Education, language and professionalism: issues in the professional development of early years practitioners in Germany

Abstract

In the Federal Republic of Germany, many efforts are currently under way to improve the quality of early childhood education. One starting point is the quality of the professional training of early childhood practitioners. However, discussions mainly refer to input factors, such as the training curricula or the formal level of training. Output factors, such as the professional knowledge base of future early childhood practitioners, tend to be neglected. Here the sciences have a role to play, by developing competence models for the critical analysis, detailed description and purposeful improvement of everyday practice in early childhood institutions. As an example of this direction, this paper focuses on the knowledge base of the language support competence (LSC) of German early childhood practitioners with possible implications for both the continuing professional development of teachers and pre‐service and in‐service training in Germany.