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

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.