“Who I am at work” - sources and determinants of childcare workers professional work.
Abstract
This article examines the ways in which childcare workers position their background in their work practice (sources) and explores how they perceive their work as childcare workers (determinants). This exploratory study focuses on the experiences and perceptions of childcare workers. Twenty individual interviews were organised with qualified childcare workers. Transcriptions were analysed using thematic analysis to explore perceptions of sources and determinants of strategies, which is described in the context of U. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. The model reveals that the childcare worker’s professional role forms the basis for his/her self-perceptions, with the mesosystem emphasising the crucial influence of beliefs and behaviours from other childcare workers, directors, parents, and children on the shaping of their professional identity, while the exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem collectively contribute to the dynamic and time-dependent construction of this identity within the broader societal and cultural context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The professional experience of childcare workers is analysed in light of the needs for strengthening professional practice, advocating for the implementation of policies that ensure better professional status. The determinants influencing strategies in their work were identified as mental costs, attitudes toward the profession, successes and failures, and the atmosphere in the facility, emphasising the importance of managerial support and the need for clearer tools to address challenges within the childcare profession.
References
Bastos, P., & Cristia, J. (2012). Supply and Quality Choices in Private Child Care Markets: Evidence from São Paulo. Journal of Development Economics, 98(2), 242-255.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Harvard University Press.
Brubaker, R. & Cooper, F. 2000. Beyond “Identity”’. Theory and Society. 29, pp. 1–47.
Chalke, J. (2013). Will the Early Years Professional Please Stand Up? Professionalism in the Early Childhood Workforce in England. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 14(3), 212–222.
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1999). Shaping a Professional Identity: Stories of Educational Practice. Teachers College Press.
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches. Sage Publications.
Crompton, R. (2000). The Gendered Restructuring of the Middle Classes: Employment and Caring. In: R. Crompton, F. Devine, M. Savage, J. Scott (ed.). Renewing Class Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dalli, C. (2008) Pedagogy, Knowledge and Collaboration: Towards a Ground-up Perspective on Professionalism, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 16(2), 171-185.
Eckhardt, A. G., & Egert, F. (2020). Process Quality for Children under Three Years in Early Child Care and Family Child Care in Germany. Early Years, 40(3), 287-305.
Gajek, K., & Wysłowska, O. (2023). The Types of Work of Early Childhood Education and Care Professionals: an Interactive Perspective. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 1-13.
Gee, J. P. (2001). Identity as an Analytic Lens for Educational Research. Review of Research in Education, 25(1), 99-125.
Geiss, M., & Westberg, J. (2020). Why do Training Regimes for Early Childhood Professionals Differ? Sweden and Switzerland Compared. European Educational Research Journal, 19(6), 544-563.
Goouch, K., & Powell, S. (2016). Babyroom Workers: Care in Practice. In Under-three Year Olds in Policy and Practice (pp. 143-157). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Hakim, L., and C. Dalli. 2018. “‘To Be Professional Is a Never-ending Journey’: Indonesian Early Childhood Practitioners’ Views about the Attitudes and Behaviours of a Professional Teacher.” Early Years 38 (3): 244–257
Jones, L., Holmes, R., Powell, J. (2005). Early Childhood Studies: A Multiprofessional Perspective. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Keary, A., Babaeff, R., Clarke, S., & Garnier, K. (2020). Sedimented Professional Identities: Early Childhood Education Pre-service Teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 26(3-4), 264-279.
Langford, R., Richardson, B. (2022). The Early Childhood Educator: Critical Conversations in Feminist Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Miller, L. & Cable, C. (2011). Professionalization, Leadership and Management in the Early Years. London: Sage doi:10.4135/9781446288795
Manning, M., Wong, G. T., Fleming, C. M., & Garvis, S. (2019). Is Teacher Qualification Associated with the Quality of the Early Childhood Education and Care Environment? A Meta-analytic Review. Review of Educational Research, 89(3), 370-415.
Moloney, M. (2010). Professional Identity in Early Childhood Care and Education: Perspectives of Pre-school and Infant Teachers. Irish Educational Studies, 29(2), 167-187.
