Danish University Colleges
Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic
ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences Aabro, Christian
Publication date:
2020
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Citation for pulished version (APA):
Aabro, C. (2020). Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic: ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences. Paper presented at NORDPRO 2020, Kristianssand, Norway.
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Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic: ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences
Christian Aabro, ca@kp.dk
Konferansetema: 5. Profesjon, selvforståelse og politikk Keywords: ECEC, professionalism, neoliberalism, agency
This paper analyses the consequences of what are regarded as neoliberal developments within the Danish ECEC area. More specifically, it looks at how an increasing monitoring and regulation affects the ECEC educator’s sense of professionalism. Drawing on a qualitative study of educators’ interactionist accounts, a series of unintended consequences is identified that seriously challenge them in their daily work. Previous research has pointed out the risk that this can lead to a process of deprofessionalization, in the sense that it limits professional autonomy and reduces the educators to mere policy implementers or ‘technicians’. But as I will demonstrate, a ground-up perspective on the reaction of the ECEC educators reveals degrees of agency and discretion that adds to this discussion, pointing towards not only deprofessisonalization, but also new forms of professionalism.
The project is based on an interest in the active agency of educators, partly inspired by Michael Lipsky’s (2010) point that policy governance should not only be understood as top-down, but also needs to include a ground-up perspective. This means the final link in the chain, the front line workers, do not merely implement policies, but to a large extent use their judgement to reshape, translate and convert policies and to actively engage in daily practice.
I therefore adopt an interactionist view of educators as active practitioners who seize on, reshape the various demands and expectations, and merge them with their specific contextual everyday practices. To make judgements and assessments in day care centres requires a high degree of relational and social skills, which can only be developed through participation, that is, negotiation of meaning in communities of practice with colleagues (Wenger, 1998).
I conducted six focus group interviews. My choice of the focus group interview as a method was based on my interest in educators’ contextual perceptions of their professional practices. The choice of the focus group interview gave me the opportunity to examine how educators’ views of their work and their professionalism are constructed, expressed, negotiated, defended and sometimes also modified through dialogue with others. Ideas, opinions and understandings are not generated by individuals in isolation, but emerge in interaction with others in specific social contexts. In focus groups, participants are confronted with the need to create meaning out of their individual experiences and perceptions, that is, ‘collective sense-making in action’ (Wilkinson, 1998).
