Early childhood practitioners’ insights on professionalism: Views from Indonesia

<p>Understanding early childhood teachers’ perspectives on professionalism is important because the notion of professionalism in early childhood is contextual and varies according to location and cultural backgrounds. Despite numerous studies on early childhood teachers’ insights on professionalism, no investigation has yet existed regarding unique environments of Indonesia. Thus this study examines Indonesian early childhood practitioners’ insights about the notion of professionalism and what constitutes the characteristics of a professional early childhood teacher. This study adopted a phenomenological method to be able to conduct an in-depth exploration of teachers’ experience and their insights about professionalism. The participants for this study were 21 kindergarten and playgroup teachers who had experienced intermediate level training in the national programme for up-skilling in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Teachers in this study considered professionalism as a journey toward an improved state at both the pedagogical level at their actual early childhood centre and the personal level of self-improvement as a role model. The study argues that these two outputs of the journey were like parallel tracks; that lead towards improvement in both teaching performance and personal qualities. The outcome of the first track is tangible in each day of teaching performance, while the outcomes of the second track are experienced one’s entire career, or even an entire life. This echoes Urban and Dalli (2012) conclusion that being professional cannot separate the “nature of practice, thinking about practice, and thinking about oneself in this practice – making the boundaries between doing, knowing and being blurred or non-existent” (p.161). This sense of understanding professionalism as collections of interrelated actions towards an overall goal underpinned the attitudes of the teachers in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.</p>

Early childhood practitioners’ insights on professionalism: Views from Indonesia

<p>Understanding early childhood teachers’ perspectives on professionalism is important because the notion of professionalism in early childhood is contextual and varies according to location and cultural backgrounds. Despite numerous studies on early childhood teachers’ insights on professionalism, no investigation has yet existed regarding unique environments of Indonesia. Thus this study examines Indonesian early childhood practitioners’ insights about the notion of professionalism and what constitutes the characteristics of a professional early childhood teacher. This study adopted a phenomenological method to be able to conduct an in-depth exploration of teachers’ experience and their insights about professionalism. The participants for this study were 21 kindergarten and playgroup teachers who had experienced intermediate level training in the national programme for up-skilling in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Teachers in this study considered professionalism as a journey toward an improved state at both the pedagogical level at their actual early childhood centre and the personal level of self-improvement as a role model. The study argues that these two outputs of the journey were like parallel tracks; that lead towards improvement in both teaching performance and personal qualities. The outcome of the first track is tangible in each day of teaching performance, while the outcomes of the second track are experienced one’s entire career, or even an entire life. This echoes Urban and Dalli (2012) conclusion that being professional cannot separate the “nature of practice, thinking about practice, and thinking about oneself in this practice – making the boundaries between doing, knowing and being blurred or non-existent” (p.161). This sense of understanding professionalism as collections of interrelated actions towards an overall goal underpinned the attitudes of the teachers in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.</p>

Structural Dissonance, Enacted Hope and Initial Early Childhood Teacher Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

<p>This thesis argues that there is structural dissonance in university-based initial early childhood teacher education programmes in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and suggests a pedagogy of enacted hope as a countermeasure. In this thesis, structural dissonance is constructed as a form of structural violence, which is based on the contradiction between socioculturalism in the content of IECTE programmes and individualisation in the context in which they are provided. This theoretical thesis uses Richard Rorty’s (1979, 1982, 1989, 1999) neo-pragmatic assumptions on truth, reality and knowledge to provide a coherent and consistent approach to the argument of structural dissonance and enacted hope. Distinctions between truth and justification, reality and appearance, found and made are rejected, and utility for social justice, language use, and an ironist approach to scholarship are adopted. This thesis uses philosophical hermeneutics as a methodology for interpreting the textual sources that make up the data drawn upon in this thesis. This methodology is linked to interpretive scholarship, research bricolage, and the constructivist paradigm in qualitative research. The methods used in this thesis are an ecological hermeneutic, ideal type method (converted into an interpretive method of textual analysis) and focus groups of student teachers. This thesis constructed two ideal types. The ideal type for socioculturalism is used to argue that the content of IECTE programmes is heavily influenced by socioculturalism. The ideal type for individualisation is used to argue that the context in which IECTE programmes are provided reproduces individualisation. Socioculturalism and individualisation are shown to be dissonant in the structure of a case IECTE programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand resulting in a situation of structural dissonance. A pedagogy of enacted hope is then proposed to counteract structural dissonance in the case study IECTE programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This pedagogy is constructed using a theory of hope developed through the integration of Ernst Bloch’s (1986) philosophy of hope, Rortyan philosophical assumptions and enactivist learning theory. Implications of using the pedagogy of enacted hope are then discussed in relation to the problem of structural dissonance.</p>

Structural Dissonance, Enacted Hope and Initial Early Childhood Teacher Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

<p>This thesis argues that there is structural dissonance in university-based initial early childhood teacher education programmes in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and suggests a pedagogy of enacted hope as a countermeasure. In this thesis, structural dissonance is constructed as a form of structural violence, which is based on the contradiction between socioculturalism in the content of IECTE programmes and individualisation in the context in which they are provided. This theoretical thesis uses Richard Rorty’s (1979, 1982, 1989, 1999) neo-pragmatic assumptions on truth, reality and knowledge to provide a coherent and consistent approach to the argument of structural dissonance and enacted hope. Distinctions between truth and justification, reality and appearance, found and made are rejected, and utility for social justice, language use, and an ironist approach to scholarship are adopted. This thesis uses philosophical hermeneutics as a methodology for interpreting the textual sources that make up the data drawn upon in this thesis. This methodology is linked to interpretive scholarship, research bricolage, and the constructivist paradigm in qualitative research. The methods used in this thesis are an ecological hermeneutic, ideal type method (converted into an interpretive method of textual analysis) and focus groups of student teachers. This thesis constructed two ideal types. The ideal type for socioculturalism is used to argue that the content of IECTE programmes is heavily influenced by socioculturalism. The ideal type for individualisation is used to argue that the context in which IECTE programmes are provided reproduces individualisation. Socioculturalism and individualisation are shown to be dissonant in the structure of a case IECTE programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand resulting in a situation of structural dissonance. A pedagogy of enacted hope is then proposed to counteract structural dissonance in the case study IECTE programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This pedagogy is constructed using a theory of hope developed through the integration of Ernst Bloch’s (1986) philosophy of hope, Rortyan philosophical assumptions and enactivist learning theory. Implications of using the pedagogy of enacted hope are then discussed in relation to the problem of structural dissonance.</p>

The role of opportunities to learn in early childhood teacher education from two perspectives: A multilevel model

Early childhood teacher education is considered crucial for the development of professional knowledge. However, little is known about the impacts of teacher educators, especially with respect to domain-specific knowledge in areas like early mathematics education. We investigated the relationship between opportunities to learn as reported by teacher educators and perceived by pre-service teachers and pre-service teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge, mathematics pedagogical content knowledge, and mathematical content knowledge. The sample comprised 909 pre-service teachers from two different teacher education tracks (vocational school vs. university) and their 43 teacher educators. The results provided the first empirical evidence that opportunities to learn reported by teacher educators are highly relevant for pre-service teachers’ knowledge. This strengthens calls to focus on the role of teacher educators in both research and practice.