The (in)convenience of care in preschool education: examining staff views on educare

Abstract

It is generally accepted that Early Childhood Education and Care should adopt a holistic view on education, in which education and care are inseparable concepts. Perspectives of staff members themselves are, however, often absent in these educare debates. We conducted six video-elicited focus groups with various preschool staff members (n = 69) in Flanders (Belgium), which is well known for its split system in which children between two and a half and four years old are confronted with the pivotal transition from an informal or formal caring environment (home or childcare service) to a formal learning environment (preschool). With Maurice Hamington’s theory of embodied and performative care as a theoretical lens for this empirical study, we propose a new direction for pre- and in-service training, in which the use of emotions, embodied exchange and social responsibility has a central place.