2-Curious: jarring representations of the two-year-old in transformative continuous professional development (CPD)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores how new materialist ideas informed a non-linear experimental approach to ‘continuous’ professional development (CPD). Experiences of professional development in the early years are diverse but remain at the heart of continuous improvement practices. In the UK, the roll-out of the ‘disadvantaged two-year-old’ offer increased demand for professional development, at a time when austerity impacted on training budgets. Where opportunities for professional development exist, the focus is typically on ‘best practice’ solutions, which often cling to developmental psychology. This paper focuses on the process of ‘continuous’ professional development inspired by new materialist thinking. It recognises that integral to quality early years’ provision are understandings of how children learn, but that this knowledge is embodied, always in movement and yet deeply situated. Focussing on the first CPD session, the glass jar, this paper assembles happenstance encounters from within and beyond the CPD session to explore how combinations of relational becomings are continuously changing as encounters and experiences spark new thinking and doing in diffusive and irrational ways. This paper emerges only as a resting place; writing becoming part of the movement needed in new materialist practices, vitally informing the transformative potential of CPD that continues to move.