Abstract
ABSTRACTThis study explores the extended demands for writing in the Swedish public service sector of early childhood and how academic writing in the higher education programmes aimed at professional work in that sector is perceived to be of value for early childhood practice among practitioners. Empirical data was collected in individual interviews and focus groups among 65 early childhood staff in two different communities. The study points to an overall focus on assessments and evaluation in professional writing which tends to challenge everyday communication, i.e. everyday discourse for an internal audience (staff, parents and children). The study further indicates that professional writing holds implications for social relations and contributes to strengthened hierarchies among early childhood staff; younger generations more trained in academic writing tend to be ‘ranked’ higher than staff more experienced in practice. Whether the twin demands for ‘professional’ and ‘academic’ writing will contribute to a ‘professional’ early childhood staff community, as suggested in policy and teacher union rhetoric, remains an open question.
Highlights
A common trend of many vocationally-oriented programmes in higher education is an ‘academic drift’, i.e. a move towards academic practices as expressed in curriculum, degree structure and research (Edwards & Miller 2008; Kyvik 2009)
This study explores the more recent and extensive demands concerning writing for staff in the early childhood services, and to what extent writing in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programmes, the final degree project, is considered to be of value for practitioners
In this study we have explored the stronger emphasis on writing in the early childhood sector; we have pointed to a shift from a ‘back-stage’ informal, everyday oral or written situation to a more formal and professional situation, what we call here a ‘script situation’ and which indicates ‘academic drift’ in policy and among staff (Kyvik 2007, 2009)
Summary
A common trend of many vocationally-oriented programmes in higher education is an ‘academic drift’, i.e. a move towards academic practices as expressed in curriculum, degree structure and research (Edwards & Miller 2008; Kyvik 2009). In Sweden, ‘academisation’ in the early 1990s of teacher education programmes (Erixon Arreman, 2015; Hegender 2010), including Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) was paralleled by the inclusion of the public service of early childhood in the national education system; at the time a new emphasis in policy rhetoric described teachers in early childhood services as “professionals” (Nyberg 2008), including new responsibilities for written documentation in the workplace (Pramling & Sheridan 2004; Andersson 2013). Thereafter, the academic quality of students’ completed final degree project (FDP) have come to constitute the main basis for licensing the programmes at the respective higher education institution (Haikola 2013)
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