Professionalisation policies in the ECEC field: trends and tensions in the Italian context

In recent times, a growing consensus has emerged, among researchers and policy-makers, that a well-educated, competent and adequately supported workforce is crucial for the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Despite governmental initiatives aimed to enhance the professional preparation and continuing development of early years practitioners being high on the political agenda of many EU member states, very few studies are analysing professionalisation policy developments and their implications within the national contexts of ECEC. Against this background, the article describes the key features of ECEC policies in Italy and their current trends by focussing specifically on the professionalisation of early childhood practitioners working across 0–3 and 3–6 services. Drawing on the data collected from documentary sources and interviews with key informants, this paper will critically review policy discourses as well as recurring themes and tensions arising from the academic and political debate. The findings from our analysis highlight that the increasing discontinuity characterising professionalisation initiatives across the 0–3 and 3–6 sector might lead to widening the gap among professionals working in such services. The risks that are associated with this trend are, on the one side, to devalue the educational role of 0–3 services and, on the other, to produce the schoolification of educational practices in 3–6 services. In addition, our analysis identified inconsistencies between initial and continuing professional development policies, which are progressively creating a dichotomy between initial and in-service training. The consequences of this process might produce, on the long term, the fragmentation of the ECEC system across public and private not-for-profit provision with the subsequent risk of impoverishing the local culture of childhood on which the Italian ECEC system has traditionally built its strength.     

对高职院校推行职业资格证书制度的思考

推行职业资格证书制度,实行学历证书与职业资格证书并重制度是高等职业教育发展的必然趋势。高职院校要充分认识推行职业资格证书制度对培养技术应用型人才的重要性,以就业为导向,以培养学生的职业能力为主线,加强实践教育,深化教学改革,不断完善职业资格证书制度。     

Geographical migration,psychological adjustment,and re‐formation of professional identity: the double‐culture shock experience of international pharmacy graduates in Ontario (Canada)

The experience of migrants with qualifications in health professions is of significance given current and projected skills shortages in western countries. The situation of pharmacy practice in Ontario (Canada) is unique in demonstrating an unusually high reliance on foreign‐trained professionals. This qualitative study examined the experience of migrant‐pharmacists in Ontario as they enculturate both personally and professionally. In negotiating re‐professionalisation and re‐licensure, these individuals reported instrumental use of professional qualifications to facilitate personal life goals, primary reliance upon mono‐cultural (rather than professional networks), an idealisation of the professional practice environment in their home country, and a diminishing social identification as a pharmacist. Most participants reported lack of engagement with the pharmacist community and a declining interest in their own professional status and development. Participants described a ‘double‐culture shock’ experience: adapting to both a new national and a new professional culture simultaneously. Addressing these issues is of importance in attracting and retaining immigrants with health professional qualifications and to engage them more fully in the professional community and their ongoing professional development.     

Imagining a future: changing the landscape for third space professionals in Australian higher education institutions

In the last decade there has been a shift in the discourses around professional staff in higher education that has been influenced by neoliberal agenda that focused on driving education reforms. Earlier discussions centring around nomenclature variations have progressed to those about creating and developing borderless professionals operating in the third space – a notional space where professional staff and academic staff with diverse and valuable skills work as equal professional partners on complex and multifaceted projects. This article looks at the evolution of the debates around professional staff. It considers how the notions of professionalism and professionalisation are being reconceptualised in the third space. Discussion progresses towards capability building and developmental opportunities of aspiring third space professional staff in higher education settings. Possible pathways of engaging with and empowering professional staff in designing their future careers and professional identities are considered. Building a community of research practices under the auspices of the Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) and engaging postgraduate students in the university third space project work are proposed as potential areas for further research in the field of professional staff capability building.     

