Professionalization and Counter-Professionalization in Early-Childhood Education and Care

The early childhood education and care (ECEC) domain has lived impressive changes in the last decade, becoming central as women are growingly involved in labour market and families demand for externalizing preschool childcare, cutting across middle and lower-middle classes. Especially in welfare countries (but not exclusively), the increasing demand for services has not only increased the number of educators, but also pushed towards two concurrent trends: on the one hand, an increasing professionalization, with demand on credentials and requirements for accessing the profession in institutionalised ECEC services, on the other, an increasing diversification of the services offered. Services such as associative creches or cooperative playgrounds have gained ground as alternatives to school-like kindergartens, undermining standardized professionalization. These, along with continuous, or revitalized, forms of individualised and personalised home-based services, such as nannies, childminders, and informal care. Notwithstanding the heterogeneity and dynamism of this occupational field, professionalism among childcare practitioners is still under-explored in the sociological debate on professional groups.

In this session, we aim to explore this dynamism, and the inter-relatedness between current trends of professionalization in school-like childcare services and counter-professionalization discourses employed mostly (but not exclusively) by those who practice childcare outside formal (private or public) institutions. In particular, we would like to focus on the activisms and creativity that incites counter-professionalization discourses, contrasting the different claims of the different groups of professionals involved. Papers that take an intersectional perspective over the matter are particularly welcomed.