Europe and Central Asia

Social Status and Professional Development of Early Childhood and Preschool Teacher Profession: Sociological and Pedagogical Theoretical Frame takes a look at the relationship between the concepts of social status and professional development in the early childhood and preschool teacher workforce,. The paper aims to determine early childhood and preschool teachers attitudes about the position and the relevance of their profession in their society. It further aims to explore whether or not their is a connection between such attitudes and these professionals' attitudes about professional development.

This Core Competency Framework has been developed for all disciplines, professions and staff groups undertaking a clinical role within NHS Scotland. The twin aims of the framework are
(1) to describe the key areas of child protection work that are common and core across all disciplines, professions and staff groups with a clinical role, and (2) to describe the recommended core knowledge and understanding necessary to support these areas of work. Although this framework will be most appropriate for those with an identified role in relation to protecting children, the information it contains will be of interest to anyone who needs to know how to recognise and respond to concerns about children, in the course of their other, more regular duties.

The early years workforce: a fragmented picture, produced by the Education Policy Institute, gathered administrative data about early years providers and staff in England. The aim of this report was to create a clearer picture of the demographics, pay and qualification levels of the early years workforce. Further, the report set out to understand how these characteristics vary across school-based settings, private, voluntary and independent providers and childminders.

This project used readily available, official resources in order to generate new researched questions that require additional analysis. The early years workforce: a fragmented picture provides a glance into early years provision in England, data about the workforce and the implications for children in funded provision.

Competent Educators of the 21st Century: Principles of Quality Pedagogy is a policy document that defines quality teaching practices when working with children from 3 to 10 years old, and their families, to better support the child's development and well-being. 

This resource contains:

• A brief history of the development of the Principles, including references to the international documents on which they are built,
• Explanations of the values the Principles represent for ISSA and its member NGOs,
• Short suggestions for how they can be used and by whom,
• Brief descriptions of each of the 7 Focus Areas that provide the framework for the Principles of Quality Pedagogy,
• A list of the 20 Principles and the 85 Indicators that describe how to apply these Principles.

In addition to the to the four full PDF versions, ISSA has translated the Quality Principles into two Romani dialects: Vlaxicko and Rumungricko. You can find these on the ISSA website.

Based on its long experience in working with practitioners, mostly in challenging contexts, ISSA has articulated an approach that embeds the values and practices that are considered to lead to meaningful and sustainable mechanisms for continuous professional growth.

An important outcome of this process is called “Roads to Quality”. This is more than a guidebook explaining how the resources in the ISSA Quality Resource Pack can be used to increase the quality of practices in early childhood education services. It stands for ISSA’s approach towards practitioners’ professional growth and nurturing their professionalism. It stands for the systemic change in early childhood education systems that should reflect the concern to invest in professionalism. As a democratic and inclusive professional learning community, ISSA promotes learning within its network, while at the same time bringing in knowledge and innovation from outside the network.

With this guidebook, ISSA proposes not only a quality framework for early childhood education practices—including a range of resources supporting its translation into practice—but also a “know-how” approach that reflects the consistency between scaffolding children’s development and learning, and scaffolding practitioners’ professional growth in such a way that each achieves their full potential.

This regional (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania and Serbia) overview aims to sketch the social service workforce—with a focus on those engaged in the child protection system—in southeast Europe. Specific research areas include, but are not limited to the following:
1. Perceptions and understandings of social service work
2. Who does what and where
3. Policy and regulatory frameworks
4. Organization and funding of child protection systems
5. Competencies and standards for the social service workforce
6. Professional development opportunities
7. Motivation and support
8. Working conditions for the workforce
The finding of the study can be used for improving the child protection system and the lives of children, families and communities by multiple stakeholders which among other include: national governments, professional social service worker associations, NGOs and civil society agencies that rely on the social service workforce to provide child protection services, and educational institutions who train social service workers.
This report represents part of a global research movement to map the social service workforce in diverse regions, which aims at highlighting promising approaches and unique elements to certain countries whereas at the same time identifies common challenges and trends across regions.

Child Protection Hub

2016

This Early Years Workforce Strategy from the United Kingdom details how the department for Women, Equalities and the Early Years plans to support the early years sector and remove barriers to attracting, retaining and developing the early years workforce. 

Chapter one of this document focuses on attracting staff to the sector, while the second chapter takes a look at retaining and developing staff. Several commitments are also addressed in this strategy, including: 

• Enabling staff with Early Years Educator qualification who also hold level 2 English and mathematics qualifications, including Functional Skills, to count in the level 3 staff:child ratios.
• Consulting on allowing those with Early Years Teachers Status (EYPS), and its predecessor Early Years Professional Status (EYPS), to lead nursery and reception classes in maintained schools. 
• Working with the sector to develop level 2 childcare qualfication criteria.
• Improving the quality of early years training and providing access to continous professonal development (CPD).
• Providing funding to support the sector to develop quality improvement support in partnership with schools and local authorities.

This document further addresses challenges faced by the early years workforce and actions to be taken to address these.

The quality of the early childhood workforce is central to service provision in this area, being a major factor in determining children’s development over the course of their lives. Specific skills and competencies are expected from early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce. Well-trained staff from ECEC settings are an extremely important factor in providing high-quality services which will positively influence the outcomes of children. The present paper analyses the quality of early childhood education and care workforce from the parents’ perspective in the context of Romania’s early childhood reform agenda. A critical review of the specific situation of the early childhood system in relation to the workforce from this sector is made in the first part of the paper in order to highlight the complexity of this issue. In the second part, the authors will present the results of empirical research developed in 2017 using qualitative and quantitative methods in order to assess the activity of early childhood education and care staff. The main challenges in this field as they emerge from research will be analyzed, the findings having implications for policy-makers and practitioners in the field of ECEC services.

This document, commissioned by Health Education England, provides a framework for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Health Visitors.

The framework sets out the importance of CPD and offers a set of guiding principles that should be embedded in all post-qualifying training and development provided for health visitors. It builds on the standards set out in “A National Framework for Continuing Professional Development for Health Visitors - Standards for the High Impact Areas for Early Years (iHV, 2015)”. Best practice standards are offered to promote the expected knowledge, skills and attitudes that should be achieved by health visitors to support the development of professional practice in four of the key areas identified from policy, key stakeholders and practitioners.

The four standards for Continuing Professional Development included in this document are seen as essential to support the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme ( DH, 2009) and the health visitor service specification (NHS England, 2014). They cover:

• Working therapeutically to effect change with children and families;
• maintaining and developing prescribing practice;
• providing and developing intelligence to inform the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment Process; and
• working in partnership with families and communities to build capacity and resilience.