ES3219: Early Years Education
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Last updated 01.03.05.
Professionalism –
a contested concept
Definitions of
professionalism are full of oppositions, what it is vs. what it is not:
•
Profession
vs. trade/vocation/craft
•
Occupational
closure vs. occupational openness
•
Active vs.
passive (e.g., with regard to new initiatives) (Riley, 2003)
•
Practical
wisdom (‘phronesis’) vs. applied theory
•
Indeterminacy
vs. technicality
•
Improvisation
vs. effectiveness (Humphreys & Hyland, 2002)
•
Knowledge
vs. functional competence
•
Discipline
vs. everyday judgement
So, who are the professionals?
What is a ‘profession’? Carr vs. Winch
A debate over what it means to call education workers ‘professionals’
continues between Prof. David Carr (
The Carr position:
•
“The core of the
concept of a profession consists in a system of ethical principles expressible
as duties or obligations.” (Carr, 2000, p.248)
•
Obligations arise in
relation to human rights, e.g. , the right to
health-care or legal justice.
•
BUT, is education a right
or a commodity? Even if it is a right, what is the right to?
•
Beyond the basics
(e.g., functional literacy), there are problems with the morality of any
education:
“any
explicit teaching of personal values… is liable to risk undermining personal
freedom of choice…it is at this point that professional theorising of the
relationship between human development and professional conduct has commonly
had recourse to the concept of autonomy or self-direction.” (ibid.,
p.255)
Postmodernism problematizes overarching rational accounts of human
development and their accompanying concept of ‘the Good’ which professionalism
relies on. The postmodern critique which results in a
loss of criteria for distinguishing ‘genuine’ from ‘bogus’ education:
•
opens the way for treating education as an
individual or social commodity;
•
makes all
ethics subject to ‘perspective’;
•
rules out
educational professionalism.
Carr’s dilemma:
Should we regard the
otherwise effective early years teacher in a
Carr’s dilemma:
“On the one hand, there are facts of human
nature which occasion culture independent attraction to some things and
aversion to others… On the other hand, such fact-dependence of values does not
preclude scope for evaluative and ethical diversity in the light of the facts
of human weal and woe…it might now be said that insofar as human need is
greatly conditioned by cultural difference, no such distinction can be
practically sustainable. But whilst conceding some room for perspectival
manoeuvre here, there would seem to be a real enough point at which any
attempted defence of serious human harm in the name of cultural integrity rings
hollow… If it can be shown, as seems likely, that even medically supervised
physical chastisement carries with it a palpable risk of physical and psychological
harm, it cannot but be at odds not only with any conception of civilised
polity, but also with any professional educational practice of such a society.”
(ibid., pp.263-3)
•
The ends of education
are contested
•
Making the moral
judgements which lie at the heart of the activity of teaching is what defines
our ‘professionalism’. E.g., is there any less reason for regarding teaching
about homosexuality as morally wrong than there is for regarding doing so as
morally indifferent or right?
But is this also true of childminders or
play-scheme leaders?
The Winch position:
Carr is wrong because -
•
Other occupations such as farming have a moral & ethical dimension
•
Just because the aims of education are contested, it doesn’t mean
teachers are the only ones able to make the ethical judgements about it
•
Teachers are not uniquely virtuous (moral exemplars), nor are there any
virtues unique to their occupation
•
Teachers do not have
a systematic body of theoretical knowledge as do, for instance, physicians;
•
Other professionals
are primarily technicians;
•
Carr and others are
wrong to complain that technical knowledge consists in the rigid application of
rules – it is possible to be a ‘flexible technician’;
•
The Foundation Stage
Guidance and other initiatives give practitioners a normative
theoretical structure;
•
Other professions
also have a body of empirical theory;
•
We need such an
applied theory in order to become technologists rather than just
technicians.
“Teachers without
theory seem to be, not technicians or technologists, but a species of craft
worker, whose occupational knowledge is largely practical, context-dependent
and non-discursive… Teachers have a body of knowledge to convey to their
students within an ethical framework, they cannot just do their job by displaying
practical wisdom in their dealings with students and other people, but need to
display skill I teaching and getting students to learn.” (2004, p.189)
•
In order to be
regarded as professionals teachers need a empirical theory of education,
developed piecemeal in numerous contextually sensitive studies, which would
provide them with a reliable basis for their practice
•
Teachers as
researchers would contribute to this shared body of theory, using common
protocols, methodologies and data presentation.
The Early
Years Context
Many factors weaken
public perception of EY practitioners as ‘professionals’, especially, the association of
the profession with emotion and passion relegates it to a low-level operation. Moyles (2001):
•
an
emotional response to young children is central to the EY practitioner’s role;
•
there is a
conflation of teacher and parent roles: ‘educare’;
•
The
workforce is overwhelmingly female;
•
The values
of community service currently have no ‘value’ in PM systems
•
There is much ongoing
collaborative ‘action research’ among EY practitioners, but does it add up to Winch’s body of applied theory?
•
Are there shared aims
to the research in the field? Will there ever be? If the aims of the research,
like the aims of EY education more generally are contested, e.g., by
educators, governments, is it possible to construct a unified, systematic
empirical theory of EY education?
•
Even if we did, would
EY practitioners’ professionalism still be limited by other social and economic
factors? Or by the ‘passionate’ nature of the job?
•
Moyles suggests that Carr’s
phronesis is not an adequate basis for EY
professionalism either: prioritising morality over knowledge results in
teachers and parents becoming satisfied that being ‘happy’ and ‘socially
adjusted’ are satisfactory in themselves as a basis for EY education.
So what makes an
Early Years educational professional?
References
Carr, D. (2000)
Education, Profession and Culture: Some Conceptual Questions, British
Journal of Educational Studies, 48 (3), pp. 248-268
Humphrey, M. &
Hyland, T. (2002) Theory, Practice and Performance in Teaching:
Professionalism, Intuition, and Jazz, Educational Studies, 28 (1) pp.
5-15
Moyles, J. (2001) Passion, Paradox and
Professionalism in Early Years Education, Early Years, 21 (2), pp. 81-95
Osgood, J. (2004)
Time to Get Down to Business? The Responses of Early Years Practitioners to
Entrepreneurial Approaches to Professionalism, Journal of Early Childhood
Research, 2 (1) pp. 5-24
Riley, K. (2003)
Redefining the Profession – Teachers with Attitude, Education Review 16
(2), pp. 19-27
Winch, C. (2004) What do Teachers Need to Know about Teaching? A Critical Examination of the Occupational Knowledge of Teachers, British Journal of Educational Studies, 52 (2), pp.180-196
