Professional Learning Activities of Professional Early Childhood Educators

Abstract

UNESCO has called for Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) to have opportunities for in-service professional learning and access to career ladders. However, ECEs are located at a junction between policy demands, the changing nature of professionalism, and prescriptive/autonomous choices for their learning. In this study we investigate in-service ECEs learning, their capacity to make choices, and the sorts of choices they make when they have autonomy to do so. The focus is Ontario, Canada, where ECEs belong to a self-regulated profession called the College of Early Childhood Educators (CECE) and members are required to engage in Continuous Professional Learning. Challenges that ECEs identified in semi-structured interviews point to the need to develop professional pathways and structural relationships within the ECE professional environment. The professional pathways issue arises because ECEs need regulated pathways to become providers of professional learning. This would offset external influences on the provision of professional learning and encourage contextual (Ontario) support. Structural issues arise within the current environment due to inefficiencies that cause unnecessary duplication or additional demands upon ECEs. Coordination can improve the situation through greater clarity about employers’ role when supporting their employees’ learning and how to support the self-guided aspects of professional learning.

Keywords

• in-service learning
• professional pathways
• organizational relationships
• professional learning

References

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