Practitioners' Experiences of Personal Ownership and Autonomy in Their Support for Young Children's Thinking

Abstract

This article reports the third phase of the Froebel Research Fellowship Project: ‘The Voice of the Child: ownership and autonomy in early learning’. Building on the first and second phases of this study, this phase examined early years practitioners' experiences of supporting young children's thinking in relation to the personal ownership and autonomy they felt in their practice. Thirteen early years practitioners (1 male, 12 female) working in private, voluntary and local authority nursery schools and reception classes in England took part in the informal one-to-one semi-structured interview study. Themes such as (1) dealing with constraints, (2) the importance of flexibility based on shared understandings amongst the team of practitioners and (3) interpersonal relationships emerged as central to practitioners' views about concepts of ownership and autonomy, and the ways in which practitioners endeavour to exercise agency in directing the course of their practice in extending children's thinking.