ABSTRACT
This chapter allows you to build upon your 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. 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. This provides readers with an opportunity to use this chapter as a platform from which to consider and reflect upon their own personal and professional development.
