TY  - THES
AU  - Leach-McGill, Daniel
Y2  - 2018/08/20
Y1  - 2018
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/11343/214752
AB  - My research investigates the influence of policy reform on the professional identities of Early Childhood Education and Care professionals operating in an integrated service setting. I used interviews and activity-based focus groups to examine ways that ECEC professionals describe and value their work and how their priorities and practices shape their professional identities. In addition, I analysed five key ECEC policy-reform documents to identify the problems they propose and explore ways that policy imperatives shape the practices of ECEC professionals. 
I worked between critical and poststructuralist theories to explore the complex intersection between policy and practice. I drew on the work of Foucault to explore concepts of governmentality and Butler to explore the performative ways in which policy is enacted. Turning to critical theory, I drew on Fraser’s concepts of recognition, redistribution, and representation along with Lynch’s concept of relationality, using these constructs to fashion a model of professional inclusion. Using this model, I traced the professional performances and practices of six ECEC professionals in one integrated care setting. I examined the ways in which both practitioner performances and government policies were influenced by cultural, economic, political, and affective scripts that circulated as discourse through the field. 
Through my research, I found that both policy descriptions of quality service delivery and practitioner priorities are increasingly influenced by neoliberal ideology in ways that often obscure other valued professional contributions. I used the model of professional inclusion to re-centre views of professionalism and to examine the affective work in which ECEC professionals engage to counter-balance economically scripted policy descriptions of ECEC practice. Using this model, I argue for greater recognition of the affective effort that ECEC professionals describe in relation to implementing integrated approaches and undertaking the relational elements of their work.
T1  - The impact of policy on early childhood education and care professionals working in integrated service settings
L1  - /bitstream/handle/11343/214752/DLeach-McGill_The%20Impact%20of%20Policy%20on%20ECEC%20Professionals%20Working%20in%20ISS_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
ER  -