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Early YearsAn International Research Journal

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Revisioning professionalism from the periphery

Jennifer Skattebol, Elizabeth Adamson & Christine Woodrow

To cite this article: Jennifer Skattebol, Elizabeth Adamson & Christine Woodrow(2016): Revisioning professionalism from the periphery, Early Years, DOI:10.1080/09575146.2015.1121975

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2015.1121975

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Early yEars, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2015.1121975

Revisioning professionalism from the periphery

Jennifer Skattebola, Elizabeth Adamsona and Christine Woodrowb

asocial Policy research Centre, University of New south Wales, sydney, australia; bCentre for Educational research, Western sydney University, sydney, australia

Introduction

The issue of who should be included and recognised as professionals in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) service system is both contested and pressing in the current cli-mate of expansion and contraction of government investments. This neoliberal environment is characterised by competitive processes for services to access funding, which often set clear boundaries between who is ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the ECEC sector. As ECEC is of increasing interest to government, debates about professional identity have been more intensively framed around notions of rationality, that are central to credentials and regulation, and notions of emotionality in how professionals describe their own practices. To a large degree, the framing of these debates reflects the education and care dichotomy that has long plagued ECEC struggles for professional recognition.

While there is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally about the con-struction of professionalism in ECEC, debates about professionalism have not extended beyond mainstream centre based services to include non-mainstream services (such as

ABSTRACTThe issue of who should be included and recognised as professionals in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) service system is both contested and pressing in the current policy climate. At stake is a high-quality early childhood care and education service system that is both responsive and appropriate to the constituency it serves. A review of the history of ECEC professionalism reveals complex entanglements and debates regarding professional belonging. Services that deliver education and care to children and families living in high poverty contexts are often excluded from ECEC professionalism debates. Drawing on notions of rationality, emotionality and criticality presented in recent accounts of ECEC professionalism, we use data collected from interviews with service providers delivering services to children and families living in high poverty contexts in Australia to develop an account of criticality that is pertinent to current funding and policy contexts. We argue that these service providers’ perspectives about their own professionalism have much to offer broader debates.

© 2016 TaCTyC

KEYWORDSEarly childhood professionalism; professional identity; service delivery; low-income families; australia

ARTICLE HISTORYreceived 24 July 2015 accepted 16 November 2015

CONTACT Jennifer skattebol j.skattebol@unsw.edu.au

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mobile services, playgroups and other intervention services). Centre-based or mainstream ECEC settings are only one component of a complex system. The families least likely to use mainstream services before school are those in high poverty contexts (brennan 2012) and mainstream services do not tend to prioritise providing accessible entry points for vulner-able families. Accounts of professionalism from this part of the sector are important in the consideration of the skills and dispositions needed in the sector as a whole. These accounts are not always so exclusively steeped in frames of rationality and emotionality and may bring other dimensions of professional practice to the fore.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it aims to give voice and exposure to the experiences of those who work with families living in contexts of high poverty. These fam-ilies and those who work with them are frequently located on the periphery, sometimes geographically but always economically, socially and politically. Secondly, we ask what these perspectives might offer to broader debates about the nature of professionalism and professional identity. We explore these questions through data collected from service pro-viders who deliver education and care services to communities in high poverty contexts. We are using an inclusive definition of ECEC services and hereafter refer to all services that deliver education and care to young children – whether or not they are centre based or fall under the regulatory guidelines. At a time when professional identities are increasingly narrowed through regulatory regimes and economic pressures, the experiences of those at the periphery of service systems potentially offer insights into different, alternative hybrid forms of professionalism that have emerged under the pressures of being under resourced and sometimes beyond the regulation and quality improvement frameworks which shape centre-based ECEC.

Trajectories of debates about professional identity in early childhood

The way we define professionalism requires a robust account of the repertoire of professional skills needed to ensure adequate professional preparation, decent working conditions and ongoing professional learning opportunities for a healthy and capable workforce. A study of the history of ECEC professionalism reveals a problematic trajectory marked by struggle – the struggle for recognition of the professional character of the work, the struggle for wage ‘justice’ – pay and conditions that reflect the importance of caring for children and the complex nature of the work – and the struggle for parity with other sections of the education profession. Its history also reveals complex entanglements regarding professional belonging, marked by hierarchies, alienation and marginalisation of certain sectors of the profession – from both within and without.

From our reading of this history, there are three inter-related themes salient to the accounts of professionalism we draw from in our empirical work. Two of these themes, a dichotomy between care and education and the persistent tension between rationality and emotionality, are inter-related and have been quite well rehearsed in the literature in various ways (Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999; Dalli and Urban 2013; Fasoli, Scrivens, and Woodrow 2007; Fenech, Sumsion, and Goodfellow 2006; Moyles 2001; Moss 2006; osgood 2006, 2010, 2012; Woodrow 2008). They derive, at least in part from the historical positioning of ECEC within feminised discourses.

