Reconceptualising and (re)forming early childhood professional identities: Ongoing transnational policy discussions

Problematic policy constructions of the purpose of education implicate professional identities and working conditions of professionals working with the youngest children. This paper builds on our earlier writing, to contest teacher professional identities in Australia, Ireland, Denmark and the United States of America, to illustrate the crucial importance of contextualised policy landscapes in early childhood education and care. It uses prevailing policy constructions, power imbalances and tensions in defining teacher identities, to ask crucial questions, such as what has become of the professional ‘self’. It questions the fundamental ethics of care and encounter, and of worthy wage and other campaigns focused on the well-being of teachers when faced with a world-wide crisis. The cross-national conversations culminate in a contemporary confrontation of teacher identity and imperatives in increasingly uncertain times as evolving in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Early Childhood Professional Development Model for Technology Integration

This chapter shares the experiences of two early childhood educators as they participated in an early childhood professional development model focused on overcoming the barriers that often impact the integration of technology in PreK-K classrooms. The professional development model attended to three external barriers (i.e., lack of time, lack of access, and lack of support) and three internal barriers (i.e., teacher readiness, teacher attitudes, and teacher pedagogical beliefs). The experiences of these two educators indicated the following: 1) when the external barriers to technology are adequately addressed, more space is provided to attend to the internal barriers; 2) the barrier of readiness may be more easily overcome when teacher attitude is not a barrier; 3) overcoming the barriers of readiness and attitude precedes a change in pedagogical beliefs and practices; and 4) teacher attitudes are more likely to change when teacher learn from their respected colleagues. The chapter concludes by offering ideas for ECE leaders to consider as they plan and implement PD models.

Minority-world professionals in majority-world early childhood contexts: How do international field experiences promote intercultural competence or reinforce “professional” ethnocentrism?

This colloquium problematizes the use of early childhood international field experiences as a tool for professional development with Euro-Western pre-service and in-service teachers. The authors critique experiences where minority-world educators teach or implement internships within majority-world contexts. It is critical for Euro-Western teacher education programs to provide pre-service and in-service teachers with opportunities to expand their global views of the early childhood professional through international field experiences. But how can this be done when conceptions of the “professional” are constructed in Euro-Western images, ideas, curricula, ideologies, and privilege? The authors make a call for early childhood teacher educators to reconsider, deconstruct, and re-examine themselves and their pre-service and in-service teachers’ rationale for engaging in international field experiences.

Providing quality early childhood professional development at the intersections of power, race, gender, and dis/ability

Quality professional development for a diverse early education and care workforce has been a priority in policy reform agendas. This issue points to the need to address quality professional development for this particular workforce, across varied childcare settings, which takes into consideration the complex experiences and intersecting social positions of these individuals. This colloquium reports on a case study of part-time childcare staff’s experiences as the researcher implemented an on-site professional development program at an area childcare center. Post-structural perspectives and Black feminist thought were utilized as epistemological and analytical tools to highlight how power discourse and the intersecting subject positions (gender, race, and dis/ability) of particular participants influenced both the implementation of and access to quality professional development within the given context.