Mentoring of newly qualified teachers in early childhood education and care centres

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Wiebke Klages ◽  
Magritt Lundestad ◽  
Paul Robert Sundar
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Dual Roles ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
Individual Needs ◽  
The Individual

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss contrasting perceptions regarding “leadership and mentoring” among leaders of Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres in their mentoring practices with newly qualified early childhood teachers (NQTs). Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with eight leaders in Norwegian ECEC centres. Findings Leaders in dual roles as leaders and mentors have varying orientations in mentoring NQTs. The paper presents the findings as two main orientations: an individual and an organizational orientation. Individually oriented leaders as mentors focus on individual needs and support of the NQT. Organizationally oriented leaders as mentors emphasize collective reflection and learning in the staff group and include NQTs in various learning processes in the ECEC centre. Research limitations/implications The study is a qualitative research inquiry in a specific context and may not be representative for larger groups. Further studies could include larger samples of leaders and NQTs. Such studies could focus on the balance between NQTs’ individual needs and organizational needs, and how NQTs are included in the organization’s collective reflection and action. Practical implications The study provides insights into how leaders as mentors in their dual roles try to meet both the needs of the individual NQT and the needs of the organization. It also identifies and highlights some of the challenges that leaders must cope with in their dual roles. The paper benefits those working in such dual roles and in the education of mentors and leaders. Originality/value The study contributes to increased knowledge on how leaders’ views on leadership and organization influence their mentoring with NQTs. The study is relevant for leaders in other educational settings such as schools. In ECEC centres, the leader is responsible for mentoring NQTs and other staff members. This study shows different ways of conceptualizing mentoring with NQTs in the role as leader.

‘I mean, why wouldn’t men be involved?’ The life histories of six male practitioners working within early childhood education and care in England

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-293
Author(s):  
Charlotte Estella Jones ◽  
Carol Aubrey
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Life History ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Personal A ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
History Approach ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Job Role

Many surveys and interviews have elicited male practitioners’ views about gender balance in the early childhood education and care workforce, and few have explored in depth the context to such work choices, whether economic, cultural, social or personal. A life history approach was employed to provide a retrospective account by six early childhood education and care professionals of their lives and some of the influences on these. They varied in job role, in organisation that employed them and in their ages ranging from 20 to 60 years. Being at different stages of their life course, some had lived through considerable societal change in education, job choice, attitudes and values. The life history approach also offered a means to explore broader questions about their professional development, links between life and work that rose above the individual voice to represent the profession that participants had chosen.

Mapping the dilemmatic space of early childhood education and care practitioners when challenged by children’s curiosity

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soern Finn Menning
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Video Observation ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Stimulated Recall ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Stimulated Recall Interviews

This article explores the notion of curiosity as a gateway to value dilemmas in early childhood education and care practices. The concept of dilemmatic space (Honig) is used to highlight the complexity of educational practices. Through an ethnographic approach based on video-observation and stimulated recall interviews, the reflections of the practitioners in three early childhood education and care institutions in Norway are analysed regarding situations in which curiosity was challenging and in which explorative behaviour was stopped, transferred or adjusted. The analyses allowed the construction of several axes of dilemmatic space, such as Equality versus Supporting the Individual, Social Order versus Questioning Status Quo and Being Professional versus Being Private. This highlights the entanglement of values, which is part of the ongoing process of constructing professional identity. It is argued that even in the case of widely accepted notions like curiosity, standardised and fixed guidelines on practice cannot be the sole answer to the complexity of early childhood education and care.

scholarly journals Love as an act of resistance: Ethical subversion in early childhood professional practice in England

2020 ◽  
pp. 146394912093229
Author(s):  
Lynette Morris
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
The Individual

Challenging the conventional binary of morality and subversion as opposing forces, this article presents a new construct of ethical subversion in early childhood education and care professional practice. The conceptual framework combines constructs of emotional labour and care ethics, and theorising on power and subversive tactics. Text generated from focus group discussions and individual semi-structured interviews with graduate early childhood education and care practitioners provides the concrete corpus for Foucauldian discourse analysis. Critical analysis elucidates how, on the one hand, practitioners working in England experience ethical boundaries reflecting dominant discourses, while, on the other, they feel morally committed to care responsively even if it contravenes rule-based ethics. Ethical subversion is born from both reason and emotion: these are acts of loving disobedience by experienced practitioners who possess a deep understanding of risk and the critical implications of their rule-bending. Ethical subversion is relational and individualistic, supporting a care pedagogy focusing on the individual care needs of young children. Conceptualisation of ethical subversion raises important issues in the areas of ethics, management and professionalism: ethical subversion is constructed as a powerful phenomenon, with potential for effecting positive transformation in the lives of children and their families, while simultaneously augmenting constructs of professionalism in early childhood education and care in England.

Promoting Children’s Participation Rights in Early Childhood Education and Care: Self-Assessment Tool for Professionals

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
Children’S Participation ◽  
Children's Participation ◽  
The Individual

This self-assessment tool was designed to support early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals in enhancing participatory practices based on their organizations’ resources. We define participation as children’s right to be heard, to express their perspectives in matters and situations affecting them, and to have them considered and given due weight (i.e., as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989). The tool consists of three versions taking into account the work specificity of ECEC assistant, teachers and coordinators. It is intended to be used in both the individual and group context. This self assessment tool was elaborated in Europe in a participatory process to allow for its cross-country application. We call this process participatory as it considered the voices of key actors – ECEC professionals at all stages of the elaboration of the tool by the international team of researchers and teacher trainers. Children’s participation was conceptualized following the Lundy model (Lundy, 2007).

Social Investment and Childcare Expansion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita León
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Perfect Match ◽  
Preschool Education ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Education And Care

The chapter first examines at a conceptual level the links between theories of social investment and childcare expansion. Although ‘the perfect match’ between the two is often taken for granted in the specialized literature as well as in policy papers, it is here argued that a more nuance approach that ‘unpacks’ this relationship is needed. The chapter will then look for elements of variation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) expansion. Despite an increase in spending over the last two decades in many European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, wide variation still exists in the way in which ECEC develops. A trade-off is often observed between coverage and quality of provision. A crucial dividing line that determines, to a large extent, the quality of provision in ECEC is the increasing differentiation between preschool education for children aged 3 and above and childcare for younger children.

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