The third theme of periphery, whilst contiguous with the first two, has received less atten-tion in the literature and is understood multi-dimensionally in this paper. In the first instance,

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accounts of the construction of ECEC tend to highlight ECEC’s location ‘on the margins’, its peripheral relationship to mainstream education, with poor professional recognition and remuneration (see McGillivray 2008; Woodrow 2008). However, ECEC’s peripheral position at the edge of the formal education sector has also generated divisiveness within the field as different subsectors within it struggle for professional recognition. Some subsectors, for example preschool services, have historically benefitted from credentialing through teacher standards and registration, and therefore enjoyed greater professional recognition than oth-ers. This has given rise to a hierarchy between preschool and long day care services which has been entrenched through an education and care dichotomy (osgood 2012; Woodrow 2008). In one sense, preschool teachers have functioned (perhaps unwittingly) as gatekeep-ers of the profession in ways that excluded other workers from that professional recognition (this notion is evident in the debates around family day care in Australia; see Cook et al. 2013; lyons 2012; Saggers et al. 1994). In this way, struggles for professional recognition in the ‘peripheral field of ECEC’ have created peripheral service communities because these struggles themselves have invoked professional exclusions.

Programmes that cater to families in high poverty contexts who do not use formal cen-tre-based services might be seen as doubly ‘peripheral’ because of the constituency – families in high poverty contexts – and also because of the sometimes unregulated nature of the programme types. We argue that this periphery offers alternate articulations of profession-alism that exceed current ECEC conceptualisations and so have an important contribution to make to the debate. These alternate articulations provide a specialised and, we argue, significantly different perspective in professionalism debates.

While there is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally about the con-struction of professionalism in ECEC, studies are more commonly focussed on mainstream childcare and preschool programmes. Questions of what constitutes ECEC professionalism have rarely been considered in the context of working in services for low-income and vulner-able children (Grover 2004; Moore 2012). They have not been extended to services that offer ‘soft entry points’ for children and families who face barriers to use mainstream services. The neoliberal trend toward a marketised landscape (bauman 2013; Newbury and brennan 2013; Woodrow 2008) requires service providers to be entrepreneurial and creative in accessing the resources needed to deliver effective services. The challenges of this are exacerbated for workers in high poverty contexts because of their problematic location as peripheral to the mainstream and the paucity of resources available to them.

by assembling these inter-related themes about early childhood professionalism/identity, we are able to frame some of the claims made about the professional skills needed by early childhood practitioners in high poverty contexts. These claims expand how we think about the repertoire of skills and knowledge that are involved in professional practice. In the next section, we discuss the dichotomies relating to education and care that are prevalent in the literature. We then turn to some of the literature which pushes the limits of these dichotomies and introduces a notion of criticality as an important lens for understanding professional practice. This is followed by an outline of our study which involved service providers in high poverty contexts articulating their professional practice. After considering what these perspectives offer to the debate about professionalism, the paper concludes with some reflections about how the conditions on the periphery might be a harbinger for professional practice everywhere and what this might mean for the preparation and development of effective ECEC professionals.

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Frames for understanding professionalism: rationality, emotionality and criticality

Whilst the construction of early childhood workers as professionals (or not) has changed considerably since the mid-twentieth century, many of the dominant discourses remain. Much discussion of professionalism has revolved around a so-called dichotomy between care and education, where care speaks to the dispositions and behaviours traditionally associated with being female and located in the domestic sphere, and education is asso-ciated with the more codified practices of schooling and curriculum in the public sphere. In the 1950s, women working in ECEC were chosen for their personal and practical expe-riences of mothering of young children. In contrast, a perceptible policy shift toward a focus on children’s education has been evident both in Australia and internationally. This has strengthened claims for professional recognition on the grounds that ‘working with preschool children should have as much status as a profession as teaching children in schools’ (McGillivray 2008, 249).

This shift has been partly mobilised and supported by the acceleration of mandated credentialing and quality assurance systems whereby teacher accreditation and degree qualifications are used to define professionalism (Fenech, Sumsion, and Goodfellow 2006; Sumsion, Shepherd, and Fenech 2010; Woodrow 2008). Global trends to professionalise ECEC were partially inaugurated through the oECD’s (organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2006) recognition of the importance of the years preceding formal school-ing. The growth of an audit culture and the accompanying discourses of universality and accountability have added weight to these hegemonic framings. To ‘be professional’ implies compliance with defined standards and credentialing requirements, the demonstration of ‘authorised’ specialist knowledge and the capacity to act on this knowledge autonomously and dispassionately.

