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Teaching or Childcare - and do we have to choose?
This debate is something which feels like it’s raging in the Early Years world at the moment and there are two big areas of focus:
1 - To raise the profile of Early Years and its amazing, wonderful practitioners
2 - To help people (especially the powers that be) to understand the importance of play and how children learn through play.
There is a lot more around this area but these are two topics which I think the majority of the Early Years community would agree are important right now for so many reasons - policy making, the staffing crisis and outcomes for children to name a few.
So what is it that we do? It’s a complicated question, because if you list out the daily job role of an Early Years Practitioner it is endless. But the overarching question is, are we teachers or are we childcarers, and does it matter what our title is at the end of the day?
Let’s take a look at some of the opinions people have about Early Years and how they could impact the sector.
“You just play all day”
We’ve all had this said to us about our jobs, haven’t we? And it’s very tempting to argue back that we don’t just play all day - but actually at its core, isn’t that what we’re doing? Shouldn’t we be responding with “yes, and it’s great, let me tell you about all the things we learnt while we played today!”?
If we argue against this idea of ‘playing all day’ then are we risking reducing people’s understanding of the importance of play in the Early Years even more?
“We’re teachers, we spend all day teaching”
This is absolutely true as well - teaching and play aren’t mutually exclusive! In fact, I would go as far to argue, in the Early Years, you can’t have one without the other.
Early Years practitioners are 100% teachers, and I strongly believe that they should be valued just as highly (if not more so) than any teachers throughout any of the rest of the education system. If we don’t get it right in the Early Years, then it can have a massive impact on children’s future journey through the education system, and the same can certainly be said for when we do get it right
But there’s more to it than the typical ‘teaching’ role (or how that is perceived), we have to be careful not to lose the ‘care’ aspect of Early Years as well.
“Our job is to get children ready for school”
This belief about Early Years definitely leans into the opinion that changing to using ‘teachers’ would make sense.
I would argue that our job is absolutely not to get children ready for school - it’s about supporting children where they’re at and building on their skills and passions while supporting what they need. This benefits them for going out into the wider world but also just focusses on the ‘now’ and not always looking to this goal of ‘school readiness’.
“Our job is to care for children while parents are at work”
This has definitely felt like the message in recent years coming from the policy makers, with extending funding entitlements etc so that people can get back to work.
There is an important role here, if people want or need to go out to work then they should be able to do that, knowing that their children are in a setting where they are safe and cared for. The caring aspect of Early Years is so important and if we have to get this right. However, this perception of it just being somewhere for children to be while parents work can be damaging to the work being done to highlight the importance of Early Years and the impact it has on children and families.
In summary, where I’m conflicted in this whole debate is this:
If we re-title jobs to Early Years Teachers, then we definitely tick the box of giving the role more gravitas and hold it in a similar regard to any other teaching position. This could have the positive effect of helping to change policy around Early Years professions and raise their status with policy makers who can actually make a difference.
I was talking to an Early Years lecturer recently, who said that when her students leave university into an Early Years Practitioner role - unless it is titled as a teaching role, they don’t count as having gone in to a profession after university. This clearly needs to change, but is it the title that needs to change or the perception of what we’re doing in Early Years that needs to?
My concern with shifting entirely to using ‘teacher’ as the job role is the potential perception this brings from government and parents. Would there be an expectation for Early Years settings being more ‘schoolified’ and for more formal learning to take place?
Although we know that we are teaching children all day through play, without a shift in how people view play - does changing the name of the role to ‘teacher’ risk having a more damaging effect than positive?
I also think it’s integral that we don’t lose sight of the ‘care’ side of what we do by focussing too much on the title of ‘teacher’. The care is so, so important and has to be the basis of what we are doing every day - building relationships, supporting children’s wellbeing, helping through tricky transitions, the list goes on. All of this is ‘childcare’ and it is so important that none of this gets forgotten in the debate.
I guess the question we need to ask, and I wish I had the answer, is which fight can have the biggest impact, most quickly.
Do we push for a re-naming of Early Years Practitioners to Early Years Teachers but potentially risk a shift in perception and, in some situations, practice?
Or, do we put our efforts into shifting the perception of how integral play and care is to learning and development in the Early Years and focus on that?
I think ultimately, my answer is that we work on the perception of play and how important it is to learning - I would like to think this could positively impact the whole education system and highlight the importance of play based learning all the way through education - but maybe that’s a blog for another day!
