Professional Development in a Competent System: An Emergent Culture of Professionalization

Florence Pirard (1) , Pascale Camus (2, 1) , Jean-Marie Barbier (3)

1 Université de Liège
2 EXPERICE - Centre de recherche interuniversitaire, Expérience, Ressources Culturelles, Education
3 FoAP - Formation et apprentissages professionnels

Workforce quality and professionalization in the field of early childhood education are widely considered to be a powerful lever in improving the quality of childcare services. This emphasis demonstrates the necessity of increasing the level of practitioner qualification across the sector and to revise both professional profiles and training curriculum in response to the complex demands of professional activity. Nowadays workspace is recognized as a potential learning space where individual, institutional, inter-institutional and political actions interact. This approach to professionalization is grounded in a theoretical and systemic view that recognizes different levels of responsibility in the development of professional and quality services. This paper presents different educational cultures observed today in the variety of training and professional actions in the Western World. It shows that changes in early childhood education could be understood as a signifier of the emergence of a new culture of professionalization where actions, actors, and environment undergo change simultaneously.

Keywords: Professionalization; Competent system; Action cultures; Accompaniment; Quality

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences

Florence Pirard, Pascale Camus, Jean-Marie Barbier. Professional Development in a Competent System: An Emergent Culture of Professionalization. Marilyn Fleer; Bert van Oers. International Handbook of Early Childhood Education, Springer Netherlands, pp.409-426, 2018, Springer International Handbooks of Education, ⟨10.1007/978-94-024-0927-7_17⟩. ⟨hal-04030471⟩