A number of writers develop a powerful analysis of the implications of this regulatory culture for ECEC. A key theme in this literature is that this audit culture narrows what is offi-cially spoken about and recognised as professional practice but that these definitions often fall short of how early childhood educators (ECEs) conduct their work. Fenech, Sumsion, and Goodfellow (2006) found that regulation is akin to a double-edged sword: on the one hand it confers legitimacy, but on the other hand it restricts the capacity of educators to practise their sets of knowledge and wisdom. Arguments that ECEs adapt their own professional identities to match policy settings (Harwood et al. 2012) sit alongside evidence that ECEs have ‘to reconcile the necessarily emotional and affective aspects of early childhood practice’ (osgood 2010, 126). Together they attest to professional practice that juggles competing imperatives. These imperatives have different kinds of social power. The technical require-ments of the policy context emphasised through accreditation processes and regulatory approaches downplay the affective and emotional labour involved in educating other peo-ple’s children; nevertheless practitioners are in direct and daily relationships with children and their families.

osgood (2010) argues that the realities of ECEC work are imbued with affect and emo-tionality. She showcases how practitioner accounts of their own practice often privilege affective, emotional discourse and shows how ‘participants placed a degree of higher impor-tance on acting in caring loving and compassionate’ ways (127). osgood (2010) thus argues for a possible reconstruction of professionalism that could see ‘emotionality reclaimed as vital and credible in ECEC practice’ (130). This focus on the significance of emotionality in

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professional practice resonates with a substantial body of literature which has established that an emotional investment is integral to ECEC practice because the work involves strong feelings towards children, a child’s family, the wider community and support and care for colleagues (Dahlberg and Moss 2005). However, in her own analysis of empirical data, osgood also identifies the need for critical thinking as an important aspect of professional practice. She found evidence that practitioners expressed the need for a critical capacity alongside these emotionally oriented skills – articulated in her coding as self/reflexive/crit-ical, non-judgemental and fair and collegial and labelled as ‘criticality’ (osgood 2010, 127).

Moyles’s (2001) interrogative work about ECEC professionalism furthers how we might consider rational and emotional skills and dispositions within ECEC practice. Her work teases out the need for emotionality to be underpinned by a more critical understanding of the field and the political and economic conditions of ECEC work. Moyles argues against discourses about professionalism that elevate passion, contending that these often use emotive and emotional language to symbolise the deep commitment and engagement ‘vital to the role practitioners fill’ (Moyles 2001, 82). This, she argues, often accompanies a lack of appropriate conceptual language that nuances how and when passion contributes to professional prac-tice. Commitments to children can then become entangled with historical discourses that position ECEC as feminised intuitive work and that have the effect of pushing imperatives to respond to immediate relationships ahead of broader political perspectives and goals. An example of this might be the reluctance of ECEC workers to strike because they want to fulfil their role in enabling families to meet their work obligations rather than seeking the conditions that support a stronger workforce. Moyles’s work offers a lens which contributes to the development of a nuanced understanding of emotionality and begins to point to the need for an equally nuanced account of criticality.

Australian academics have also contributed tools that sharpen how we think about criticality. In particular, Fasoli, Scrivens, and Woodrow (2007) propose the concept of sus-tainable professionalism, which comprises a number of elements that emphasise profes-sionals as agents or facilitators of change. Most relevant to this paper is the element of ethical entrepreneurship, which, as the authors explain, ‘starts with a belief in social justice, making a difference and taking some action that contributes in a strategic way to the wellbeing of children, families, community and colleagues’ (244). The frames described above help flesh out the underdeveloped notion of criticality and are, we argue, central elements in the professional practices and knowledge required by services working in high poverty contexts. We argue that the precarious nature of programmes and their funding in high poverty contexts complicates practitioners’ engagements with political landscapes and intensifies the need to be ‘entrepreneurial’. Interactions with families raising children in precarious circumstances and the tenuous and short-term nature of funding support develops the political awareness of practitioners and strengthens their capacity for ethical entrepreneurship.

Arguing for the necessity for a stronger conceptual framework within which ECEs might engage with dominant policy discourses around ECEC, Sumsion (2006) invokes distinctions between advocacy and activism, policy and politics to signpost professional identities which incorporate political activism. This encourages educators to go beyond the frame of the status quo to question the political assumptions which frame policy and to make active challenges to entrenched frames of references and ‘the power bases that support them' (3).

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Method

The study aimed to understand how low-income parents make decisions about paid work and the use of ECEC services. It used mixed methods to develop a contextualised under-standing of how and why parents negotiate local child care markets and/or choose informal care. The qualitative component of the study involved semi-structured interviews in six sites across four Australian states selected through mapping of demographic and neighbourhood characteristics including ethnic background, whether there was a child with a disability in the family, intergenerational households and single-parent households. The research project was reviewed and approved by the University of New South Wales’ Human research Ethics Committee. Service providers working in high poverty contexts were approached through professional networks. We snowballed out to (and through) families from these contacts. All data from families and service providers have been de-identified to ensure participants’ confidentiality.

