The Future of Education

In Portugal, as well as in several European Union (EU) countries, the number of young children with both parents working full time is very high (60%). About 76% of women with children under three years are integrate into the job market, one of the highest rates in the EU [1]. The number of families that use daycare services, the most used social responses by families with children under three, has increased in recent years [2]. To know who are the professionals to whom families trust "the most precious thing in the world"[3,4,5], was the initial question that guided our research project. Our investigation had as theoretical framework studies on social representations [6], on identities [7] and on professional identities [7,8,9]. Thus, our research was focused on the construction of the professional identities of the early years educators who perform their professional activity in baby rooms in daycare centers. The focus of this study aimed on the exploration of the perceptions of social actors regarding: The space/time of daycare; the presence of educators in the baby rooms and the conceptions of childhood and child. Three focus groups were held: with families, with early years educators and with the educational assistants. We anticipate that the results of this study will give us different perspectives that will allow us to characterize and trace, even in a preliminary way, aspects related to the professional identities of these professionals.

Keywords: Early years educators, educational assistants, parents, social perceptions, professional identities in baby rooms;

References:
[1] OCDE (2011). Doing better for families. Portugal.
[2] UNICEF (2013). As crianças e a crise em Portugal: Vozes de crianças, políticas públicas e indicadores sociais. In Karin Wall & Ana Nunes de Almeida (coord.).
[3] Goouch, K., & Powell, S. (2012). Orchestrating professional development for baby room practitioners:Raising the stakes in new dialogic encounters. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 11(1). 78-92.
[4] Goouch, K., & Powell, S. (2017). Babyroom workers: Care in practice. In Jayne White & Dalli Carmen (ed.). Under-three year olds in policy and practice (143-157). Wellington: Springer.
[5] Lightfoot, S., & Frost, D. (2015). The professional identity of early years educators in England: Implications for a transformative approach to continuing professional development. Professional Development in Education, 41, 401-418.
[6] Moscovici, S. (1978). A representação social da psicanálise. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar
[7] Dubar, C. (1997). A socialização: Construção das identidades sociais e profissionais. Porto: Porto Editora
[8] Lopes, A. (2008). La construcción de identidades docentes como constructo de estrutura y dinâmica sistémicas: Argumentación y virtualidades teóricas y prácticas. Professorado, Revista de Curriculum y Formación del Professorado, 11 (3), 1-25.
[9] Lopes,. A. (2009). Teachers as professionals and teachers’ identity construction as na ecological construct: An agenda for reasearch and training drawing upon a biographical research process. European Educational Research Journal, 8 (3), 461-475.