Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic: ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences

The study investigates the consequences of neoliberal changes in Danish kindergartens, specifically how an increasing degree of control and regulation by the authorities affects the kindergarten teacher’s experience of professionalism. The research question is: How do kindergarten teachers create and negotiate meaning in their professional work when increasing external control and regulation result in unintended consequences?

The study shows that kindergarten employees are not passive performers of new policy initiatives, but that they actively negotiate, interpret and prioritise the initiatives. The increased control and regulation, combined with increasingly poor working conditions and kindergarten economy, leads to a feeling that the professionalism of Danish kindergarten teachers is being undermined. At the same time, kindergarten teachers also say that the political initiatives are accepted and contribute to professional development through an expansion of the kindergarten teachers’ conceptual apparatus and a categorisation of the system. Kindergarten teachers’ negotiations, interpretations and prioritisations in the ambivalence between the positive and negative consequences of increased control and regulation lead to what the author calls a new form of complex reprofessionalisation.

The study has retrieved data from a previous study by the same researcher. The data material was obtained through seven focus group interviews at seven different locations in Denmark. Each interview lasted four hours. The interviews were filmed and transcribed, before the material was analysed with focus placed on the group, not the individual. The analyses were inductive, exploratory, open and rooted in Grounded Theory.

Aabro, C. (2020). “Juggling, ‘reading’ and everyday magic: ECEC professionalism as acts of balancing unintended consequences”. Policy Futures in Education, 18(6):757-771.