The large majority of the interviews were with parents (mostly mothers), however the research team also interviewed service providers and other key informants at each site to better understand the network of services and support available for families. The mix of sites and interviews undertaken is illustrated in Table 1.

The data from the interviews with service providers contributed to our knowledge of the complex and dynamic ECEC space in which these providers operate. They were asked about local up-to-date knowledge on neighbourhood resources, the ECEC system and the socio-economic makeup of the community. The interviews encouraged service providers to describe their roles and what underpinned professional practices. We draw on this data to identify examples of key knowledge and skill sets that are required to work with low-income and other vulnerable children and families.

our sample was not limited to those who had ECEC teacher qualifications but included those who had lower level certificates or other qualifications (for example a social work degree). We contend that as these practitioners are delivering ECEC to children they have valid perspectives on the skill sets and dispositions required in this ECEC field. Importantly, these service providers were often excluded from policy initiatives and funding opportuni-ties designed to benefit ECEC professionals because they were not working in mainstream services and centres.

Findings: articulating professionalism from the periphery

In this section, we separate the competencies described by service providers in interviews into three main themes: rationality, emotionality and criticality, arguing that the latter – criticality – is underplayed in current debates about professionalism. This is the dominant

Table 1. summary of fieldwork interviews.

State location Fieldwork timing No. of family interviews No. of service provider interviewsNSW Inner metro sep–Nov 2011 18 1 VIC Inner metro Nov 2012 28 3VIC Outer metro Mar 2012 23 3SA Outer metro Nov 2012 12 3QLD regional May 2012 31 2NSW regional Oct 2012 10 8Total number of interviews 132 20

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central theme about professionalism offered by educators in high poverty contexts and refers to skills involved in addressing barriers that prevent service and programme take-up.

Rationality: a priori and beyond

In the previous section, we outlined literature that critiques rationalist frames of profession-alism as enshrined in regulation and standards, maintaining that it falls short of what is both required and enacted in the field. The audit culture described by Moss (2006), osgood (2010) and Fenech et al. (2006) was not as intrusive on our informants working in peripheral services as has been reported by those in ‘mainstream settings’. Some practitioners delivered the same kinds of services as their counterparts in mainstream settings but the funding arrangements and formal status of their programmes located them beyond regulatory frameworks. one service received funding for a transition to school programme and employed a teacher and a teacher’s aide. The programme type and the authority or status of the programme were described as beyond the auspices of regulation:

Interviewer: Was that like a transition, or was that a preschool?

Interviewee: It wasn’t a preschool because they weren’t allowed to call it that … no regulations and that but it was pretty much a preschool. They did preschool stuff. (rural service provider)

While all service providers acknowledged that families were looking for opportunities for their children to learn the requisite knowledge and skills to do well in school, they also consistently argued that they required extensive skills for engaging families long before opportunities for pedagogical interactions arose. Many believed they needed skills that exceeded those taught in teacher education courses and described these skills as coming from ‘life experiences’ with one form or another of adverse conditions (rural Service Provider). Most indicated they had made successful inroads in addressing the complex challenges facing families in adverse conditions first before they could use (the rationalist) skills and competencies validated in regulatory and quality frameworks. one service provider who worked from a community development model shared a story about employing a parent on account of her exceptional skills in forming relationships with families who faced complex challenges. yet she quickly realised these skills alone were not enough and some of the more traditional authorised ECEC skills were needed.

We had given her the job without the training and then I started to realise that even if you have the knowledge of how to manage complex issues, you can’t actually do it without some knowledge of child development … you need the training. (Supported Playgroup Facilitator)

So what is it in the training that you need?This is going to sound really traditional, but you need to learn about child development, not as a one size fits all because there are all kinds of cultural differences …, but I still think you need to focus your attention on children, and, what children want and need. I think the exploration of play …

What is perhaps most interesting in this account is the almost apologetic stance taken towards child development and pedagogy – ‘this sounds really traditional but …’. The impli-cation here is that the traditional has little to offer professional practices in high poverty contexts because it is not fused with sufficient understanding of the conditions of people’s lives. However, it is important for this discussion on professionalism to acknowledge that skills which fall under the rubric of rationalist skills were part of the skill set that practitioners

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nominated as important in their work – not least because pedagogical skills and content can equip children to have a better start in school.

