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This paper reports on findings from a case study of an intergenerational project between a nursery school and a residential care home for people with dementia in the South-East of England. It examines how multi-modalities support meaning-making between 3-year-old children and older adults. The study is qualitative, interpretative, and explorative. Data was collected using naturalistic observations of children and older adults during intergenerational sessions at the care home and qualitative interviews with nursery school practitioners. The analysis draws on a dialogic narrative approach informed by the work of Mikhal Bakhtin. Our research demonstrates how multi-modalities support young children’s engagement and meaning-making with older adults. The findings explore how the context of the intergenerational sessions was influential in shaping the interactions between the children and older adults. The study contributes to existing research as well as offering new understandings about the interactions between children and older adults within a co-located intergenerational project. Our research would suggest a benefit in the re-establishment of intergenerational practice in a post pandemic context when such encounters pose less physical health risks.

This study investigates our role as early years researchers in qualitative data analysis. We draw on our doctoral studies to address how the co-construction, co-performance and co-reflection of narratives elicit deeper and new understandings of early years workers in England, and how our life stories are co-produced through narrative inquiry. Employing a constructionist approach and building on Buitelaar theorisation of I-positions and the multi-vocal ‘self’, we explore how narratives are co-constructed and co-performed between the researched and researcher in relation to the ‘self’ and master narratives of culture, time and place. Data were collected using focus groups and semi-structured interviews involving 50 early years workers and 17 nurseries situated in the South East of England. By ‘co-reflecting’ on how the data was analysed, we discussed the ways in which we and our participants are simultaneously positioned within social categories of intersectionality, such as gender, social class, mother and worker. Our reflections offer a broader understanding of how qualitative research can enrich existing knowledge of how early years workers and their practice are constructed in England.

This paper discusses society’s lack of recognition of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce as professionals, and its emotional impact that this deficit has on them. The concerns are that the role of the ECEC worker has been mainly conceptualised as maternal, where emotional labour is taken for granted and needing to be suppressed or harnessed as part of the caring role. This is at odds with successive government policy agenda which has focused on professionalising the workforce. In this paper we engage with qualitative data gathered from twenty-four experienced ECEC workers to explore the impact that ‘affect’ has upon them. In this respect we build on the theorisations of Massumi and Stewart, which connect affect theory with the emotional labour; we argue that affect theory offers different ways to consider how objects, spaces, material and discursive entities and bodies impact ECEC workers emotions and emotional labour.

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, effecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40% by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over-arching discourse of moral responsibility essentially relating to deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.

This paper addresses the research problem of how to reach, engage and support parents in home‐educating young children during the first national COVID‐19 lockdown in England (March–June 2020), which was addressed through using technology. An internet‐mediated research (IMR) approach is used to investigate the effectiveness of using technology and translational research as strategies for disseminating a rapidly produced digital guide, for promoting play‐based learning at home, to parents. Lockdown with the closure of early years provision led to parents finding themselves isolated at home with young children. Early years educators were managing a unique set of circumstances where communication with families, including those ‘harder‐to‐reach’ was contextually problematic. Qualitative data using IMR captured online interactions by unobtrusive and obtrusive methods; unsolicited emails and social media comments and questionnaire responses. Conventional content analysis identified emerging themes of access, availability, reliability and readability. Analysis showed a combination of factors impacted on the speed and scale of sharing and downloading the digital guide. First, being digitally ready as platforms were already used by early years educators and Local Authorities. Second, the professional drive of Local Authorities and early years educators to support families during the crisis and third, the availability of an easily accessible online resource seen as valuable in improving play‐based learning at home. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic? There are high levels of digital readiness in the United Kingdom.Technology is one method used by early years settings to communicate with parents.Parental engagement is challenging. What this paper adds? A translational research strategy (to share research‐informed‐knowledge with stakeholders) and internet‐mediated research (to gather data from stakeholders) combine effectively for use within the early years sector to disseminate research knowledge to parents and support home learning environments.The high levels of technology readiness of early years educators and parents in England provides opportunities for disseminating information and improving home learning environments.Accessing and sharing documents online may involve parents but is insufficient to engage. Implications for practice and/or policy Early years settings need to be more proactive in engaging with parents online.Technology provides opportunities to develop interaction and the sharing of information with parents.Digital media should be used as additional communication strategies and should not replace the fundamental importance of face‐to‐face‐interaction.

Since the start of the pandemic, schools around the world have closed their doors to children to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. This meant that many parents were forced to start home schooling their children which requiring significant efforts, knowledge, and the right equipment. Home schooling, or ‘Elective Home Education’, requires parents to ensure that their child receives efficient full-time education appropriate to his-her age and ability (Department for Education, 2019). Home schooling has become the new ‘norm’ during the first and third lockdowns in England. This paper reports on relevant policy analysis, empirical research/literature review and findings from semi-structured interviews with parents who home schooled their primary school aged children. Findings indicate that the habitus of familial environment and the social position of field are significant determinants of education outcomes, in which the cultural and material deprivation have played a part. This paper highlights that home schooling has brought inequalities in educational experience into sharp focus and has shown the importance of embodied preferences and cultural goods in the drive to improve outcomes across the country. Had cultural approaches not been so different, the experiences of children from the North and the South, and from richer and poorer families, would not have been so different. Findings also shows how financial privilege does not provide an escape from stress and how parents’ well-being, regardless of their economic background, has been affected by home- schooling.

