‘Being an Educator is more than a state of mind – it is a professional role that exists within a complex system of governance, practice standards and accountability’.

Educator studying Masters degree, working in 0-1 year old’s nursery

I was thinking about this remarkable Educator when I drove to their Centre to sit with the team, discuss the professionalisation of the sector, how that looks like in their Centre now, and how they want it to look in the future.

This nursery room Educator had considered why her professional knowledge, status and standing was not as recognised as someone with a comparable qualification in another setting, and had come to the understanding that the reasons were intrinsic to the current structure of her profession and extrinsic – held back by the external work required to move her profession along. It sounds complex. Maybe it is. She raised one other very valid point:

‘We have the National Quality Framework – why don’t people recognise that for the advance that it is? Doesn’t the progress we have made through that speak volumes on our capacity to develop even further?’

Same person

I have been working with one Centre on looking at supporting Educators to relook at the role of a professional and what that might mean to them, their practice, their careers. We started with what it might feel like to own their own profession and be at the end point – where their community, other professions and their teams all felt acknowledged and heard. In guided discussions, they had talked about what is needed for Educators to do, and what is needed for others interacting with Educators to do.

The elements of the Educator Professional Identity discussions have been discussed in previous blogs. We discussed those, how they related to their work and thinking, and in a short discussion looked at the systemic change that needs to come to make this change a reality. What is exciting about this is we are looking at building a profession from the Educator perspective.

First though, it is important to share with you one question from the discussion that I think everyone needs to hear:

Do you call yourself a professional?

A: Sometimes, usually no.

Do you refer to your role here as being part of a profession? A: No.

May I ask why?:

A: Because no one will believe us.

A group of Early Childhood Educators

That was the starting point.

After some guided discussions on professionalisation and professional identity – discussions we were underway.

• They decided that ‘owning your identity ‘ meant that Educators themselves must recognise:

Educators must recognise	Educators discussed this	Outcomes of note from the discussions	Related systemic changes needed
That the Educator role is clearly differentiated in law and operate within a legal framework	The Educators had not considered that their own professional governance was remarkably similar to the governance of other professions.	This shared concept became incredibly important to each of them.	Sharing information on the professions that Educators interact with will advance a better understanding of professional structures and foster cross professional understanding between practitioners.
That would-be Educators are prepared with an intellectual basis for their practice through higher education	This group committed to look at the units of study they shared, they shared the question – ‘What units would you have preferred and needed?’	They shared the idea that course designers had to think beyond current ‘stereotypical’ Educator images and reach deeper into the potential of the role – nursery staff felt this especially – they wanted more post graduate opportunities	Ensure all courses are in alignment with the current Educator role, reflect the diversity of the roles, and that pre degree courses consistently align with and provide entry into degree courses
That Educators have a clearly developed code of ethics which protects our children and our community	They were concerned that ongoing learning is largely voluntary postgraduate. Ethics is a good example of this.	This group committed to annual professional learning targets	Annual professional learning targets are essential for maintenance and growth of essential professional knowledge. Required targets such as those for teaching need to be well resourced.
That regulation is a part of Educators’ professional accountability agreement with our community	They were concerned that they were heavily regulated but that those regulations are poorly understood.	They decided to petition the regulatory unit for more and ongoing learning on accountability.	Learning on accountability must be embedded in undergraduate and post graduate required learning.

• They decided that looking at possible and future professional roles, Educators would need:

Educators need	Educators discussed this	Outcomes of note from the discussions	Systemic changes they consider are needed
Professional credentials that mandate the agreed range of knowledge and skills required to do the role	Educator roles may be closely linked to education but they are also linked to health and social work.	The myriad of qualification providers and courses now accepted causes concern that any change in qualification will take a long time to transition into practice and that significant levelling for current qualification will be needed.	New thinking is required for designing the qualifications needed in the sector and careful attention is needed to implement them. Qualification affordability is a significant issue for the Educators consulted.
A career structure that leads Educator to positions of professional autonomy in leadership, research and practice	It is reasonable to expect a career structure to promote excellence in the role, support retention of learned and talented Educators, and to keep those most qualified in the role, actually doing the role.	They are alarmed at the number of Educators who saw the only way to pursue career opportunity was to leave the role.	The myriad of employers who now offer differing levels of organisational structures need aligning to allow for portability of roles and consistency of preparation for the roles.

