Advanced Work-based Practice in the Early Years

A Guide for Students

Samantha McMahon, Mary Dyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351181624
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Inspired by the first-hand experiences of those studying early childhood education and care, this book supports students as they gain advanced knowledge and skills, and embark on the journey from inexperienced student to graduate professional.

Bringing together advanced theory, links to research, and illustrative case studies, Advanced Work-based Practice in the Early Years enables students to consolidate learning by applying theory to practice and identifying the skills, knowledge and personal traits which will help them succeed as a graduate practitioner. Chapters address a wealth of topical issues relating to both the development of the child and the student's own professional development. Areas of focus include ethical practice, safeguarding and child protection, the voice of the child, the role of the mentor, observation, assessment and the social and cultural factors which may impact on a child's development.

Including reflective activities, practical tips, and examples of student experience throughout, this is an essential text for all early years students as they make the transition from academic study to professional practice.

Chapter 1

Ethical practice in the early years

Mary A. Dyer

CHAPTER AIMS

By the end of this chapter you will:

• understand how pedagogic strategies and care values contribute towards ethical and professional practice
• understand the relationship between ethical practice and personal values
• identify the personal values that underpin your own practice and understand how to reflect on and challenge them.

Introduction

It is easy to imagine that when early years students and practitioners are asked what they consider ethical practice to mean, that they focus on matters of policy, legislation and research protocols, identifying issues of confidentiality and anonymity in data gathering and information sharing, and the safe storage of data. They may also bring into their discussions the need to respect parents’ wishes, and their own professional responsibilities for safeguarding and child protection. However, although these are key elements in ethical early years practice, they can sometimes give the misleading impression that ethical practice is a matter of process and policy, rather than one of personal values for individual practitioners. This can also lead students to believe that ethics and values are more usually concerned with issues of care and relationships rather than the supporting and assessment of learning.

This chapter considers how the practitioner’s understanding of the child and childhood, and the purpose of early years provision inform practice. It explores how policy, pedagogy and personal values can be combined to develop an understanding of good practice through critical reflection, offering you a context within which to evaluate how you support young children’s learning and holistic development, and how you decide what is important and ethical in your own practice. We begin by addressing the question of what is ethical practice in the early years, going on to consider the policy and pedagogical contexts for understanding ethical practice and end by considering how critical reflection can support you in articulating your own understanding of ethics in early years practice. In doing so, the chapter draws on literature that stresses the need for practitioners to apply and develop their own ethical stance not only to how they care for the children they work with and form relationships with, but also to their practice in supporting and assessing learning for these children.

What do we mean by ‘ethical practice’?

Palaiologou (2012, p. 22) argues that ethical practice in the early years encompasses both how we practice, and how we conduct research ‘through morally upright practices and how different points of view are considered’. This introduces the notion that the voice and interests of the child are significant when considering what ethical practice means. An example of this can be seen in this narrative from a Children’s Centre practitioner:

there was a practitioner, when it was snowing and there was obviously lots of ice on the floor and a 2½-year-old toddled outside and started playing in the ice and the snow … at which point the practitioner straightaway put the child in an all-in-one suit, wellingtons, took them outside, collected some snow and ice, came back in and continued that by getting ice out of the freezer that had got animals in it and extending that child’s interest … that practitioner took the time and could see what that child actually wanted to do and was interested in and the whole time she was talking and explaining and really extended what he was enjoying doing … [closing the door] does keep the child warm but the child was also warm when she wrapped him up and took him outside. And that [closing the door] would just have, to me, would’ve been ‘your interests aren’t worth exploring and not valued.

(Early Years Practitioner)

Palaiologou’s definition also introduces a moral dimension to early years practice, a sense of personal value about right and wrong ways to practise, and about respect not just for the wishes and needs of parents/carers and colleagues, but also for those of young children. This may appear to introduce a tension between practice that meets the immediate needs of a child, and practice that supports their longer-term benefit, as shown in this narrative from a practitioner working in a school setting:

you’ll be timetabled to play with the role play with the children and to encourage them to use it properly … rather than run round playing drums with the cauldron which they might like to do, we have to kind of try and direct the play to the focus as it’s intended … They’re only allowed to wear their dressing up shoes for inside, they’re not allowed to then go outside … I would love to let them do that … it’s part of how they learn, how they develop and they could be engaged … sometimes it’s so sad to make them take things off before they go outside because they might have dressed up in something inside and they’re building their own role play in their home corner and then they want to take it outside and continue it and then you’ve got to stop them and say ‘No take that off, that stays inside.

(Classroom Support Worker)

For this practitioner, the right of children to lead their own play is overlooked by the need for adults to direct their learning. It is the responsibility of the practitioner to determine which of these needs are most pressing and how this balance may be achieved, based on their personal understanding of childhood and their own professional role.

Good practice, Palaiologou (2012) also reminds us, requires first an understanding of what we mean by good, in relation to how we perceive the child and their place in the social world. A perception of children as ‘social actors, having agency, belonging to a unique culture and engaged in worthwhile, meaningful social relationships’ (Palaiologou, 2012, p. 20), implies an acceptance that they are active participants in constructing their understanding of their world, individuals with whom rather than on whom we practice, which changes how we behave towards them. Neither of the two practitioners above has used the terms ‘ethical practice’ or ‘values’ in their narratives, but it is clear from the practice they describe what they approve of and what they are critical of. Their judgement is based on how the rights and interests of individual children are respected, and how this is reflected in the learning opportunities they are offered. Constructing children as capable and knowing individuals with shared responsibility for their learning shapes the experiences and interactions we offer them in early years settings, and influences the pedagogic strategies that underpin our practice.