This chapter focuses on early childhood education and care (ECEC) for three Hungarian minority groups of people in Romania, Slovak Republic, and Serbia. The primary focus is on kindergarten-age children; however, it is important to state that the early childhood provision in these countries is divided between bölcsőde (nursery), services from three or six months to three years old, and óvoda or napközi (kindergarten), from three to six or seven year-old children. This binary approach to the ECEC was introduced in the late 1940s, where both nurseries and kindergartens were financed either by the state or by the local authority except for the religious nurseries, which were financed by the church. Traditionally, children in the nursery were cared for and educated by the kisgyermeknevelő (infant and early childhood educator), while in the kindergartens this role has been undertaken by the óvónő (female pre-primary pedagogue or kindergarten teacher)

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is a complex field of study. This research explores the creation of an understanding of the ways in which the concept of ‘good’ nursery workers is constructed in the current political, economic and societal context in England. It discusses the findings of a qualitative narrative study which investigates how ‘good’ practice is understood by nursery workers who directly work or have worked with babies and young children. In order to find out what nursery workers think, know and feel about ‘good’ practice, twenty-two nursery workers from a wide range of nursery settings were interviewed.\ud \ud The rationale for the research was that by exploring experiences of nursery workers, a deeper understanding is provided of what they think ‘good’ nursery practice is, thus adding to the literature in this area, while simultaneously contributing to discussion around professionalisation of the ECEC workforce. The study presents insights into experiences of working with children within a feminist approach that facilitate the emergence of three themes. Each theme is presented in a separate chapter: the relationship between the nursery worker and policy; the close link between maternal discourses and formation of good practice; and the emotional labour involved in working with children.\ud \ud This research highlights the impact of policies on nursery practices, societal lack of recognition of the ECEC workforce as professionals and the emotional investment of nursery workers when working not just with children but also with their families. The study also reveals the commitment and passion of nursery workers’ and their ‘love’ towards the children. It thus unsettles the notions of nursery workers as ‘technicists’ and as ‘substitute mothers’, and also calls attention to the complexities of nursery work in contemporary England.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. This case study used a co-creation approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a translational research strategy in supporting early childhood education. How Mapping Educational Specialist Knowhow (MESH) and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) collaborated to enhance the training of volunteers and learning provision for 1,500 refugee children is explored. The findings highlight that: training empowered a marginalised community to enhance children’s learning; language variation was a challenge; common values enabled effective partnership working between MESH and VSO; maintaining the relationship is vital for developing socio-culturally relevant resources; MESHGuides have great potential although features could be redesigned to increase impact. The strategy addressed United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SGG) 4, to improve the quality of education for all and SDG 5, to enhance gender opportunities for girls and women.

Technocratic accountability, which is impacting on ECEC practices in England, is where the government favours evidence-based knowledge to work with children. As a result, the emotional aspect of ECEC work and emotional labour have become increasingly complex and are sometimes unrecognised. In this paper we the importance of more relational, connected and embodied ways to work with young children. Analysing qualitative semi-structured interview data from two projects, we focus on emotional labour which is interpreted with poststructuralist and posthuman affect theory. The resultant analysis allows us to reconsider knowledge-making practices in ECEC and challenge existing Cartesian dualistic thinking which separates ‘care’ and ‘education’. Data from the first project sees us analyse narratives from ECEC practitioners highlighting the relationship between government policies and dominant discourses. The second project notes entanglements with human and other-than-human bodies enacted with affect theory which reveals embodied other-than-human productions of emotional labour generating alternative ways to explore ECEC work. By engaging with these two theoretical and conceptual positions we offer a different perspective to consider ECEC professional knowledge(s) and reveal the ways these can shed an alternative light on professional practice.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, educators worldwide are facing a major challenge in how to adapt, become resilient, and to monitor/detect potential safeguarding issues amid nursery and school closures. Online communication between parents, children and early years practitioners/teachers rapidly became a new ‘norm’ during the first lockdown in the UK. This paper reports on quantitative and qualitative findings from 55 participants compromised of early years practitioners and primary school teachers working with 3 to 8 years old children in the South-East of England. Methods of data collection deployed online surveys and a qualitative focused questionnaire, to capture what measures nurseries and primary schools adopted to ensure children are safeguarded. We argue that pressure on early years practitioners and teachers to monitoring safeguarding children by using various online platforms is physically and emotionally challenging. This paper highlights the difficulties of detecting safeguarding issues amid school closures, which should be avoid during further future closures.