Moss, P. (2010). We Cannot Continue as We Are: The Educator in an Education for Survival. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 11(1), 8–18. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2010.11.1.8
Noailly, J., & Visser, S. (2009). The Impact of Market Forces on Childcare Provision: Insights from the 2005 Childcare Act in the Netherlands. Journal of Social Policy, 38(3), 477-498.
Osgood, J. (2010). Reconstructing Professionalism in ECEC: The Case for the ‘Critically Reflective Emotional Professional’. Early Years, 30(2), 119-133.
Osgood, J. (2012). Narratives from the Nursery: Negotiating Professional Identities in Early Childhood. Routledge: London.
Page, J., and P. Elfer. 2013. The Emotional Complexity of Attachment Interactions in Nursery. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 21 (4): 553–567.
Rauschenbach, T., & Riedel, B. (2016). Germany’s ECEC Workforce: A Difficult Path to Professionalization. Early Childhood Development and Care, 186(1), 61–77.
Sadowska, K. (2017). Wczesna edukacja dziecka w opiniach opiekunów poznańskich żłobków–raport z badań. Nauki o Wychowaniu. Studia Interdyscyplinarne, 5(2), 116-134.
Schaefer, L. (2013). Beginning Teacher Attrition: A Question of Identity Making and Identity Shifting. Teachers and Teaching, Theory and Practice, 19(3), 260–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2012.754159
Sollars, V. (2022). Reflecting on ‘Quality’ in Early Childhood Education: Practitioners’ Perspectives and Voices. Early Years, 42(4-5), 613-630.
Telka, L. (2023a). Uwspólnianie przekonań wychowawców o wychowaniu w żłobku. Problemy Opiekuńczo-Wychowawcze, 616(1), 53-64. https://doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0016.2403.
Telka, L. (2023b). Postrzeganie dziecka przez wychowawcę w żłobku. Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji, 57(2), 67–78. https://doi.org/10.26881/pwe.2023.57.05
Ünver, Ö., Bircan, T., & Nicaise, I. (2020). Opinion-policy Correspondence in Public Provision and Financing of Childcare in Europe. International Journal of Educational Research, 101, 101576.
Vincent, C., Ball, S., (2006). Childcare, Choice and Class Practices: Middle-Class Parents and their Children. London, Routledge.
Copyright (c) 2024 Elementary Education in Theory and Practice
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- When submitting a text, the author declares that he/she is the Author of the article (hereinafter referred to as the “Work”) and:
- he/she owns the exclusive and unlimited copyright to the Work,
- is entitled to dispose of the copyright to the Work.
Declares that it does not infringe any third party copyrights or legal rights.
Declares that there is no conflict of interest.
2. At the same time, the Author grants the Ignatianum University in Cracowa royalty-free, non-exclusive and territorially unlimited licence to use the Work in the following fields of exploitation:
- recording the Work in a hard copy, as well as on a digital or magnetic medium;
- reproduction of the Work using any technique, without limitation of the number of editions or copies;
- distribution of the Work and its copies on any medium, including marketing, sale, lending, and rental;
- introduction of the Work into a computer memory;
- disseminating the Work in information networks, including in the Internet;
- public performance, exhibition, display, reproduction, broadcasting and re-broadcasting, as well as making the Work available to the public in such a way that everyone can have access to it at a time and place of their own choosing;
- within the scope of dependent rights to the Work, including in particular the right to make necessary changes to the Work resulting from editorial and methodical development, as well as to translate the Work into foreign languages;
The licence is granted from the moment of the transfer of the Work to the Ignatianum University in Cracow. The Ignatianum University in Cracow is entitled to grant further sub-licences to the Work within the scope of the right granted. The licence is time-limited and it is granted for a period of 15 years, starting from the date of its granting.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to publish their text online (e.g. in their institution’s repository or on the institution’s website) before or during the submission process as this may lead to beneficial exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of the published text (See The Effect of Open Access). We recommend using any of the following portals of research associations:
- ResearchGate
- SSRN
- Academia.edu
- Selected Works
- Academic Search