So what happened here?

Educators were empowered and they felt empowered and were keen to explore issues further. They felt that in-person discussions allowed them to ask questions and explore the issues raised in a way that was very appropriate to them and their setting. We will certainly keep the discussions going.

If this pilot on Educator Identity has taught us anything, it is that Educators who have a series of guided discussions on professionalisation can work them through at a high level and can take the issues and with new curiosity, explore further.

Professional identity is a hot topic. It is also a much misunderstood topic. So let’s clear that up first – what is Educator ‘professional identity’? When I am talking with Educators, we talk about it like this:

“Educator professional identity is how a person identifies themselves as a qualified and knowledgeable practitioner in the field,

and while practicing,

how they, by virtue of their role, demonstrate knowledge, undertake quality actions and maintain an awareness of accountabilities, and

how they engage within the profession”.

What it isn’t – It is not about how others identify Educators, because if you haven’t studied the role, done the role, and been held accountable for the role in some way, how can you hold that role’s professional identity?

‘What is an Educator’ has been in the spotlight in 2020 in a way I have never seen before. I am reminded of this by a post-it note in my study – it’s over there near the ‘next to read’ pile of books that somehow keeps growing – showing a quote from a 2011 paper by Chong, Low and Goh [1]:

Research shows the development of … professional identity to be in a state of flux and that there is a strong correlation between a sense of teacher professional identity and their propensity to stay in teaching.

Sylvia Chong, Ee Ling Low, Kim Chuan Goh

This may be for teaching but for Educators it also makes a strongly held professional identity vitally important.

We know that defining a profession is at the root of understanding the profession and how it operates [2] . Understanding Educator professional identity is important to Educators themselves because it underpins developing a deeper engagement with their practice and performance, and we are told, wanting to stay in the role.

This idea came under a great deal of discussion when we were developing the National Quality Framework. My thinking at the time was that early childhood Educators were taking new steps into being recognised as a profession – with entry qualification benchmarks, a practice framework, standards of practice and a regulated accountability matrix. The schedule of consultations held at the time were an acknowledgement that we couldn’t apply standards and regulations to a profession and to the professionals in it, unless we truly knew how they operate.

What struck me at the time and afterward was that Educators show such a strong connection to their role, so much so that they adopted the National Quality Framework without any sign of recompense – this held up even while the research was showing a high rate of intention to leave (up to 1 in 5).

Under the circumstances, it had to be asked not just how many are leaving, but – why did any of them stay?

Educators struggle with the idea that anyone from outside their role would ever recognise their role for what is actually is, and many feel that no-one from outside the role would ever recognise them as professionals in their own right. They are underpaid and work in a sector that is woefully insecure in its employment profile.

Yet they (4 out of 5) stay!

The Educator’s Professional Identity Project

First – The endgame

What will success look like?

It is that all Educators will own their professional identify.

For some there, this came as a shock. One asked – Are we allowed to do that? Is it legal?

They decided that ‘owning your identity‘ meant that Educators recognised:

1. that they are clearly differentiated in law and operate within a legal framework
2. that we prepare would-be Educators with an intellectual basis for their practice through higher education
3. that we have a clearly developed code of ethics which protects our children and our community
4. that regulation is a part of our professional accountability agreement with our community

and that looking at possible and future roles, we would need:

1. professional credentials that mandate the agreed range of knowledge and skills required to do what we do
2. a career structure that leads us to positions of professional autonomy in:
   1. leadership
   2. research
   3. practice
3. career outcomes that leads us to professional regulation and self regulation
4. minimum and protected expectations for workload and remuneration [3]

and that we want those who interact with the profession to:

1. acknowledge Educator knowledge and skills as much as they do theirs, and that every profession should share early childhood by learning to speak the same professional language
2. acknowledge the complexity of the Educator role, by not thinking of Educators as a subset of teachers, but as a specialty in its own right
3. acknowledge that current qualifications are not hitting the mark as they are based on a current thinking and are usually only amended rather than rethought
4. acknowledge that Educators are as accountable as other early childhood relevant professions.

Finally, that they wanted others to work with Educators and for Educators, but not in a manner that takes the decisions and career directions from them.