Education has increasingly been consumed by neoliberal expectations that result in the need for data to be collected to justify regulative, pedagogical, curricular, and teaching practices. The marketisation of higher education requires more quantitative measurement of student attainment and progress which impacts on pedagogy and provision. Working with Karen Barad's theorisations of spacetimemattering, agential cuts, intra-action, and diffractive analysis, I draw on research with Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teachers who were working and concurrently studying on a degree programme. Empirical data was generated from a focus group discussing the influences of data recording software on the teachers and their professional practice, the devices used as part of the recording process, and the curricular expectations during children's assessment. Scholars have argued that the need to ensure children meet developmentally appropriate milestones in ECEC can lead to performative, technicist teacher practices driven by data and that these practices may result in datafication and ‘dividual’ subjectivities ( Deleuze 1992 ). Entangling with material-discursive productions between ECEC teachers and ‘data’ provides a new contribution to understanding the influence of other-than-human bodies on the process of dividualisation and its impact on professional practice. Although focussing on ECEC teachers and their assessment practices, the outcomes of the analysis are connected to higher education, which is facing similar pressures for student progress. In line with the theme of this issue of Somatechnics, I discuss how putting to work Barad's agential realism can articulate and rethink both human and other-than-human matterings by revealing how some ‘agential cuts’ reinforce deficit dividual discourse. In turn, this can help us move beyond datafication and dividual practice.

Has there been a shift in thinking and practice in relation to men working in the early years? Here, we talk to two Early Years Teachers about their thoughts and experiences of educating and caring in settings.

Early years practitioners are integral to government policy on addressing child poverty in the UK. Drawing on findings from a qualitative study this paper seeks to contribute new understandings about how practitioners’ narratives are shaped by discourses of poverty. Overall practitioners’ understandings of poverty reflected a moral discourse of deserving and undeserving poor. However, the complexity of interconnections between morality, gender and motherhood (and fatherhood) reveals how understandings were also broad, nuanced and at times contradictory. The study highlights the need for further research into how understandings of poverty are formed together with the need for new narratives of poverty.

Engaging with posthuman theorising, this article puts to work a number of concepts to produce generative reimaginings of early years leadership. In 1992, Deleuze argued that we are witnessing a transition from societies of confinement to ‘societies of control’. In societies of control, power operates through neo-liberal corporate worlds via a process of ‘continuous modulation’, which encourages a regime of perpetual flows of change, revealing new productions of a more posthuman agency. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, the author notes how the concept of assemblage can be employed to explore leadership. She argues that early years leadership in England is part of a wider set of connections and relations which include human and non-human ‘bodies’. The assemblage connects and collects bodies, and is not defined by its individual components but by what is produced as these bodies interact. These interactions can be striated, which explores certain forms of leadership. However, smoother spaces can also be produced, which empirically reveals the situational ethics and micropolitics of four early years leaders who are entangled with children, policy, neo-liberal framing, quality, curriculum, and social and material worlds in their settings and schools. This article broadens current views on early years leadership by taking a more-than-human view of relations between human and non-human bodies as a distributed subjectivity which reworks notions of solely human agency. This production allows the author to question how posthuman leadership and the ethics and micropolitics of connectivity might function in this new form of more-than-human relationality.

This chapter discusses the doctoral research process that informed our teaching and learning practices. In recent years, social research has turned its attention to ‘the body’ (Waskul and Vannini, 2016). We consider the implications of such a turn on the ways in which we (re)position ourselves as teachers by reflecting on our experiences of teaching future early years practitioners and teachers. In the first part of the chapter Eva argues that teaching requires a considerable amount of emotional labour that is embodied in her professional practice. She focuses on how her emotions became ‘embodied’ and the ways in which her professional practice/performance has been influenced by her emotions. To demonstrate her subjectification, she used her reflective diary and fieldnotes written over a period of one year which recorded her experiences as a teacher and novice researcher. In the second part of the chapter Sandra reflects on her doctoral study relating to child poverty and how Foucault has informed her ideas of embodiment in relation to her analysis of interviews with early years practitioners and her teaching of child poverty to future early years practitioners and teachers. She draws on examples from both her data analysis and reflective notes on her teaching.

Vojvodina is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Europe where, according to the latest census in 2011, Hungarians are the largest non-Serb national minority group. In recent decades, this northern province of Serbia has faced continuous depopulation, forcing schools and nurseries to face an uncertain future. We argue that despite the decreasing population in general, the nature of Serbia’s minority rights regime currently produces social inequality, as policies that seek harmony by accepting ethnic separation may give rise to future conflict. In these challenging times, we focus on the political culture that is currently functioning in Serbia, in which the Hungarian national minority is (re)positioning itself to secure its own identity. In this paper, we will cover the history and function of the nurseries (bolcsőde) and kindergartens (ovoda) of the Hungarian national minority in Serbia. We will cover the early years curriculum and qualification requirements of the early childhood workforce. Furthermore, we will explain the influence of educational and cultural traditions and values through early childhood education and care (ECEC), giving specific attention to the usage of the native language that is fundamental to cultural identity.

This case draws on the author’s doctoral studies about practitioners’ narratives of poverty in the early years. The case discusses how focus groups provide a useful way of exploring early years practitioners’ (EY practitioners) understandings of child poverty. The research was based in two Sure Start Children Centres with onsite Nursery Schools and Daycare provision in the South of England. Overall forty EY practitioners took part in six focus groups. A ‘secret box’ and newspaper article were used to help stimulate discussion and address issues of power within the groups. A narrative approach was chosen to analyse the focus groups based on Riessman’s (2008) dialogic/performance analytical approach. Lessons learnt included: using innovative strategies to help facilitate focus groups; allowing sufficient time to analyse data; and the developmental nature of the analysis process. It is concluded that focus groups provide a rich source of narrative data particularly for examining how participants co-construct understandings and meanings relating to child poverty.

