Practitioner Research in Early Childhood

International Issues and Perspectives

Linda Newman, Christine Woodrow, Linda Newman, Christine Woodrow, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781446295359, 9781446295342
• eBook ISBN: 9781473934207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

"This comprehensive publication rightly establishes early childhood as a critical phase in the education of young people and makes the case for developing our insights regarding early childhood education (ECE) practices through the eyes of practitioner inquiry in the context of collaborative partnerships. It achieves its goal through a series of insightful case studies that not only illuminate the text as stories from the field, but also contribute to our understanding regarding ECE learning and pedagogy."- Susan Groundwater-Smith, Honorary Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney.

Bringing together theory and practice, this book draws on the projects and experiences of senior and new researchers implementing various forms of practitioner research. Chapter discussions are informed by international literature to provide insightful reflections on research processes and the contribution of practitioner research in changing practice. The diversity of perspectives across the chapters provides an excellent resource for those undertaking research within early childhood contexts.

Features include:

• the contribution of practitioner research to curriculum and social change.  professional development and        strengthening learning communities
• how practitioners can be supported in documenting and articulating their work
• the relationships between the research community and field of practice through practitioner research projects
• contemporary problems and issues that frame the practices of early childhood educators
• case studies from Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Chile

A diverse range of case studies that use a range of internationally recognised research methods are presented. The book offers guidance, support and inspiration to practitioners on how to research their implementation of meaningful and sustainable changes in early childhood contexts.

1 Recognising, Valuing and Celebrating Practitioner Research

Christine Woodrow

Linda Newman

Practitioner research has become a recognised and legitimate form of professional learning in many professional contexts, and a significant component of what has been identified as a ‘paradigm shift gathering momentum’ in relation to the professional learning of teachers that goes beyond ‘merely supporting the acquisition of new knowledge and skills’ (Vescio et al., 2008: 81). An established research literature demonstrates the contribution its use makes to sustaining educational change, quality improvement and teacher growth and empowerment in school settings (see, for example, Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2007; Groundwater-Smith and Mockler, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014; Mockler and Casey, this volume). In contrast, in early childhood contexts, practitioner research might be seen as an ‘emergent’ practice, and the research literature documenting its use in these settings, while growing, is relatively small. This is both perplexing, given the growth in policy attention internationally to early childhood, and the consequent need to strengthen pedagogical quality and ‘grow’ the profession, and unsurprising, given the often marginal status of the early childhood profession and the increasingly dominant framing of early childhood within human capital discourses (Bown et al., 2009; Moss, 2012). In this chapter, we establish the rationale for the production of this book and its contribution to understanding and exemplifying the important place of practitioner research in the early childhood field. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the research and policy context of early childhood. This is followed by an articulation of what is understood and implied by practitioner research and its variant forms, incorporating a discussion of its distinctive characteristics and contribution. The final section of this chapter introduces the chapters of the book and discusses their content and contribution under the particular themes of collaborative partnerships, knowledge and knowing, capacity building and transformation and change. These themes were identified by the editors as particularly salient from the research findings of projects described by the chapter authors.

The early childhood policy and research context

Although internationally early childhood is a field of practice with a long and often vibrant history, in many countries its place has only recently moved from existing ‘on the margins’ to the mainstream of education/social policy and its practitioners accorded recognition of their professional status, as reflected in their professional identity, learning opportunities and pay and conditions. In other places, particularly in majority nations, this recognition is yet to occur, so in many contexts, the recognition of professional status is at best ambiguous. Further, the theoretical framings of early childhood education have historically been rooted in discourses of child development, stage theory and scientific research models, reinforcing notions of knowledge as fixed and universal, and research as something undertaken by more knowing ‘others’. Such conceptualisations offer little space and few resources for thinking about practitioner agency and knowledge as contestable and locally situated. Accompanying the increasing prominence of early childhood in government agendas, and the consequent expansion in early childhood services, there has also been a strengthening conceptualisation of early childhood that invokes human capital and regulatory discourses within neoliberal frameworks of accountability, the effects of which are eloquently explained by Moss (2007) and others. These discourses have resulted in increasing codification of practice (Sumsion et al., 2009; Woodrow and Brennan, 1999), proliferating regulatory requirements and increased accountability through standards and competency frameworks (Miller, 2008; Osgood, 2006), resulting in practitioners experiencing what has been described as a ‘regulatory burden’ (Fenech et al., 2006, 2008; Fenech and Sumsion, 2007a, 2007b). According to some early childhood researchers, these developments threaten the empowerment of early childhood practitioners, their professional autonomy and suppression of their leadership aspirations (Skattebol and Arthur, 2014), and are reductionist by promoting an understanding of professional practice as the demonstration of technical competence (Osgood, 2006).

