Pedagogy in the Nursery: Establishing Practitioner Partnerships in High-Quality Long Day Care Programs

One of the most significant societal changes over the past few decades has been the growing number of women in the paid work force. As a direct result of this sociological phenomenon, childcare centres have been providing long day care for vastly increasing numbers of very young children. The speed of this change has created a societal dilemma regarding the level of training required to prepare practitioners for such important pedagogical work. Traditional approaches to the training and preparation of practitioners for work in this field do not always highlight the significance of the important relationship early childhood education and care practitioners have with very young children, or respond to current conceptualisations of children and families and the contexts in which they live (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2002; Moss, 2003). This paper takes issue with these points by exploring an alternative approach to the preparation of practitioners for work in this field. The use of Learning Circles as a conceptual tool is examined as an alternative response, aimed at developing a concentrated pedagogical process by which undergraduates explore the links between theory and effective practice.