An Inquiry Into the Development of Teacher Identities in STEM Career Changers

National shortages of math and science teachers have led to a variety of strategies and programs to attract second career professionals into teaching. This qualitative study explores the development of professional teaching identities in six STEM career changers in a post-baccalaureate pre-service teacher credential program in California. Findings suggest the career changers relied upon skills developed in their previous careers to navigate through a new profession; however, returning to the life of a student again was difficult. Additionally, the career changers in this study valued interacting with their traditional aged peers in the program as these relationships were beneficial to their own socialization into teaching as they developed their teacher identities.     

Supervision and Schizophrenia: the professional identity of Ph.D supervisors and the mission of students' professionalisation

Professionalisation, defined as the transmission of competences adapted to the job-market, is one of the new missions of Doctoral Schools in France. Interviews with supervisors reveal a number of ambivalent attitudes towards this new policy. Supervisors do support the rhetoric of professionalisation, but are powerless to push their students towards other careers than the academic one. We interpret this as a challenge to the academic identity through the modification of what a Ph.D is, which, in turn, impacts on the content, output and meaning of supervision. We show that academics do professionalise their students, but only for the profession they know: academia. They only train the students whom they believe they can acknowledge as future peers, and the on-the-job training provided by Ph.D supervisors is implicitly directed towards academia. The absence of an explicit academic professional identity is discussed, as well as the fact that 'professionalising' must relate to a specific professional identity. We argue that only 'specific' professional identity can be transmitted, leading to questions about the implementation of the related policy.     

The Development of Professional Attitudes Among Administrative Staff in Universities and Colleges of Advanced Education in Australia

This paper reviews the situation of administrative staff in universities and colleges of advanced education with a view to assessing the degree to which they have a professional attitude to their work or might be described in more common terms as professionals.

The numbers and functions of such staff in tertiary institutions are surveyed in the first section and some of the factors affecting the attitude of these staff are noted. The second section looks at the definition of a profession and at the alternative terms professionalism and professionalisation in order to establish a basis of comparison. The establishment and subsequent history of the Australian Institute of Tertiary Educational Administrators is then examined to see what light it throws upon the changes of attitude which have taken place in the last few years. In the fourth section the various criteria by which professionalism is judged are reviewed to determine to what extent the attitudes of administrative staff may be regarded as professional. Finally, I give my views on the degree of professionalisation existing at present.     

教师职业、资格与专业化

对教师职业专业性与教师资格的认定是提高教师专业化水平的必要前提。本文针对长期来社会与公众对教师职业的属性认识模糊的状况,对教师职业的产生与发展、教师职业的专业属性进行了分析,并从中外教师资格的比较着手,对实施教师资格制度与提高教师专业化程度之关系作了探讨。     

Education and the cult of relevance

Abstract

Recent policy developments within the public service sector have led to widespread de‐professionalisation and a general loss of motivation and morale within education, health and social work. This state of affairs has been brought about by the imposition of a social market on public sector professions and through the introduction of competence‐based education and training (CBET) strategies into professional studies. These developments are criticised for their failure to capture the essential epistemological and moral dimensions of the work of professionals, and programmes for professional regeneration are recommended through the renewed emphasis on the workplace as the site of professional learning. Work‐based learning may enable professionals to re‐affirm the importance of experiential learning and reinforce the centrality of the ethical bases of professional practice.     

Early childhood educators’ experiences and perceptions of professionalism and professionalisation in the Asian context

Increasingly early childhood educators are referred to as “professionals,” but how do they view themselves in terms of professionalism? What does it mean to be an early childhood professional? This study explored the views of 78 Asian early childhood educators who were upgrading their qualifications to degree level. In groups of five to eight, participants visually created and explained metaphors of professionalism as a class activity. The visual metaphors were analysed using Gleeson’s polytextual thematic analysis with Rogoff’s personal, interpersonal and institutional planes as the theoretical framework. Findings revealed that the educators’ perspectives of professionalism and professionalisation related to their work–life roles, their cultural understandings and relationships, and how they believed they were viewed by others in relation to the status of early childhood education. This study provides an insight into perceptions and challenges related to the developing professionalism and professionalisation of early childhood educators in Asian contexts.     

