ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the academic studies in early childhood and your developing practice and emerging critical insight and thinking. It explores the background to the recent attempts in England and Wales to professionalise the early childhood workforce, discusses what constitutes an early childhood professional and places this discussion within a historical, cultural, political and social policy context. Davies suggests that the occupational cultures in Britain were directly drawn from ideologies of gender and gender imagery to explain the relations between the 'professional work of men and the 'supportive' activities of women'. This is an important distinction as many early years' writers emphasise the importance of incorporating a relational dimension into a construction of an early childhood professional identity. It incorporates a discussion on contemporary discourses on early childhood professionalism and considers recent research evidence relating to the childcare workforce's experiences of the sector and efforts to professionalise it.