The decision to make Early Years Initial Teacher Training available to all graduates was the right one, it is a person's ability and motivation to learn, lead and inspire that makes the difference, as these stories show.

This paper is focusing on the concept of students ‘voice’ that informs the teaching and learning (T&L) strategies in higher education (HE) within the UK context. The analysis draws on feedback received from students experiencing Problem Based Learning (PBL) which was implemented in one of the modules of the department of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). My aim is to provide different perceptions of exploring, thinking and conceptualising ‘voice’ (feedback) and the ways in which the findings are linked to, or inform, the emerging research fields in which I and my students are participating. I will consider how to explore ‘voice’ from a range of sources and theoretical perspectives such as feminist practice and poststructuralist theory in order to enhance T&L and to improve the experience of the PBL. Due to policy change in higher education in recent years, the ‘voice’ of the learner in ECEC became more dominant in HE environments, therefore exploring their thoughts, emotions and experiences are vital in understanding the concept of PLB that informs the T&L strategies in HE in the UK context.

All children have the right to experience a professionalised early years workforce that supports, challenges and inspires those working within it, works in partnership with others and draws on inter-disciplinary knowledge to address inequality and promote all aspects of children’s care, health, development and learning.

Children are more likely to experience a range of traumatic experiences in the Early Years, including child abuse and the consequences of living in environments where domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse are prevalent. These experiences can impact across the life course and the cost to the individual and society can be immense.\ud \ud This presentation challenges us to think about the rights of our youngest children to a professionalised Early Years workforce that understands their role in all areas of early childhood trauma. A workforce that pro-actively creates safe, nurturing environments and that promotes aspiration and life chances for all children.

Research into Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy and practice in the UK is subject to the demand that such research be measurable and achieve impact to provide the basis for evidence-based professional practice. New and creative experimental ways of knowing/thinking/doing ECEC research have been proposed in resistance to this quantified and instrumentalised agenda. Here I focus on posthumanist theorising, which proposes research that does not privilege the human subject but rather opens conditions of possibility for an entanglement with non-human and more-than-human bodies within and between assemblages. This engagement with complexity is a new ethical and political project aiming at re-conceptualising ontology beyond the limits of the human. Posthumanist research does not only challenge quantitative research, but also engages creative ways to challenge the limits of qualitative inquiry. Drawing on my research experience, I explore this de-centring of the human-as-researcher through the notion of the ‘methodological umbra’. This shadow space is one in which traditional thoughts on research open out these new forms of inquiry into thinking-in-movement. My analysis uses my own diary entries as sites in which this ‘umbra’ becomes evident under the pressure of creating new forms of a ‘living’ methodology. This is analysed through the contrast between smooth and striated space proposed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) to explore what form of life might emerge in the smooth space of the umbra.

In 1992 Gilles Deleuze argued, in a brief essay, that we are witnessing a transition from societies of confinement to 'societies of control'. In societies of control power operates through a process of 'continuous modulation': a regime of 'perpetual training' and assessment. The focus of my doctoral research is to use Posthumanist theorising to explore how Early Years Teachers modulate their practice within their organizations following the introduction of the Teacher Standards (Early Years) (DfE, 2013) in England. This will allow me to provide an alternative lens on the understanding of professional identity formation and (re)imagine professional becomings (Fairchild, 2015) as a means of charting affective flows in and between Early Years Teacher assemblages.\ud \ud Drawing on St. Pierre (2011:613) my productive engagement with the work of Deleuze and Guattari has allowed me to consider a ‘reimagination of social science inquiry’. I have been grappling with how to creatively embrace a Posthuman onto-epistemology of difference and have been working in the umbra (shadows) as I challenge the traditional views of qualitative research practice. Early Years Teachers work in human and material organizational contexts as they engage with children, policy, practice, the nursery/school environment and spaces for play and teaching. Posthumanism allows for an attention to materiality and affectivity and gives a new articulation of the concept of identity leading to the individual emerging as an assemblage. The assemblage as methodology provides the vehicle to explore the affective flows and their relations to Early Years Teacher assemblages. Additionally the assemblage as methodology provides a ‘commitment to thinking with materials and incorporating them as forceful agents in the formation of the social world’ (Meiches, 2015: 479). \ud \ud In charting affective flows I will explore and be entangled within machinic assemblages at a number of levels - material, affective, embodied, corporeal, political and neoliberal. Being part of the research assemblage my methodology is (re)emerging and I currently am enmeshed in a series of rhizoaffective multidimensional events which have (re)(e)volved around my desire to engage with the perceptual, experiential and sensory nature of affective flows. This engagement has led me to question what data will be revealed, what it might want and how might I move away from representation to mapping and charting and reconfiguring and reimaging data (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016). This paper will present the affective flows of five Early Years Teachers as I consider their experiences both spatially and temporally. Data will be revealed using a range of methods including discursive (interviews), visual, material, and political. There will be visits to Early Years Teachers in their workplace and we will engage in an ongoing co-constructed multidimensional dialogue about their experiences, their affects and percepts (Deleuze, 1995) as they fold and unfold. In this way I can attend to social justice by decentring the role of the Early Years Teachers within their organization as I critically analyse materiality and affect within the new regime of modulation. The resultant data analysis is, as yet, unknown – an immanent methodology becoming.

