Editorial. Rethinking Professionalism in Early Childhood: untested feasibilities and critical ecologies

There is a lot of talk around professionalism in early childhood. Internationally, influential
discourses, both scholarly and political, link ambitious goals to workforce requirements. Despite
huge differences between countries’ approaches to early childhood institutions, and to
qualifications and roles of staff (Oberhuemer, 2005), there appears to be a broad consensus that the
workforce is central to achieving the ambitious policy goals, for example, of increasing both
quantity and quality of provision (Siraj-Blatchford et al, 2002; Dalli, 2003; MacNaughton, 2005;
Oberhuemer, 2005; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006). In these
discourses, the workforce and its members are regularly referred to as something that has to be
professionalised, not least in order to be able to cope with the increasing challenges of the work
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001, 2006).
This special issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood is undoubtedly placed within these
discourses to further develop, rethink and re-form the early childhood profession. It does not,
however, promote one particular answer; it does not attempt to offer one specific solution to the problem of early childhood professionalism. Instead, it challenges the notion that there is one
problem that should be dealt with by applying a specific (right) solution.