ACTIVITY

Explain how you would support children aged 18–30 months in dressing.

• Which is quicker (and for the adult, easier) – letting a child work out how to put their socks on for themselves, or doing it for them?
• Does your approach envisage children as capable learners who can work things out for themselves or as unknowing individuals who need to be instructed and supervised?

Similarly, practitioners who understand the importance of emotionally stable and supportive environments often describe this in terms of what children need rather than as an ethical stance or personal value underpinning their own practice:

I think children should come to the setting and be happy all the time … children come to us and they come from really disadvantaged backgrounds and unfortunately that smile [my smile] might be the only smile they see throughout that day so it’s important that if they’re only with us for 3 hours they have 3 hours of happiness.

(Day Nursery Deputy Manager)

if the children are coming into the setting and the staff aren’t getting on then that’s not good for the children … if you haven’t got a happy team you haven’t got a happy setting … and children will notice when things aren’t good.

(Pre-school Manager)

For both these practitioners, meeting children’s emotional needs is as important a part of good or ethical practice as meeting their cognitive needs, and cannot be overlooked. Relationships with young children, and the care and emotional support they receive are integral to an understanding of ethical practice. Taggart (2014) describes the role of the practitioner as being ‘to water the seed of human flourishing itself and to foster compassion in future society’, arguing strongly for an affective, emotional connection between practitioner and child.

What this means for practitioners is that they need to attend not only to the observation, planning and assessment required to support children’s learning, but also that they need to consider how they respond to children as individuals and meet their care needs. Care and affection have been identified by many researchers as vital to young children’s holistic development, from Bowlby’s attachment theory that underpins key person working, to pedagogic issues (Ang, 2014; Taggart, 2014; Luff and Kanyal, 2015) that shape your interactions and engagement with children. The importance of practitioner-child relationships has been acknowledged not only in research (Page, 2011; Elfer and Page, 2013) but also in early years policy and legislation (DfE, 2017).

Policy context for ethical practice

Initial vocational training at NVQ Level 3 makes clear to would-be practitioners their responsibilities in terms of safeguarding and protecting children, data protection, and health and safety, as well as their role in providing a stimulating and supportive learning environment. Critical evaluation and a deeper understanding of these responsibilities, as well as the policies and legislation that support them, follow at degree level. The statutory EYFS framework (DfE, 2017) sets out the regulatory framework for all registered providers to adhere to, and Ofsted inspections are there to ensure these rules are followed. However, this legislative framework does not clearly address the issue raised above by Palaiologou (2012) of practitioners defining for themselves an ethical understanding of ‘good’, based on their own perceptions of the position of the child in our society and the kind of childhood they should experience.

The overarching principles of the EYFS

Three of the overarching principles of the early years foundation stage (EYFS) (DfE, 2017, p.6) offer a basis for understanding how practitioners might frame their understanding of children, and what ethical practice should encompass for the practitioner:

• The Unique Child
• Positive Relationships
• The Enabling Environment.

These three recognise children’s individuality, the importance of relationships, and the role played by the physical and interpersonal or emotional environment of the setting in supporting children’s healthy, holistic development. They bring together not only children’s emotional and social needs but also their learning needs. They are an integral part of the statutory welfare requirements for early years practice (DfE, 2017) but there is little specific guidance on how they are to be fulfilled. This is a matter of judgement for individual practitioners, based on their own values, cultural practices and perceptions of the child. We know that practitioners’ failure to respect any one of these principles risks undermining and damaging children’s developmental progress, and breaches professional practice standards and legislative requirements. Therefore, practitioners need to ensure that they understand how to underpin their practice with these principles. This can include taking time to get to know children, their interests, their families, their likes and dislikes; paying attention to which children play and socialise together; recognising and accommodating the individual learning needs and personalities of the children they work with; and understanding that an enabling environment is as much a matter of emotions and interactions as it is physical resources.

Key person approach

Key person working, a statutory requirement of the EYFS (DfE, 2017, p. 22) is recognised as an effective means of ensuring these three principles are embedded in practice:

The role of the key person

Each child must be assigned a key person. Their role is to help ensure that every child’s care is tailored to meet their individual needs … to help the child become familiar with the setting, offer a settled relationship for the child and build a relationship with their parents.

(DfE, 2017, pp. 22, 23)

The responsibility of the key person in settling a child into an early years setting cannot be underestimated, and it is based on a relationship between practitioner and child that takes time to develop. You need to consider how you can respond to a child as a unique individual, recognise their learning and development needs and their capabilities, and encourage in them a sense of belonging within the setting. Page (2011, p. 313) describes such a relationship as ‘professional love’ (her italics), characterised as a relationship between practitioner and child that is ‘deep, sustaining, respectful and reciprocal’. She goes on to argue that it complements the love a child receives from their parents and in matching what parents want or need for their children whilst attending the early years setting, represents ethical practice. Such a deep relationship requires effort and commitment on the part of the practitioner, an issue identified by Elfer and Page (2013) as causing anxiety for some. It is a very personal element of your practice, which may be undervalued by some as appearing to be based on instinct rather than knowledge and understanding (Manning-Morton, 2006), but which represents a vital element of your role.

Key person working is much more than a matter of staff deployment and workloads within a setting, and requires training, mentoring and support for practiti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Ethical practice in the early years
• 2 Social, cultural and economic factors shaping children’s learning and development
• 3 The unique child
• 4 Listening and responding to children’s voice
• 5 Becoming an advanced practitioner
• 6 Safeguarding in practice
• 7 A creative curriculum
• 8 Communication and language
• 9 Advanced academic skills and your major study
• 10 Work-based practice: Your next steps
• Index