These conditions work to ‘technologies’ early childhood professional practice (Dahlberg et al., 2007), and result in the prescription of norms to which practitioners must conform. Osgood (2006, 2010) argues that this puts at risk alternative constructions of early childhood professionalism that acknowledge the relationality and complexity of early childhood work, and in which critical reflection and the practice of autonomous professional decision-making are features. Such divergent constructions of the early childhood pedagogical space have implications for the kind of professional learning made available to the profession. Technicist constructions favour professional learning models in which knowledge is perceived as fixed and universal, fostering skill development and compliance, and these reflect the dominant discourse. Alternative models in which early childhood educators are constructed as site-based researchers involved in the production of localised, contextually relevant knowledge experience greater difficulty in gaining traction, and hence attracting funding support and institutional commitment; an aspect of which the authors have considerable experience.

However, practitioner research might be seen as an ideal methodology that responds to the pressures of these contextual features and might usefully contribute to the need to build a more nuanced repertoire of pedagogical practice (Mitchell and Cubey, 2003), the creation of conceptual resources for building local community and pedagogical adaptive leadership capacity (Skattebol and Arthur, 2014; Woodrow, 2011), a better understanding and recognition of the relational and emotional dimensions of early childhood work (Taggart, 2011), practitioners’ willingness to research their own practice (Newman and Mowbray, 2012), and harnessing the well documented ‘passion’ that characterises practitioners’ engagement in the field (Moyles, 2001; Osgood, 2010; Pardo and Woodrow, 2014). At the same time, there is what might be characterised as a current flourishing of research in the early childhood field, particularly within post-colonial, post-structural and post-humanist theoretical frameworks. There are implications emerging for understanding knowledge and truth as fragile, contested and contingent, encouraging the production of locally situated knowledge and suggesting a place for the application of professional learning methodologies that contribute richly textured accounts of local action and their effects and to building local leadership. A number of writers have highlighted the particular challenges for the field at a time when neo-liberal discourses of accountability and the dominance of human capital framings cut across the new imaginings and social transformational possibilities opened up by this flourishing of intellectual energy. According to Skattebol and Arthur (2014), the current times call for an adaptive leadership characterised by an activist professionalism in order to engage with government agendas and exercise moral judgement. They also argue that Fenech and Sumsion’s (2007a, 2007b) empirical study on the impact of regulation on early childhood educators demonstrates the critical significance of the ‘level of intellectual resources held by educators and the power they can galvanise in their professional identity’ t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Recognising, Valuing and Celebrating Practitioner Research
• 2 Collaborative Capacity Building in Early Childhood Communities in Chile
• 3 Insider Islamic Spaces of Inquiry: Muslim Educators Producing New Knowledge in Sydney, Australia
• 4 What Is Play For, in Your Culture? Investigating Remote Australian Aboriginal Perspectives through Participatory Practitioner Research
• 5 Developing Collaboration Using Mind Maps in Practitioner Research in Sweden
• 6 Reconceptualising Services for Young Children through Dialogue in a South African Village
• 7 Sustaining Curriculum Renewal in Western Sydney: Three Participant Views
• 8 (In)sights from 40 Years of Practitioner Action Research in Education: Perspectives from the US, UK and Australia
• Index