Working with the cracks in the rigging in researching early childhood professional development

Barron, IC and Taylor, L (2017) Working with the cracks in the rigging in researching early childhood professional development. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 18 (1). pp. 67-79. ISSN 1463-9491

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Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the development of the relationship between a group of early childhood academics from the same university and practitioners from a particular early years setting in the North of England into an innovative professional development and research project. The paper uses Foucauldian notions of heterotopia to theorise an approach to professional development and research concerned with examining the discourses and practices associated with provision for two-year-old children. In place of a transmission model of professional development and scientific preoccupations with research purity, we explore what is offered by an alternative approach that offered a broader engagement with ideas, feelings and the body and the layering of research complexity. We consider what emerges when the practitioners take the learning from the project back into their own settings and conclude by considering the possibilities and complexities of academics and practitioners working together to research and represent what emerged from the project.