Do you feel like a second mum at work? Should you be motherly towards the children in your care? How do the children's mothers respond to you as a nursery worker?
These were just some of the issues raised in a four-year study that sought to explore:
- nursery workers' views and experiences of being understood as professional
- what constitutes 'professionalism' in early years settings.
Conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies in Education, at London Metropolitan University, the study involved in-depth investigations in private, voluntary and state-run nurseries through repeat interviews with 27 nursery workers, from managerial level to trainees.
Professionalism is frequently defined as something that requires workers to be rational, dispassionate and unemotional in their day-to-day activities. But for early years practitioners, these traits are arguably inappropriate.
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