Occupying a ‘third space’: research trained professional staff in Australian universities

Despite the expansion and professionalisation of university administration over the past 20 years there has been no scholarly study on the extent to which universities, which promote the value of generic skills from research degrees to prospective research students and their employers, capitalize on the research and transferable skills of PhD graduates later employed in the university sector as professional staff. Findings from this study of research-trained professional staff at one research-intensive Australian university suggests that these professionals are using their research and generic skills in management roles, to the benefit of the university. In the context of the knowledge based economy, this study suggests that universities could benefit from actively targeting the products of their own system for professional roles.     

Mentoring practices in workplace-based professional preparation: a critical analysis of policy developments in the Italian context

In recent years, the issue of early childhood staff professionalisation has been taking an increasingly prominent position in policy-making and academic debates at the international level. Despite this growing interest, studies investigating the content and delivery of professional preparation programmes for early childhood practitioners are still quite rare in European literature. Against this background, the article will describe and critically analyse the characterising features of the university degree for the professional preparation of pre-school teachers in Italy, with a special focus on workplace-based training. In particular, the theoretical underpinnings and shared understandings related to the implementation of mentoring practices within the university course will be explored by drawing on the data collected from documentary sources and interviews with local experts. Findings highlight that the main strengths of mentoring practices within such a programme are: (a) the extended placement periods in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings which allow prospective teachers to live the culture of practice; (b) the critically reflective component of tutoring practices, which combines theoretical and experiential learning; (c) the strong partnerships built at the local level between ECEC services and universities, which generates reciprocal influences between academic research and educational practices and thus sustains pedagogical innovation. At the same time, the fact that the mentoring role of placement tutors in ECEC institutions is not adequately supported in terms of competence development and workload allocation might potentially undermine the benefits of workplace-based training for students. In addition, the contextualisation of our analysis within the broader landscape of national policy developments in the field of ECEC staff professionalisation revealed that the increased academisation of pre-school teachers professional preparation might lead – in the long term – to a risk of ‘schoolification’ of pedagogical practices enacted within ECEC services. In regards to these issues, the article will raise questions for further consideration and debate.     

Developing as an Ethical English Teacher: Valuing the Personal and Poetic in Professional Learning

This article draws upon virtue ethics to illustrate the importance of English teachers as ethical professionals. In doing so it focuses attention on the significance of the personal and poetic in professional learning. It is suggested that eschewing the personal and poetic in professional learning may contribute to the de‐professionalisation of English teachers and the commodification of the children they teach. Conversely, acknowledging the personal and poetic liberates teachers of English to develop as ethical professionals who teach for social justice and foster the ethical learning of their students. The article moves from a consideration of the importance of personal values to the value of poetry in professional learning.     

The challenge of establishing a professional practice within practical education

Clinical teachers in the discipline of nursing in Denmark undergo additional education in addition to their registered nursing education to establish their teaching skill qualifications practicum. This ethnographic study examines some of the pedagogical initiatives clinical teachers are practicing as working professionals attempting to gain a foothold in their own jurisdiction. This study demonstrates that teaching practices contain implicit norms of what counts as knowledge among clinical teachers. Consequently, the classic knowledge hierarchy is continuously reproduced, and the intrinsic qualities of practice that are characterised as opaque, fluctuating, concrete and highly personal are overlooked and downplayed in the clinical teacher's teaching practices. Instead, bringing abstract, academic knowledge into play seems to be a strong marker that emerges when distinguishing the actual practice of nursing from clinical teaching. Organisational imperatives strongly disrupt the pedagogical agenda. When clinical teachers struggle to demarcate jurisdictions, their professional identities are at risk of being blurred and becoming unclear.     

