What is an ‘educator’?: The impact of policy discourses on early childhood professionals

Background: This thesis investigates how policy-driven approaches to change in early childhood education in Australia are impacting on the field, and its dominant discourses, and on how professionals interpret the process of change. The thesis contributes to the investigation of the impacts of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) since its introduction in 2009. This is an important issue for early childhood education because understanding the ways in which educators see their role in the workplace has the potential to deepen our understanding of what it means to work in the early childhood field right now, as well as what it will mean for future practitioners entering the field.
Aim: The research question asked: How do Victorian early childhood degree-trained educators perceive the term ‘educator’, as used in Australian policy documents? The thesis identified a gap in the literature in relation to the naming of early childhood practitioners’ roles. Although there is a growing body of literature around the use of the EYLF in relation to how it applies to children and families, there is limited research regarding what practitioners think of the changes the EYLF has made, and what these changes mean for them.
Method: The thesis takes a poststructuralist perspective on the role of language and uses a sub-category of discourse analysis, Membership Category Analysis (MCA), to analyse the data. Six degree-qualified early childhood professionals were interviewed. Three were based in sessional kindergartens and three in a long day care setting. The interviews were conducted over 45 minutes, primarily over phone or webcam.
Results: The thesis demonstrates that the meaning of the term ‘educator’, to those experiencing it, is constantly changing and developing, so it is difficult to come to a clear, defined, single ‘truth’ of what it means to be an ‘educator’. Using MCA, the thesis argues firstly that there are two categories within the data: discursive resisters category (teacher) and discursive adapters category (educator). The two categories indicate that the field may well still be finding its way into what it means to be an ‘educator’. Secondly, this thesis argues that these categories do not exist in isolation. There are a range of issues outside of these categories that impact on the way practitioners understand their role in the field. The implications for policy development and future research include the need for greater understanding of how policy documents are embodied within the field. Further research could also be expanded into diploma- and Certificate III-qualified practitioners to provide greater topic saturation.