In this chapter we explore the impact of foundation degrees within the Early Years sector and give an explanation to recognise the role of higher education institutions in developing partnerships with employers. Furthermore we are reflecting on an employer’s perspectives of the Foundation Degree in Early Years (FDEY) to determine whether it is fit for purpose and will make informed choices as an Early Years employer or student in developing the Early Years sector and enhancing both practice and career prospects.

Chapter 3 discusses the way mature students who are also practitioners-professionals, see themselves as a valuable resource for children and their families. The term ‘mature student’ was used to refer to everyone who is 21 years old and above and fully enrolled with the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the UK and who is eligible to apply for the government maintenance grant and student loan as an ‘independent’ student (DfES, 2012). \ud Furthermore the chapter explores possible issues mature students face while studying the Foundation Degree in Early Years (FDEY). Drawing on the case studies of 42 mature students across three HEIs in the SE of England, mature students’ experiences were examined where the focus was on analysing their emotional experiences while studying at degree level. This concept may be a surprising perspective for you, who may expect that the primary focus is on children. However, this chapter gives you an insight to the multi-layered nature of mature students’ emotions highlighting the complex issues they face of how to balance the multiple demands of professional work, personal life and academic requirements. It is then linked to their personal achievement in education that enhances the quality of the Early Years (EY) settings which is relational to the value of attending HEIs and gaining a degree. Consequently, the course provided all participants with real depth of relevant knowledge, professional confidence and competence.

The aim of this paper is to build on the current conceptions of professional identity formation which require a new way to view the subject and subjectivities (St. Pierre, 2004) and to provide an alternative lens on the formation of professional identities of Early Years Teachers. The application of Posthumanist theory (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Braidotti, 2011, Coleman and Ringrose, 2013; Jones and Holmes, 2014; Osgood, 2014) allows for a wider exploration of the complexity of the social world and can provide a new theoretical perspective on the experiences of Early Years Teachers as they negotiate a new professional identity which has been defined via the Teachers’ Standards (Early Years) as stipulated by the Department for Education.\ud \ud The notion of professional identity is used to define how a professional should act and behave. Hickey-Moody and Malins (2007) argue that the politics of identity, although enabling important socio-political change, have their limitations. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) described identity as a way society makes sense of a changing world. When bodies are stratified the stable sense of self allows for the production of ‘the thinking, speaking political subject’ (Hickey-Moody and Malins, 2007: 5). The politics of identity can have a limiting effect as they can promote the reproduction of a negative view of difference – the self, versus the ‘other’. However, Deleuze (1994) argued difference is positive and productive and allows for an exploration of new ways of becoming. The development of the Early Years Teacher could be viewed as top down State mandated professionalism leading to a dominant view of professional practice which takes a molar form defining normative practice (Ringrose, 2012). Coupled with dominant discourses from policy as to how children should be taught and become school ready the view of suitable professional practice can take the form of a molar machine (Jackson, 2013) which attempts to dominate, territorialize and stabilise professional identity. \ud \ud This paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interview data collected from Early Years Teachers in training. The data was (re)viewed using Posthuman concepts of the assemblage, the nomad and becoming (Delueze and Guattari, 1987). Charting becomings allowed for the opening up of possibilities ‘a radical possibility of the unfinalised’ (Jackson, 2013: 123) and provided an alternative conceptualisation of professional identity formation.

Previous studies have revealed that children increase the size of drawings of topics about which they feel positively and use their most preferred colours for colouring in these drawings, and decrease the size of topics about which they feel negatively and use their least preferred colours for colouring in these drawings. However, these previous findings have been obtained in studies employing drawing tasks where planning and production difficulties have been minimised by asking the children either to copy or to colour in an outline stimulus of a figure provided by the experimenter. The present experiment was designed to examine whether children also alter the use of size and colour in their drawings in response to emotional characterisations when they are not constrained by the presence of a model. Two hundred and fifty three children aged between 4 and 11 years were asked to produce drawings of a neutrally, a positively and a negatively characterised topic (either a man, a dog or a tree). It was found that the children consistently increased the size of the positively characterised figures, did not consistently decrease the size of the negatively characterised figures, used their most preferred colours for the positive figures, and used their least preferred colours for the negative figures. These findings are discussed in relation to the operation of an appetitive-defensive mechanism and pictorial conventions.

Dr Jane Murray explains how her PhD research can help practitioners recognise and evaluate young children's explorations as critical thinkers.

