ABSTRACT
The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless one. It has to be what you can’t avoid saying, not what you set out to say.
Jasper Johns
Ongoing learning should have as much to do with the ‘why’ of what we do as the ‘how’.This is, in essence, the difference between a professional development approach and one of training for skills. Better and better outcomes for children will only be reached through purposeful reflection and challenging ourselves to take another step forward, sometimes to take a risk, but always to seek inspiration from others and be open to new ideas. Moving beyond the daily activity of delivering good early years practice is hard: you seem to be satisfying regulators, parents and your employer, so why go further? We have discussed in earlier chapters the child development, and personal development reasons for this; however, a further reason is to think about how your nursery will stand out from the crowd – how your service will be recognised as being ‘cutting edge’. In this podcast age we all have access to the same knowledge and information; what matters is the inspiration we draw from it to feed our passions and influence what we do. Our creativity is what makes the difference now.What can we make of this new idea, what potential does it have to improve outcomes for children and families, how can we best share it amongst our team? A manager/leader can help to prompt such curiosity and conversation by offering time and place for them to happen and by providing some starting points.
