Emotional Sensibility and Early Childhood Education: Building Quality Relationships

In close alignment with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australia, the underlying premise of this thesis is that the early years, from birth to five years, are educationally, profoundly important. It follows, therefore, that those who work with young children in early childhood (EC) settings, performing this important and foundational educational role should be professional educators or teachers, educated to the same professional, educational standard as teachers in schools. Moreover, the relationships that EC educators or teachers form with the young children in their care should be appropriately caring and emotionally supportive, but also thoroughly professional as they work to enhance children’s learning, wellbeing and development. Currently, however, the educational mission and professional status of early childhood learning in Australia remains what the Framework called in 2009, a ‘vision’. Moreover, some of the language currently surrounding early childhood provision in Australia undermines the educational purpose and the professional role of providers. This includes the persistent use by government of the term ‘childcare’, when referring to the role of EC centres, and the term ‘childcare workers’ when referring to educators or teachers. It also includes the ubiquitous use of the terms ‘attachment’ and ‘secure attachment’ in policy and other support documents, including the EYLF, to characterise the kind of relationship that should exist between early childhood educators or teachers and the children they teach. This thesis is concerned with the building of quality relationships within early childhood education and argues that the terms ‘attachment’ and ‘secure attachment’ are educationally and professionally problematic and should be abandoned. These terms properly belong where they originated, within the context of parent and child relationships. Instead, relationships between early childhood professionals and young children should, first and foremost focus on quality, primarily characterised in terms of Emotional Sensibility. In furthering this claim, this thesis draws on research undertaken in early childhood settings. The findings of this research help to clarify and defend the notion of Emotional Sensibility as the appropriate educational and professional basis for building quality relationships in early years settings. In particular, a main outcome of this study was the production of an Emotional Sensibility Observational Scale (ESOS) as an authentic tool for observing, assessing and supporting EC educators and teachers’ Emotional Sensibility, when relating to children in their care. Changing the way quality relationships are characterised in early childhood education is not a mere technicality. Rather, this thesis argues, founding quality relationships on Emotional Sensibility is central to achieving the vision of early childhood education as truly educational and professional, which, in turn, has an important bearing on how early childhood educators are themselves educated in preparation for the role they will play in early childhood education