Emotionality: paradox and potential

Practitioners referred to the range of skills that underpinned their ability to share pedagogy and content in ways that align with the notion of emotionality. This dimension of practice – a deep, sound and emotional commitment to children – has been traced through the litera-ture on professionalism and well elaborated by Moyles (2001) and osgood (2010). Moyles (2001, 82) points out that the emotion necessary for building the relationships that lie at the centre of effective early years practice also has the capacity to restrict ‘early years practice to a low-level operation in which children receive care but which negates or rejects educa-tion’. osgood’s (2010) reference to the praxis of emotionality demonstrates how emotional dimensions of practice are caught up and constrained by audit culture and in spite of these constraints, or perhaps because of them, are imbued with reflexivity and criticality. These writers reclaim emotion as a vital and credible (but not unproblematic or uncontested) component of ECEC professional practice.

Practitioners from the study described the need to be caring, compassionate and non-judgemental, as well as being willing to go beyond their job responsibilities and pro-gramme mandates. The emotions necessary for building relationships were often front and centre in accounts of effective practice. Many described complex processes of interacting with families and the necessity of reading emotional cues. These skills helped them to deliver information to families in the most effective ways. one practitioner in an integrated child and family service highlighted the importance of reading emotional cues:

We don’t push parents towards the other stuff (preschool curriculum) but when we see people are ready and looking for more (educational information) then we offer the information.

Affective and emotional skills allowed them to deliver education (parent education) within a culture of care and carefulness. Establishing trust with families was discussed as a cen-trepoint of practice and as difficult emotional work. Practitioners valued their capacities to be emotionally present and responsive in their work with families. Some likened these interactions to counselling:

We were finding that the staff were actually doing quite a lot of counselling of parents. So a lot of time was spent talking to parents and, you know, assisting with issues that would come up, and as parents sort of gained the trust of the staff, they would start to sort of talk more about their families, and then the opportunity came for referral and more other support (Coordinator, ECEC Provider).

Some interviewees were more inclined to call such interactions ‘conversations’.These accounts of professionalism diverged from the accounts of emotion in research

scoped by Moyles (2001) where practitioners discussed the joy of being close to children and their love for children and their families. While passion remained an element, interview-ees consistently indicated their interactions with families encompassed not only emotional engagement but also critical understandings about the material and socio-historical contexts of children’s family life. In the practitioner accounts in our study, claims about the role of emo-tion in building relationships were invariably embedded in the need to understand the political and economic contexts of the families they served. In this sense, the emotional dimensions of professional practice described by our participants required reflexivity that was sharply focussed on the sociological and political forces that played out in the lives of the families.

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Criticality: political contexts of everyday life and professional practice

Providers consistently highlighted their ability to use their emotional skills in critically reflec-tive and politically aware ways. osgood (2010) notes that practitioners in her study valued professional training which provided ‘scope for reflexivity’. The practitioners in our study were often explicit that their reflexive practices were necessarily informed by political con-sciousness and activity because their everyday work with families meant addressing issues of social exclusion and deprivation. They described situations where they were required to respond to the families’ socio-historical contexts and adapt their practices. This required building trust to find out about these contexts and to respond in emotionally and politically effective ways.

Practitioners underscored the importance of understanding the durational and fluid features of people’s material and socio-historical contexts. Planning for the education of children began long before any planning of curriculum ‘content’ because getting children into settings required so much professional skill. Effective practices in these contexts required practitioners to understand the compounding and confounding effects of poverty in people’s lives and to have capacity to respond to pressing and often complex children’s and family needs. Many of the challenges they faced required emotional skills (for example, building trust with adults who had lost trust in the system), however challenges were sometimes quite practical and material. one provider explained the complexity of enrolling children who had no administrative records because their births were not registered. Practitioners then needed to help families navigate to other agencies to meet these basic requirements before they could use educational services.

Alongside keeping an eye on the enduring effects of social exclusion and intergenera-tional disadvantage, service providers had to develop work practices that could respond to enormous demographic diversity and fluidity of cultural and social practices. Many of our informants were working in neighbourhoods characterised by superdiversity. The emergence of superdiversity in many industrialised countries has led to unprecedented population complexity with associated challenges for delivering social welfare (Vertovec 2007). Service providers explained the need to develop soft entry points that aligned to a plethora of child rearing values and beliefs. This often meant working with marginalised groups to identify value-orientated goals around education and learning. one practitioner explained the chal-lenges of such diversity and drew our attention to the power relations that circulate across the dynamics within families and between families and service providers. He described the challenges of working with hybrid identities and used the example of a young Samoan man, recently separated, who wanted to be a ‘better father’ and was looking for ways to support his daughter to get a head start in education:

you tell me how I convince a Samoan dad who’s got extended family on top of extended family, who’d probably take it as an insult that his daughter goes to child care when they can’t [– she can’t] come and stay with the aunties. So those conversations around the value of going to a good child care centre with a structured program, they don’t take two minutes. because then you’ve got to take all the information back to the aunties who are going to kick his arse and not talk to him for three weeks. (Supported Playgroup Coordinator)

Here, attending to the power dynamics within the family was critical to the success of engaging with the father. Social practices within this, and indeed all families, were shaped by relationships embedded in flows of gendered and cultural power. When families take up services of one kind or another, new forms of social practice are introduced into the family.