‘Left with a title but nothing else’: the challenges of embedding professional recognition schemes for teachers within higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

With increasing moves globally towards the professionalisation of teaching in Higher Education, there is growing interest in the role of accredited professional recognition schemes that provide professional development for established university teaching staff. In the UK, There are now over 120 professional recognition schemes, resulting in institutionally focused evaluation studies examining their impact. This article contributes to this emerging body of work; it draws on cross-institutional data and Foucauldian theorising to address two important questions. In what ways does engagement with an institutional professional recognition scheme impact on participants’ teaching development, and how does institutional culture influence that engagement? The data illustrate that whilst institutional culture drives engagement, it did little to promote teaching development. Across the case-study institutions, neo-liberalism agendas were apparent. Some staff felt pushed to achieve professional recognition in response to the increasing use of metrics to measure the student experience and to inform institutional standing in league tables. Whilst evidence shows the process of seeking accreditation can lead to an enhancement in teaching practices, caution must be taken to ensure that the professional development opportunities offered by accreditation schemes are fully realised.     

Qualification paths of adult educators in Sweden and Denmark

The qualification of adult educators is a central aspect of the quality of adult education. However, within current policy discourses and adult education research on the professional development of prospective adult educators, little attention is paid to teacher qualification when compared to other fields of education and training. In this study, we analyse the qualification paths, or learning trajectories, of prospective adult educators in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis is based on narrative interviews with 29 students in training to become adult educators. The career paths of adult educators are often long and winding roads. Becoming an adult educator could be their primary desire, but it could also be their ‘Plan B’, a second choice. Individual motives and external demands interact in the professionalisation process. A shift in focus from teaching subject and methods to teaching context and the relation to the learners is part of the professional development. Finally, we argue that both academic studies and hands-on work in the adult education community are crucial parts of the adult educator's qualification path.     

The challenges of academic development as a first graduate job: ‘am I doing it right?’

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experience of 10 graduate interns employed in an academic development team at a modern British university. The interns came from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds with no previous experience of academic development. We worked intensively with them to build their research and professional capabilities. They learnt to design questionnaires, lead focus groups, interview academics, and write ethnographic field-notes. The public-facing and visible achievements of the graduate interns told a brilliant story; behind the scenes they wrestled with the challenges of being and becoming. Here, we analyse a series of reflections charting their journeys as new professionals.     

近20年我国学历继续教育研究现状、热点与发展趋势——基于CNKI期刊论文的可视化分析

以中国知网(CNKI)收录的2001—2020年学历继续教育文献为数据源,借助文献计量方法和CiteSpace知识图谱分析软件对我国近20年来学历继续教育研究的总体特征、演进过程和前沿热点进行可视化分析,得到如下结论:近20年来学历继续教育的概念用词多元,直到2015年得以基本统一;学历继续教育研究的文章主要见于继续教育领域专业期刊和继续教育类学报;高被引论文集中在继续教育概念的辨析、广播电视大学和开放大学研究、学历继续教育对从业人员的影响研究;研究者之间、机构之间合作松散,但不同研究者都在尝试探索继续教育的发展新路径;研究热点集中在学历继续教育相关概念、办学生态、在职人员培训、发展对策方面。     

Enhancing learning at doctoral level through the use of reflection?

The EdD (Doctor in Education) is a professional doctorate that provides a framework for experienced professionals to examine and develop their practice through research and engagement with relevant theoretical perspectives and professional academic literature. This type of doctorate provides the opportunity for professionals to develop their capacity for critical, professional agency, often achieved through the use of reflection for the integration of academic and professional knowledge. This paper explores doctoral students’ perspectives on the nature and value of reflective statements in terms of a product of learning and a process of reflection. The analysis of EdD students’ responses from one university in the UK reveals a connection between the process of reflection and the development of professional knowledge and contribution to practice—major goals of professional doctorate programmes. This small‐scale study has highlighted implications for the role of reflection in EdD programmes for the development of critical, professional agency. At the metacognitive level of the EdD student clarity is lacking regarding the process of reflection—the nature, scope, object, purpose, value and development—which raises the very important question of ‘what counts as adequate reflection and on what grounds’. This study has identified the need to build capacity, first, in the reflective practice of EdD students and second, in the pedagogic demands of the tutors and supervisors and, third, the assessment demands required of examiners.