Abstract
The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners in Ireland, with a focus on dilemmatic contradictions between the policy reform ensemble and practitioners’ reported working conditions in a doctoral study. The critique draws from the politics of power and education, and gendered and classed subjectivities, and allows the authors to theorise early childhood education and care professionalisation in alternative emancipatory ways for democratic pedagogy rather than a limited performativity. The findings reveal the state (re)configured as a central command centre with an over-reliance on surveillance, alongside deficits of responsibility for public interest values in relation to the working conditions of early childhood education and care workers, who are mostly part-time ‘pink-collar’ women workers in precarious roles. The study has implications that go beyond Ireland for the professionalisation of early childhood education and care workers and meeting the early developmental needs of young children.
Highlights
The last decade has revealed a globalconfiguring of relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. We focus on this changing relationship in early childhood education and care (ECEC) advanced by transnational policy influencers such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Corresponding author: Geraldine Mooney Simmie, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University of Limerick, DM042 Main Building, Castletroy, Limerick, Ireland
We problematised the professionalisation of ECEC practitioners in Ireland within a globalised policy reform context thatconfigures ECEC as a system of performance management (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001, 2018, 2019)
The protest called for configuring ECEC as a public rather than private service and demanded radical reform of the sector and a decent wage and entitlements for workers – points that were later made by SIPTU in a prebudget submission in 2021 (Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, 2021)
Summary
The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. We focus on this changing relationship in early childhood education and care (ECEC) advanced by transnational policy influencers such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 00(0). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a policy influencer in 37 countries, stresses the importance, on the one hand, of quality standards and governance of staff–child interactions and, on the other, the working conditions of ECEC practitioners, including pay and conditions, and access to continuing professional development and qualifications. Its focus is on a quality reform agenda – an edu-business model that aligns with increasing competition between private providers as market-based solutions to the low status of ECEC workers, poor remuneration, low skill sets and qualifications, and poor uptake of professional development opportunities (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted recognition of the crucial importance of the ECEC sector to social and economic well-being, and a new urgency to theorise alternative approaches
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