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Some service providers spoke of the need to consider how ‘interventions’ stabilised or some-times destabilised important protective factors that operate in families and communities. Working at these intersections1 is particularly complex in contexts of superdiversity where little can be assumed about the social practices in any particular family.

Building trust from situated knowledge

Family needs ranged from structural and material constraints, including having no food, transport or housing, to management of complex intra-familial tensions. building trust meant working with the ghosts of parents’ own educational experiences. Families in inter-generational poverty have often had generations who have been socially excluded, which makes schooling engagement and success difficult. Families do not always operate within the institutional norms that services rely on and practitioners had to build positive relation-ships that reflected empathy and understanding of these cumulative effects of small and large exclusions:

They’ll think that they’ll be judged. That’s part of it. I think that, especially if there’s drug use or if they’ve got fear, fear will hold a lot of them back. Fear that they’re going to be [judged] because you’ve slept in, got there a bit late, you know. you’ve got to be really – I think to be really successful in an area where there is vulnerable or complex families, you have to be really flexible at the beginning. once things get going and they know the rules, then you can actually start saying, hey, look, you know. but there’s ways of doing it. (Supported Playgroup Coordinator)

Experiences of social exclusion loom large for families in poverty (Skattebol 2015; Smyth and Wrigley 2013). Parents who have experienced the bite of social exclusion and stigmatisation need reassurance about (and from) the services their children receive. Socially exclusive attitudes come from families using services as well as from service providers. Families in the study often drew our attention to small everyday acts that contributed to their sense of being socially excluded: nebulous feelings of not being welcome – being left with no physical space on playground seating or along fence lines, being expected to fit immediately into an established social dynamic, being looked at up and down, being made to wait longer than was perceived as polite, having their children’s skills overlooked, finding themselves in situations where they felt their children’s capabilities were compared in competitive ways (see Skattebol et al. 2014). These small acts can accumulate and compound disadvantage.

Sally, a practitioner in a community development role, ran parent information groups to orient parents in a socio-economically mixed community to young children’s learning along-side a playgroup. Sally shared a story which highlights the interplay of her technical skills, ‘carefully executed forms of emotional labour’ (osgood 2010, 128) and critical knowledge about life in high poverty contexts:

There was a woman that used to come [to the group] and her child really loved it, really, really loved it. but again, so many problems – a really awful history of DV.2 The husband wasn’t around anymore – just a lot of issues to deal with. So it’s that whole thing about feeling – it doesn’t take long for someone to walk into a room and know whether they fit in or not, even if your child clearly fits in and your child has lots and lots of friends there. Then you [the parent] have got all these other issues going on. yes, so in the end you find excuses and things not to go.

Sally stated that she and her co-worker had decided that the best way to keep the woman and her child included was to involve the mother in ways that drew on and highlighted her skills, which Sally described as practical (rather than institutional or social) skills.

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We worked really hard to get her involved. Not just to come along but to actually get her involved – there [were] various tasks that needed doing.

Sally had a deep understanding of the mother’s context and had to draw on affective and emotional skills to enable this parent to be part of the group. This required both the capacity to forge an emotional connection and emotional management/performance. She prioritised the outcomes of connecting with this particular parent over other task-oriented outcomes for the group. She focussed on facilitating positive relationships between the parent and others in the group through enabling the woman’s practical organisational skills (shopping, catering and setting up environments) to be used and most importantly seen by the other parents. rather than working through the meeting agendas (to meet the programme’s key Performance Indicators), Sally pulled back (‘bit her tongue’) and allowed the meetings to go awry in order to encourage the parent to contribute in spite of her limited capacity to follow typical meeting ‘procedures’. She described her brain flying around to read the emotional states of everyone in the group, so she could manage everyone’s emotional needs so this particular parent felt included. Her own personal/professional tendency was to run meetings in an efficient and task-oriented way. Here, she made a professional decision to run against her own grain so she could respond to the woman’s situation. She worked to recalibrate any sense the woman had about not fitting in by ensuring meeting processes enabled this woman to participate and contribute. Sally saw this awareness, and the agility to respond to the experiences of people who have been socially excluded, as necessary components of professionalism.