Recently, research involving children has included enquiry on, about, with and by children. However, studies positioning children as co-researchers or researchers have tended to focus on children older than eight years. This paper critically reviews literature relating to aspects of an empirical study within the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) field that conceptualises and explores research behaviours presented by children aged 4-8 years with no formal research methods training in three ECEC settings and five domestic settings in England. The enquiry - a critical ethnographic case study series located within a constructivist grounded approach was conducted according to the British Educational Research Association’s ethical guidelines (2004). Participants included children (n=150), practitioners (n=15), parents (n=10) and professional educational researchers (n=16). A rubric of professional researchers’ perceived ‘researcher behaviours’ was developed early in the study then used to evaluate children’s everyday activities. Throughout, challenges of gaining ethically appropriate access to data with young children were a significant concern. Challenges included: establishing an appropriate research instrument, gaining access to an ECEC setting, gaining acceptance from ECEC setting staff, securing informed consent from primary carers and gathering data on children’s natural behaviours at home. This paper employs critical review of literature reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of ECEC to discuss these challenges before making recommendations for future work

Previous research has yielded conflicting findings about the existence and the direction of the size changes which occur in children's drawings when they are asked to draw topics which have been given an affective characterization. The present study was designed to investigate whether children scale up the size of drawings of topics which have been given a positive characterization, and scale down the size of drawings of topics which have been given a negative characterization. The participants were 258 children aged between 4 and 11 years who completed three drawings of either a man, a dog or a tree. Each child drew a baseline drawing of a neutrally characterized figure, and two further drawings of a positively and a negatively characterized version of the same figure. It was found that the children drew the positively characterized topics larger than the neutrally characterized topics, and reduced the size of the negatively characterized topics relative to the baseline drawings. These patterns occurred at all ages and with all three drawing topics. Two possible explanations of the findings are discussed: the operation of an appetitive-defensive mechanism in children, and the acquisition of pictorial conventions.

Reflexivity is thinking about the way we think and the influences on our thinking. Being aware of the relationship between the individual (student or researcher) and the social world (being reflexive) and as Moon (2010) says: acknowledging who you are. Being reflexive means you consider: your views or values of a previous experience, the importance of additional factors such as perception, personal habits, social pressure (Mezirow, 1983, 2000), your ‘emotional state’ (Moon, 2010), how you assign meaning (Moon, 2008), or makes sense (Boud et al., 1985), and consider whether you have experienced a change in behaviour? (Osterman and Kottkamp, 1993). \ud When one considers the emotional experience of reflective writing, do we as educators have the right to assess such ‘personal’ writing?

Considerations about the importance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) have grown considerably in the last three decades in England, in Europe and at the wider international level. Located within the fast pace of European enlargement, new social, political and economic factors created the conditions for an increased focus on the benefits of affordable and effective childcare. This working paper outlines the UK (England) context in relation to policy, standards and practice of childcare for all children, and, in particular, it examines the extent to which childcare provision is inclusive for children with disabilities. Based on the data and research, this paper argues that while much has been achieved, there are still many challenges to be overcome. While inclusion, as the right of all children to have access to education and care and participate in it are enshrined in legislation, recent policy development in education and welfare and the variety and variability of childcare offer and provision do not seem to be conducive to establishing clear guidelines or reliable generalisations. This latter problem is further compounded by a lack of systematic and rigorous research, and a lack of reliable statistical data. This paper, therefore, suggests that more research should be carried out to gain a better understanding of the extent to which childcare in England supports the inclusion of children with disabilities and special educational needs.

When researching with children, challenges of gaining ethically appropriate access to data to support their worlds are well documented (Hood et al., 1996; Lewis and Porter, 2005). Within an educational research context, studies locating children aged eight and under as researchers in their own lives are less well documented (Clark and Moss, 2001), despite evidence suggesting the feasibility of this (Gelman and Wellman, 1991; Gopnik and Meltzoff, 1996). This paper reports and reflects on a range of access issues experienced during an ethnographic case study located within constructivist grounded theory (Siraj-Blatchford, and Siraj-Blatchford, 2001; Charmaz, 2006), conducted in England in three early childhood education and care settings inhabited by children (n=150) aged 4-8 years and five of the children’s own homes). The enquiry also engaged sixteen experienced researchers from two university education departments. Conducted within the British Educational Research Association’s ethical parameters (2004), this enquiry was concerned with ascertaining young children’s potential as researchers in their own lives. For the purposes of the study, a defining rubric of researcher behaviours was empirically established and applied to the identification of research activity undertaken by young children in their everyday contexts. The children had undertaken no formal research methods training. Nested within a dual context of educational mangerialism and heightened media and government policy focus on safeguarding, the enquiry presented a number of challenges in terms of accessing data. These included negotiating gatekeepers, securing consent over assent and gathering material for analysis. This paper reports on the ways that these were addressed, and how the study developed as a result

The importance of the early years for later life outcomes is increasingly being recognised. The former Labour Government (1997-2010) in England introduced a raft of policies aimed at raising the quality of early years provision and outcomes for the youngest children. As part of the changes a new graduate professional role and status, the Early Years Professional, was introduced evidencing a new era of involvement by policy makers in the professions. Government involvement in imposing and shaping the development makes the Early Years Professional vulnerable to political change; it was developed by government and could be removed. Indeed, political change in 2010 brought considerable uncertainty about whether the Coalition Government would continue to support the development, though they have now provided funding until 2015. Alongside this uncertainty, commissioned research evidence is emerging of the positive impact of the policy agenda of the former government. A situation that has not been formally recognised, rather it appears to have gone unnoticed by policy makers. Indeed, the current government have taken a range of actions to dismantle changes previously made and there is an emerging discourse reframing the early years as a period that supports the youngest children being ‘prepared’ for education. This paper aims to address the challenges of this change of emphasis by drawing upon doctoral research critiquing the concept, implementation and impact of Early Years Professional Status as a new professional model. The research design was underpinned by Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory of Human Development and rather than being a linear development it has been impacted upon at every stage of development by instability in wider systems, therefore providing evidence that supports his under theorised ‘Chaotic System’ and that childhood is not only a development phase but one shaped by political ideology