To paraphrase Elizabeth Matters, [3] we are naturally aware of our own work and the work of many colleagues in developing Educator practice theories, early childhood research and also specialist knowledge in unique advanced practice areas. Each area demands a huge amount of Educator experience and theoretical knowledge in order to provide unique Educator based solutions.

But who else needs to be aware of this? Everyone!

Elizabeth Matters RCN

What’s next? It all begins with communication.

They are developing a plan to:

Next week:

Stage 2 We ran a trial – Want to know how it went and what we learned?

References:

1. Chong, Low and Gow in: Emerging Professional Teacher Identity of Pre-service Teachers https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ937005.pdf
2. Mike Saks in: Defining a Profession: The Role of Knowledge and Expertise file:///C:/Users/Doreen%20Blyth/Downloads/Defining_a_Profession_The_Role_of_Knowledge_and_Ex%20(1).pdf
3. Elizabeth Matters FACN in: https://www.acn.edu.au/publications/the-hive-2018/nursing-matters-our-professional-identity

A late, late night has helped me to rethink the role of Educators, and better understand what Educators want and need from those who research , teach, create policy, regulate and advocate for the role.

It was around 2am and initially woken by neighbors who clearly have a more engaging social life than I do, for some reason I was kept awake thinking about the implications of this quote from an article from The Conversation:

‘Of the 1200 early childhood educators and degree qualified teachers working in long day care centres and preschools across Australia who were surveyed, around one in five said they planned to leave their job within a year because of low pay, feeling undervalued and increasing time spent on paperwork’. [1].

While I am deeply concerned at the impending resignation of 1 in 5 from my profession, I was more concerned that night with how the article portrayed them as ‘early childhood educators and degree qualified teachers’ as if one group excluded the other. At that time I was working with a team of Educators who have Masters degrees, 3 and 4 year degrees, 2nd degrees and some who were Diploma qualified – 3 were registered teachers – but all were working in the role of Educator. It struck me that ‘Educator’ needs deeper understanding and description.

I can see a flashing blue light outside so sleep isn’t coming anytime soon – what the hell, it is finally cool here after a hot day. Thinking time in the cool night air seems easier.

The starting point?

• How others see Educators.
• How Educators see themselves.

Molla and Nolan, in their 2020 paper, Identifying professional functionings of early childhood educators, tell us that ‘recognition is a critical condition for the professionalization of any occupational group. In our study, at the policy level, recognition is considered essential for professionalizing the ECEC workforce. However, we noted a misalignment between policy expectations and educator experiences in relation to recognition. It is evident in the interviews with educators that the wider community sees their work as just a ‘baby-sitting’. Lack of respect from the community means that educators are not able to convert the professionalization agenda into a valued achievement.’ [2].

If Molla and Nolan identified a misalignment between policy expectations and Educator experience in relation to the recognition – I think it is useful to reverse that and look at Educator expectation and policy experience as well.

What do Educators expect in the professionalisation process? Looking for Educator voices on this, I thought a useful gauge might be looking at how much they are engaged in the discussions on professionalisation. Initially struggling to find a focused source, I went looking at who was talking about Educators right now. I took a snapshot from one night on social media – a strong meeting place and market place for Educator voices:

I was intrigued by the lack of Educator input into professionalisation related debates. Mindful of a recent retort from a young Educator I have been working with on an Early Childhood (EC) + Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) development project on a school site [Twitter???] OK, you had to be there – it was all in the tone!, I jumped across a range of social media platforms and messaging groups and combed through more than a dozen Educator groups to look into what they were saying.

I found, in order of incidence:

1. Study support – requests
2. Task or case related professional practice support – requests
3. Recommendation and referral – requests
4. Assistance with conflict resolution – requests
5. … and last, Professionalisation related – mention or discussions

I showed the results at a subsequent EC Educator meeting and at an Educational Leader meeting online and asked: Do you get the sense that these figures are indicative of what you are seeing? The answer: Yes!

The next question for them was: If that is the case, why aren’t Educators more active in participating in the current discussions over the future of early childhood?