Sally’s account of professionalism involved more than emotional engagement, reflexivity and management. Her account helps flesh out what might be described as the criticality necessary for work in high poverty contexts. We can see from her example how criticality requires emotional intelligence and skill but also exceeds emotional capacity and manage-ment. Sally highlighted the need for politically mediated forms of emotional expression and/or action in order to manage the complex socio-emotional dynamics of communities.

Navigating fluid funding and service landscapes

A critical understanding of the service landscape was also required. Practitioners consist-ently underscored the holistic and durational service needs of families. They articulated the need to help families to navigate and negotiate service packages that suited their needs. Practitioners and managers indicated that they worked actively against service fragmen-tation and balkanism – a term which describes how services are constructed in isolation from each to other, and the tendency to see problems as things that should be solved by x, y or z service independent of co-ordination or co-operation with other programmes. one service worker explained, ‘What we do is just link everyone – like we’re a triage’. Families in the study were commonly connected to various targeted services and providers looked for ways to provide pathways to mainstream services. For example, one practitioner noted that families attending her supported playgroup were connected to other services, such as child health nurses or the government department responsible for child protection, so their goals for most of these families was ‘just to make it a fun morning…[and] not to be any more intrusive’ (Supported Playgroup Provider). When these needs changed they were able to direct families to the next support source with the goal that parents felt comfortable with mainstream services. This example of professional practice is supported by Fasoli, Scrivens,

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and Woodrow (2007) concept of sustainable professionalism, which focuses on professionals as facilitators, rather than experts.

one of the features of high poverty contexts is they are often targeted with an array of interventions (many of which last only one funding cycle). one supported playgroup facili-tator noted, that in his area you could ‘shake any tree and five social workers will fall out’. The service providers’ knowledge of the service landscape ranged from their immediate setting, the workings of allied services within and beyond ECEC, the governance and financing of their own and allied services and, perhaps most importantly, knowledge of programme duration and the capacity to predict new funding sources. The innovative and resourceful approaches adopted by service providers were underpinned by their ability to work together across sites and service areas.

The capacity to anticipate policy changes and the format of resources which would soon become available was critical within the current flux of policy changes and pockets of fund-ing. Some services we spoke to were working outside the regulations of mainstream ECEC services (e.g. mobile services, early intervention programmes and playgroups), yet they were also very much engaged with the quality frameworks and took initiatives to remain con-nected to the regulated service sector. Some felt it was only a matter of time before their service types would be included in the regulatory systems.

Some practitioners indicated that they did not always have the funding necessary to set up and continue services, but they had to take risks in anticipation that new funding grants would be available to apply for.

It was pretty scary actually. We went out on a limb to do that, but we were very fortunate that we knew that the PIrP [Preschool Investment and reform Plan] was coming and we were successful in gaining funding through that for early start. Which sort of established that whole program, and then we also had additional funding to increase the size of the service […] and to purchase a bus for transport, specifically for children from families that didn’t have cars or weren’t able to access services because of lack of transport. (Coordinator rural ECEC Service)

In another site, the service providers were less optimistic and expressed their worries about state funding changes and what this might mean for their services:

… it’s a huge playgroup. It used to be run by [XXXX] but it was taken over, it was made sustain-able. Apparently they have a huge number of families coming to that one. The State budget is coming today and we’re very worried about certain programmes that are being run in our area … (Supported Playgroup Coordinator)

In both these examples, the service providers illustrated their knowledge of the service system – not only must they be skilled in working on the ground with children and families; they also need to have this broader knowledge to help them deliver effective services to families. The examples described above resonate with Fasoli, Scrivens, and Woodrow’s (2007) notion of ethical entrepreneurism and the ability to navigate and respond to public funding opportunities and constraints.

Capacity to be interpretive with guidelines and policies

Many practitioners described the high levels of professional judgement required to sup-port families within the context of shortfalls of regulations, quality frameworks and service guidelines as tools that helped them to navigate the field with and on behalf of families. They were ‘interpretative’ with guidelines and policies so they could act in the interests of families.

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like the educators in Fenech, Sumsion and Goodfellow’s study (2006), many interview-ees indicated that they needed to think well beyond regulations and quality frameworks in formulating what high-quality practices looked like. one director of a centre-based service that specialised in outreach to families in high poverty contexts noted:

We’ve just had the National Quality Framework come in. We had our assessment visit at the end of last year. The way that we’ve looked at policies and the Framework is different. (Council ECEC provider)

Alongside seeing things differently in terms of how they might prioritise official aspects of quality, many also worked with targeted programme funding in order to deliver extra forms of support that delivered the necessary (unofficial) aspects of quality to their families. These buckets of funding were frequently tied in ways that did not reflect the everyday needs of the families they served and service providers often worked creatively with guidelines and regulations to develop innovative supports:

So it may be that the parent needs to be connected with similar people in the community and to do that we need to provide a playgroup or something similar to assist the child as well as mainstream services. (Early Intervention Service Provider)

Many of these practitioners worked closely with families to shape the services delivered. one consulted extensively to develop a supported playgroup for a group of culturally mar-ginalised parents. The practitioner noted:

We just said, no, let’s just kick this off and run this ourselves. Use the skills within the group because there were quite a lot of ideas about who we could bring in and recruiting … expert volunteers and all sorts of things. (Coordinator School/ECEC partnership program)

Service providers worked in imaginative ways to keep families connected through ‘soft entry’ points and perhaps what might be best described as elastic pathways. It was often through these informal events and groups that families talked to other families and became con-nected to new services at the periphery and in the mainstream. one example below illus-trates how services provided an open door to their service as a way to keep families engaged.

So we’ll say to them we don’t need to catch up any more but if the wheels fall off you know where we are, but I’m going to invite you to our barbeques, our parenting programmes, our swimming nights, our soccer programs, and we do. (Supported Playgroup Coordinator)

We concur with the service providers in our study that high-quality service provision means supporting families to navigate complex service landscapes as well as providing responsive, non-stigmatising services.

Conclusion

overall, the practitioners in our study were highly skilled in their work with families in high poverty contexts and shared examples of practice that illustrated the importance of the interplay between rationality, emotionality and criticality. Practitioners indicated that the rationalist knowledge and skills recognised in regulatory and quality frameworks had a place in their work but that they needed to draw on other knowledge and skills before they could activate these skills. Emotional competency played a significant role in their accounts of practice but again they indicated that specialised knowledge about the political contexts of people’s lives and service landscapes was required to mediate these competencies. They described a critical emotionality built on deep understandings of how living in high poverty

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contexts generates continuous crisis and erodes people’s personal, social and institutional confidence. They flagged that politically mediated forms of emotional expression and/or action are necessary for managing the complex socio-emotional dynamics that often accom-pany under-resourcing. Furthermore, they insisted that delivering empowering education required knowledge of the socio-historical context of each child and family to ensure that teaching and practice was responsive to political and social positioning.

These practitioners stated that they needed to be agile and savvy to navigate a funding environment characterised by a short audit and roll out cycle. Working in high poverty contexts required practitioners to be alert to continual changes in funding and service land-scapes and to change the form of services while maintaining and developing their skills in working with their constituents. The rapidly changing nature of the service landscape required practitioners to have deep knowledge and commitment to the means which would achieve the end of keeping families connected and providing pathways to, and confidence in, mainstream services. Their accounts of their own critical stances towards the forms of professionalism circumscribed by regulatory mechanisms exceeded those described in other research (Moyles 2001; osgood 2010). They described the need for navigational skills which would equip them to gather resources in the neoliberal quasi market system (with its ‘pop-up’ early intervention funding buckets). In short, they need to be ethical entrepreneurs (Fasoli, Scrivens, and Woodrow 2007). The knowledge of educational contexts, funding and govern-ance structures is perhaps very much a twenty-first century skill which will be increasingly required of professionals as these structures rapidly change and dissolve.

The skills and knowledge described above have not been part of debates about early childhood professionalism and recognition of status in the early childhood sector, which have tended to focus on the education/care dichotomy. The contested and often narrow views about what constitutes professionalism in ECEC form an inadequate foundation for thinking about the training of professionals (pre- and post-service) and how we lobby for adequate conditions and remuneration. These skills are essential for all professionals work-ing in early childhood settings – mainstream and non-mainstream – but we learned from our study that for service providers at the periphery this ethical entrepreneurialism is at the core of everyday practice.

These findings from the periphery contribute an important view. The knowledge and dispositions required by these professionals extended beyond the notions of rationality, emotionality and criticality described in the literature. They drew attention to the need for professionals who can anticipate and navigate an array of local and national services and funding arrangements and who are politically savvy in terms of both system and practice knowledge. The evidence from our study puts forward a strong case that these views from the periphery have much to offer debates about early childhood professionalism.

Notes

1. The idea of working at the intersections of gendered, racialised, generational and other forms of power that attach to aspect of subjectivity has long occupied scholars such as Flora Anthais and Stuart Hall. The concept of intersectionality is currently enjoying favour in sociology. See for example Choo and Ferree (2010); Crenshaw (1991); and for a discussion on how this relates to superdiversity see Humphris (2015).

2. Domestic violence.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the time and efforts of families and service providers who shared their stories with openness and generosity.

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian research Council under a linkage Grant [lP100200297]. research partners on the Grant were Mission Australia, The brotherhood of St laurence, Early Childhood Australia, Gowrie NSW, Gowrie SA and Gowrie Queensland.

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