This paper reports on a study concerned with the question ‘What do academics and the literature reveal about the similarities and differences concerning practitioner-parent partnerships in early childhood provision in Kazakhstan, Hungary and England?’\ud \ud In an international context where policy and investment have increasingly become focused on early childhood provision, the rationale for early childhood provision lacks consensus and within this diverse landscape, parents are positioned variably, for example, sometimes they are seen as less powerful than early childhood practitioners in their children’s lives, yet at other times as more powerful, sometimes as empowered consumers and busy employees, yet at other times as potential supporters of their children’s premature schoolification. Against this eclectic backdrop, inconsistencies are apparent in the nature of relationships between parents and early childhood providers, both within countries and between countries. \ud \ud The present study results from academic scholarships between universities in Kazakhstan, Hungary and England and draws on initial perceptions of disjuncture and connections that were scientifically established during a critical review of the three countries’ policy, literature and research regarding practitioner-parent partnerships in early childhood provision. The volume and quality of literature across the three countries was found to be variable but five key themes emerged from the literature. These five themes are then used to inform the second phase of the study: the capture of authentic narratives from Kazakh, Hungarian and English early childhood academics concerning parent-practitioner partnership in their home countries. \ud \ud The study is located in the interpretive paradigm and adopts narrative research in spoken and written forms. Adopted methods include critical review of the literature and semi-structured focus group interviews with experienced academics in the field of early childhood who have also worked as practitioners (n=18). Thematic analysis was utilised for both methods as it offered a valuable inductive model that fit the qualitative research design, allowing participants’ authentic voices to emerge. Due consideration was given to ethics, appropriate to each country’s protocols. In addition to the emergence of an overarching theme - ‘Parent partnership in early childhood provision in Hungary, Kazakhstan and England’ - other themes include, inter alia, parental choice in early childhood provision and power imbalances in parent-practitioner partnership in early childhood provision. The study process has allowed for new cross-cultural understandings between Hungary, Kazakhstan and England regarding parent-practitioner partnerships in the field of early childhood provision. It is expected that its final outcomes will enrich that understanding further in relation to extant themes and potentially new themes.

Emotion as a phenomenon in education has long been recognised; however, it can be argued that it has never been fully acknowledged in higher education institutions. I will share findings of a research project offering an opportunity for the audience to ‘enter the world of the student’s emotion’. The project explored the relationship between the emotion of eight mature female students and their academic performance, and the impact on their lives. Participants agreed to share their views through a written task and a follow-up unstructured interview. Their narratives were analysed using the feminist post-structuralist approach.

There has been a recent shift in Government policy in the Early Years. A growing discourse of a pedagogy of formal education has emerged as the view that learning key skills early might support narrowing the gap in educational attainment in later compulsory school. I was keen to unpack these discourses as my role is supporting the training of the Early Years Teacher. I selected a Foucauldian discourse analysis as the method for this research, as I wanted to understand how discursive formations can become a site of power and what impact this has on the wider Early Years sector.

The most recent UNICEF (2013) publication on the state of the world’s children is dedicated to the rights of children with disabilities to an education and a meaningful and productive life. The report stresses the importance of building an educational system based on the fundamental principles of inclusion, which are the respect for the rights, aspirations and potential of all children. While inclusion has been practiced and researched in primary and secondary school, much still needs to be done with regard to childcare provision. Despite envisaged changes and setback, concerns for improving childcare’s conditions, provision and offer remain pivotal issues both in relation to educational practice and to the need of the economy. Thus, it is not surprising that considerations about the importance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) have grown considerably in the last three decades in England, in Europe and at the wider international level.

The Department for Education commissioned a research to collect information about childcare and early years provision across England in 2011. The report findings are drawn together to provide an overview of the whole childcare and early years sector including similarities and differences between specific types of provider, breakdown of staff by staff type and average hourly pay of early years workers. The ‘absent presence’ of the exploration of unpaid staff or volunteers within the early years environment however, is evident. Therefore the focus of this paper is to investigate who these volunteers are, and to explore and analyse discourses of unpaid staff or volunteers in policy documents and in early years provision.

