Rethinking professional roles in contemporary ECEC by reducing the gap between health and education. Lessons learned from the pandemic

In the last months, ECEC practitioners in all European countries have been facing the challenge of continuing their educational work despite the constraints and limitations imposed by the pandemic crisis. Under the pressure of health security during and after lockdown family life, children’s daily experience and professional practices have dramatically changed (OECD, 2020). New rules have been set and different educational strategies have been invented and enacted. More reflection and discussion are required to provide practitioners with adequate support to respond to the ‘social health’ emergencies generated by the pandemic – especially regarding prevention/support actions for disadvantaged families and children (educational poverty, migration, economic/environmental disadvantage, disabilities, special needs). This paper discusses the need to develop an ‘interdisciplinary-based’ professional language and culture for ECEC educators, and to revisit their expertise in light of how the COVID-19 emergency has changed their educational responsibilities, calling for new competences and richer professional development. Responding to emergencies implies intercepting signs of vulnerability in children and families as they first appear in the daily life of ECEC settings. This can be most effectively done through community work based on stronger networking relationships with other practitioners and services, especially health professionals and paediatricians. The post-pandemic crisis highlights the need to invest locally in the professional development of ECEC educators as key «tutors in resilience» (Cyrulnik, Malaguti, 2005) as well as in that of paediatricians and other practitioners, based on the assumption that social health includes the physical and mental health of children and of the entire community. This means rethinking both how CPD (continuing professional development) is organized and its contents. As a starting point for reflecting on these issues, I draw here on preliminary findings from a family survey about children’s experiences during the initial 2020 COVID-19 lockdown (Mantovani et al., 2021). which was administered through the paediatric network SICuPP (Italian Society of Primary Care Paediatricians – Lombardy) in Northern Italy. This study is itself the outcome of promising collaboration with a network of paediatricians in a region of Italy that has been severely affected by the COVID-19 emergency