should be appropriate to securing a system in which educators can become maximally agential and exercise leadership. Fourth, knowledge building and practice development should be viewed less as the development of technical know-how and the dissemination of teaching tips. The sharing and scrutinising of narratives helps collective understandings and self- efficacy to flourish within the group. The effect is of a sense of belonging to an early years community, which might be diverse in its make-up, but nevertheless shares common goals and values