This Paper reports on the stakeholders stage of a longitudinal study critiquing the notion of professional identity through the development of the Early Years Professional

The paper looked at the Early Years Professional, social work, European social pedagogy and safeguarding of children

This thesis explores the political and ethical entanglements of Early Years Teachers with human and non-human worlds. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy, research and professional practice frame expected ways of working with children. This highly-feminised workforce has historically been presented as deficient. I argue this notion sees them as dehumanised subjects (Snaza, 2015), in need of constant upskilling. Posthumanist theorising was employed to reveal Early Years Teachers in relations with other humans (children, teachers) and non-humans (classroom, outdoor environments, objects, policy) forming more-than-human subjectivities. A post-qualitative methodology was developed to attend to more-than-human entanglements, with material-ethno-carto-graphy proposed as a methodological undertaking pertinent to this inquiry. The reconfigured methods-as-affinity-groups built on ethnography to explore connections within/between four Early Years Teacher case studies. The resultant data generated was mapped and read both literally and diffractively where glow data (MacLure, 2010, 2013) was selected for diffractive analysis.\ud \ud I theorised the positions of becoming-professional and being-teacher to reveal how subjectivities take either a more material connected or a more normative subject position and employ the metaphor of the earthworm to debate these shifting forms. Data revealed becoming-professional and being-teacher saw wider relational entanglements within indoor and outdoor spaces drove new modes of professionalism. Furthermore, the influence of an online tool, Tapestry, on subjectivities was explored. Additionally, vital agentic materiality (Bennett, 2010) and cyborg figurations (Haraway, 1991) were encountered in ECEC classrooms. Finally, the influence of nature has been explored where Indigenous ontologies trouble traditional vistas.\ud \ud Generative ways to view the production of Early Years Teacher subjectivities show that human and non-human worlds are always in flux. The more-than-human moments reveal the interplay between becoming-professional and being-teacher as a re-humanising enactment with subjectivities distributed across human and material bodies. These relations are a counter movement to the reified professional in policy, research and professional practice.

Natural research behaviours may present in children younger than eight years but tend to be overlooked by professional researchers, with the result that young children are rarely recognised as agents in enquiry concerning matters affecting them. This exclusion amounts to social injustice as it underestimates children’s capabilities and denies them particular rights. The thesis proposes that young children engage in research activity congruent with professional adult researchers’ behaviours, as part of their daily lives. Furthermore, the inequity caused by excluding children from recognition as researchers may be addressed if professional researchers were to find ways to recognise and value the children’s contributions as researchers.\ud \ud The empirical study that is the focus for the thesis secured a taxonomy of research behaviours from professional adult researchers which was then applied to naturalistic observations conducted with - and by - children aged 4-8 years in their settings and homes. A ‘jigsaw’ methodology was adopted, featuring constructivist grounded theory and critical ethnography, among other methodologies. Throughout, the project was committed to participatory, emancipatory and inductive principles, though challenges were encountered along the way. Alongside observations, multiple other methods and analysis were employed in the co-construction of data with children and their practitioners in three English early childhood settings and children and their parents in five homes. Professional adult researchers also contributed to primary and meta-data. \ud \ud Results indicated that problem solving, exploring, conceptualising and basing decisions on evidence were regarded by professional researchers as the ‘most important’ research behaviours. Children engaged in these behaviours of their own volition, alongside other research behaviours. Their activities included exploring materials to create novel artefacts in art work, rolling in giant cylinders, cooking and ordering objects systematically. While undertaking these activities, children often revealed higher order cognitive processes such as trial and error elimination, causality, analogy and a posteriori conceptualisation. \ud \ud The study produced a ‘plausible account’ suggesting that children aged 4-8 years do engage in research activity naturalistically as part of their daily lives and that this activity is congruent with professional adult researchers’ behaviours.

Background to the topic\ud This paper represents explorations at the beginning of my PhD which seeks to investigate whether democratic practice (Moss 2012) can flourish in the current Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy environment. \ud The promotion of ‘quality’ environments was driven by research advocating cross curricula learning through play, a qualified graduate workforce and sustained shared thinking between knowledgeable adults and children (Siraj-Blatchford et al 2002). The election of the Coalition Government in May 2010 saw a significant review of ECEC policy (Tickell 2011, Nutbrown 2012, DfE 2012) with a growing focus on formal learning, outcomes and children in schools from age 2. Much has been written about the impact of neoliberalism on education policy (Ball 1990, 1994, 2005, Ball and Bowe 1992 and Tomlinson 2005) and the market model of ECEC provides an opportunity to examine its impact in Early Years. This paper will consider English ECEC policy frameworks and their impact on practitioners. \ud Focus of the enquiry\ud This analysis investigates discursive formations in certain ECEC policies implemented or discussed by the Coalition Government which become ‘common sense’ notions of practice. It explores the development of teacher led ‘school ready’ discourses and reflects on the potential impacts on professional practice. Interpreting policy can provide a lens through which researchers and practitioners can reflect on practice. Policy analysis and unpacking discursive formations allows for exploration of relationships between professional values versus commercial values and collective interests versus competitive relations (Ball 2012). \ud Research methods and theoretical framework\ud A systematic literature review was conducted using key words and defined dates. The search included online policy documents, books and journals. The resultant documents sourced allowed for further refinement with six texts selected for analysis. The texts were analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis employing Grahams (2011) method of description, recognition and classification. Foucault’s notions of regimes of truth, power relations and governmentality were applied during the analysis. \ud Research findings and/or contribution to knowledge\ud Previous research (Miller 2008, Simpson 2010) considered the activist tendencies and resistance to performativity (Osgood 2006) of ECEC practitioners. These findings detail how current policy frameworks represent a neoliberalism reframing of educational imperatives for young children. There is a move away from a social pedagogic model of holistic development to to an outcome related discourse of performativity. Future research will investigate whether the ECEC practitioners can negotiate an alternative professional stance which privileges the centrality of children and families.