Their conclusions were both disturbing and exciting. First the disturbing … :

1. ‘What discussions?’
2. ‘I heard about that, I signed up to a group on that’
3. ‘Who is talking about us?’
4. ‘I have heard of some discussions in the media but didn’t think it was referring to us’.
5. ‘I have heard of some discussions – it is nice to hear people saying nice things but … ‘.
6. ‘They all talk about child development as though we don’t already know. They should just ask us’
7. ‘People talk, they say they want to help, and when they get no progress, they disappear’.
8. ‘I am afraid to recommend that [those discussions] to anyone on our team so they don’t get disappointed when it comes to nothing.’

Grim, and burdened with a history of not being heard, and the flow on negative behaviours that can come from being and feeling invisible. So why did I say ‘exciting’? Well I am not sure that is the right word but the responses did add to understanding (and that IS exciting). Again from Molla and Nolan, ‘The ECEC workforce is diverse in terms of qualifications, experiences and positions within the organizational structures it is not clear how the professionalization agenda appeals to all members of the workforce in a range of educational and care contexts, including long day care (LDC), preschools, family day care, outside school hours care and occasional care services’.[2]

Again, in the early hours – Another party, but this time the neighbors were talking in more subdued tones and mercifully the country and western bagpipes had stopped – at least while they explain themselves to the police – I considered the incredible sense of shared purpose during the nursing professionalisation period in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A review of publications at the time show that during that time of change, Nurses across the diaspora that makes up that profession were informed and wore that information as a badge of honor and were adept at using it as currency. Information was shared, traded, dissected and understood. Nurses were supported to understand what professionalisation – the process and the structure – actually meant. This groundwork meant they had everyone updating the scaffolded knowledge built with and for them.

This is it. This is how we move the professionalisation agenda forward when so many efforts in the past have come to nothing.

While discussions on early childhood’s future and its possible structure and processes are underway, we need to break down the professionalisation concept and process into scaffolded parts for Educators, and then clearly work that through with Educators.

To answer Molla and Nolan – How can the ‘professionalisation agenda’ mean anything to Educators, if we haven’t sat down and explained what it might mean?

So, to ‘move the professionalisation agenda’ forward, we need to codify the end point and all of the elements that will take.

We need a new language for this, the language of the Educator profession, as is understood and communicated by Educators. We need a unified vision of the end point, and to get there we need to:

• Develop a deeper understanding of Educator identity – one owned by Educators.
• Share our understanding the current and possible future range of Educator roles – a career structure.
• Urgently share an understanding of the intersecting knowledge and roles of those who work across early childhood – to develop a shared knowledge and language.
• Find a fresh view of qualification (beyond the assumptions about current courses)
• Find a fresh view of accountability (beyond the current passive receptivity of top down regulation)
• and of course, have a bloody great rethink of remuneration.

I am meeting with another group of Educators this week to explore this further.

Next week: the Educator Identity Project.

References and related notes:

1. Irine, S., et al., 2016. One in five early childhood educators plan to leave the profession. The Conversation. Available from: https://theconversation.com/one-in-five-early-childhood-educators-plan-to-leave-the-profession-61279 [Accessed 20 June 2917]. [Google Scholar]
2. Tebeje Molla & Andrea Nolan (2019) Identifying professional functionings of early childhood educators, Professional Development in Education, 45:4, 551-566, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2018.1449006
3. Articles and newsletters – various – [Royal] Australian Nursing Federation 1985 – 1990; National Wage Claim and case; Move to a degree qualification; Specialisation roles; Networking and meetings; Campaign notes

You and I need to talk – which is good because talking to people interested in Educators is one of my favourite things. Educators and their future needs to be discussed, with Educators. Educators are learning how to articulate what it is they want. New ideas are coming through now. Now is the time to listen closely – if we actually want to keep any of them that is.

I was talking to a group of Educators recently. They came from a group of differently owned services, covered a span of ages and cultural groupings, and had a range of different qualifications. In this sense, they were typical of the 130 000+ Australian Educators (estimated from ROGS 2020 [1]).

