Abstract
This chapter focuses on Julie, an early years practitioner in England. Starting with a brief description of recent developments in early years services and policy in England, we discuss different perspectives on professionalism and the professional roles of early years practitioners to position Julie’s work within its broader context. Julie’s day is then described through a series of situations on which she reflects during a follow-up interview with us. We conclude that professionalism for early years practitioners can be difficult to define in the context of a country which retains wide and disparate public and private provision and a widely stratified workforce in terms of qualifications. This is not aided by the introduction in 2006 of a centrally defined Early Years Professional role.
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- 1.
There are considerable differences between developments in ECEC across the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland (NI), Scotland and Wales). For example, in NI there is strong aspiration towards integrated services for young children and families as in England, but the reality across the United Kingdom is a ‘split’ system of provision and practitioner training. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss these differences and indeed there are few texts that distinguish developments across the four countries. In this chapter we focus on developments specific to England.
- 2.
Foundation Degrees are recognised as an award equivalent to level 5 (of 8) within the National Qualifications Framework (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2009). They are equivalent to the first 2 years of higher education study. A shared feature of all Foundation Degrees is a clearly articulated progression route that offers students the opportunity to ‘top-up’ with additional study and assessment in order to achieve a bachelor’s degree with honours. It is this latter award that in Europe, under the terms of the Bologna declaration (Bergen, 2005), would represent the end of the first cycle of higher education qualifications.
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The project was funded by the Practice Based Professional Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at The Open University, UK.
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Miller, L., Cable, C., Goodliff, G. (2012). Leading and Managing in an Early Years Setting in England. In: Miller, L., Dalli, C., Urban, M. (eds) Early Childhood Grows Up. International perspectives on early childhood education and development, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2718-2_3
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