The question placed before them was “What is the most important thing that the people who are working on ideas for the future of early childhood, need to know”. Meeting, Educators, October 2020

Educator 1: I want a career. My career. I want my career to grow. I am expert in what I do. You may not pay me enough. You may not respect my work. You may not respect my qualifications. You may not respect my choice of workplace. None of those things changes the fact that I am expert in what I do – and you need me. [Masters in Education]

Educator 2: If you are working on the future of my profession, and you haven’t ever done my work, let me ask you this – would you treat doctors or teachers this way? Would you assume that you are expert in their role? No? Then why do you think you know enough about my role? I am a professional, you want me to be professional, and in return I want a career. [Bachelor of Science. Masters in Early Childhood (pending)]

Educator 3: I want to go on to do a degree. I am held back by a low salary. Right now I can’t afford a degree. If I want a career here in early childhood it has to pay better. [Diploma in early childhood]

Educator 4: Please come and spend a day here. Then when we go home you can carry my work to my car for me – the work I do at home each night. I am a professional whether you like that or not. I follow the rules of my profession. Every time you change the rules, you just land it on me and then go. Then you talk about my [our] failings in the news like it is all our fault. You ask, yet you don’t support me to achieve. [Certificate III in Early Childhood. Degree in Chemistry.]

Educator 5: Tell them that when I come in to my room in the morning I:

1. assess each child (using my early childhood development knowledge),
2. talk to parents (using my parenting studies, social work type skills, often using my health knowledge),
3. review and amend plans for the day (understanding the principles of practice, project management),
4. arrange for play experiences and daily life experiences at the level needed for each child, that is led by their growing interests and understandings (using my child development knowledge, Reggio knowledge, Early Years Learning Framework knowledge),
5. allocate and support staff ( HR knowledge, coaching and mentoring skills, how to solve issues),
6. monitor and support learning (pedagogical understanding and practice knowledge),
7. support behaviours (early childhood development knowledge, resilience training, self-regulation systems knowledge, trauma knowledge)
8. support child and parent health, safety, child protection, nutrition, movement, psychology (knowledge in all of these areas),
9. analyse learning that happened during the day (pedagogical theory, Learning Frameworks knowledge, National Quality Standards knowledge, policy implementation knowledge, professional teams processes),
10. and sometimes, I get lunch.

So, what is the one element that must be considered above all others – by those working on a solution for the future of early childhood? According to Educators… a deep knowledge of what they do, why they do it, and what they want in return for it. Otherwise any work in this area will not provide the right solutions, and we will be right back at the beginning again.

Why is this so important?

Educators need a career structure. A recognised career structure will attract Educators, hold up Educators, protect their identity as Educators, and grow Educators to be great Educators. Otherwise – why should we stay? Why would we stay?

‘E’ Educator 1 year.

What is in a Career Structure?

Can we afford it?

Concern that any increase in Educator employment costs flowing on directly to parents has applied an active brake on any action in this policy area. This brake is applied at government level as well as through the sector owners, as well as in Centres with Educators who have been afraid to ask for more, lest it negatively impact on ‘their’ parents – yet one of the largest parent organisations in the country is an active campaigner for an professionalisation of the sector and increasing Educator remuneration:

“The women and men who teach young children in early childhood education are some of this country’s most dedicated professionals. But right now, educators are paid as little as $22 an hour.

We should pay early childhood educators a professional wage, one that reflects their skills, dedication and the role they play in nurturing and teaching our youngest minds”.[2]

Educators deserve a pay rise (theparenthood.org.au)

Indeed it is often cited that professional recognition and pay increases for Educators will be immediately and irrevocably be passed on to parents. There is a direct line of sight from this thinking to media stories on the impact of Australia’s high education and care fees. Australian childcare costs outstrip increase in government subsidy | Childcare Australia | The Guardian [3] This thinking assumes that there is only one way that education and care can ever and will ever be funded. We know that this is not true – we know what is possible – look at Education.

Is it really possible to make this change in what is an incredibly complex system? From policy and governance perspectives, concern about the potential impact of any increase in employment costs of Educators also comes from the view that the system of funding education and care is so complex that it cannot be changed. We know that this is not true. 2020 provided us with the evidence that substantial change can happen. Coronavirus response-Free child care – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au) [4]

Summary

Next week: How we will finally move forward.

References:

1 3 Early childhood education and care – Report on Government Services Productivity Commission (pc.gov.au)

2 The Parenthood The Parenthood is a movement of 68,000 parents, carers and supporters working together to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

3. Media article 2020: The Guardian Newspaper. Australian childcare costs

4. Parliamentary Library Paper: Australian Parliament 2020: Arrangements for free child care.