Seminar on Professional Associations in Early Childhood Education was held at the Faculty of Education UC

The event was attended by Claudia Lagos, Undersecretary for Early Childhood Education, and Linda Mitchell, WMIER academic from the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

 

With the presence of guests and guests National and international institutions, including the Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education, Claudia Lagos, was held this Monday, March 6, at the Gabriela Mistral Auditorium of the Faculty of Education UC the seminar "Construction of professionalism in Early Childhood Education: Reflecting from professional associations".

The meeting was aimed present the results of Fondecyt 1200136, research by academics Cynthia Adlerstein, from UC Education, and Marcela Brown, researcher at the Center for Advanced Research in Education (HELLO).

The event was attended by the dean of Education UC, Alejandro Carrasco, who delivered the words of welcome. “The importance of early childhood education is an invisible and cumulative impact, which is seen in the medium and long term. The challenge that the country has to add families, nursery schools, gardens, It is a very big and important challenge, and also the challenge of building a profession", indicated the dean, who also explained the changes that are being implemented in the career of Preschool Education.

“We are modifying our mesh. We have just left of a successful accreditation process and what we want to do has different purposes. In the center is the idea of ​​strengthening the professionalization of the career. We seek to try to incorporate greater knowledge about public policies and we are also aligning ourselves with greater force in the curricular bases of the Ministry of Education”, added Alejandro Carrasco.

The seminar was also attended by Linda Mitchell, academic of Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research of the University of Waikato, New Zealand, who added that “early childhood education is important for their well-being, but we also need to consider the importance of families and the community as a whole,” added Linda Mitchell.

The undersecretary of Preschool Education, claudia lakes, who delivered words at the beginning of the seminar, expressed his joy for this momentous encounter, and also “receiving me as a kindergarten educator in this space. It is a reason for great joy to return to this place".

He also explained the process in which the Undersecretary is currently involved. “A stage that it has more to do with a new governance, with once again highlighting a perspective of institutional re-articulation, of seeking joint spaces of synergy, agree, what we are doing, how we are doing it. Go looking for those meeting points that the different institutions have, the great supporters, the researchers, the professional associations, and how in some way we are configuring this stage of consolidation of an educational level with much more force”.

 

Reflecting from professional associations

Early Childhood Education Professional Associations (APEP) they are not new, points out the academic Marcela Pardo from CIAE. They have a long historical tradition in Chile, however, "there is a very interesting fact in recent years, and that is that there has been a growth and diversification of professional associations in the field in the last five years, particularly after the Feminist Movement and after the Social Outbreak”.

In this context, the research question arises: How do early childhood educators in Chile relate to participation in APEP and the construction of professionalism? The results are varied and revealing, and are condensed into an ecosystem from four participatory speeches: Empower learning and pedagogical knowledge, make transformational politics, advocate for historic struggles and renewed directions, and fight for protection and decent working conditions.

Among the conclusions are three main points. In the first place, that the Chilean APEP appear relevant to the deliberate construction of professionalism, beyond its structural conditions. The second, that the Chilean APEP avoid the adversities of neoliberal policies, self-generating an ecosystem of professional associations. And thirdly, that this ecosystem is in permanent reconfiguration and production of different professionalisms.

 

Precedent-setting results

All these results are very relevant, explains UC Education academic Cynthia Adlerstein, considering that the importance of APEP has been little explored in Chile and Latin America.

“When we advance with these results, what we do is put Chile and Chilean pre-school education in the international arena, and we compare the results of this research with what happens in other countries that are very advanced in terms of teacher collectivism and professional teacher associations, such as New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland, Canada and Australia, among others. Chile, we would say, is today the country of Latin America that manages to enter the debate of international professionalism regarding these teachers.

The second importance is that the results of the research show that "it is necessary to move towards policies that value the contribution and construction of professionalism that professional associations make, and that therefore It is also important to advance in the construction of policies or in an agenda, for the professionalism of early childhood education”, adds Adlerstein.

Ultimately, he explains that the results are very important because they allow us to observe how is it that today this professionalism is built in various ways, has different meanings that mobilize them, and they are built very late in the professional development of teachers.

Research and results show, says Cynthia Adlerstein, that it is possible to make research a platform for dialogue and incidence in public policy. And what we saw in the seminar It was a space for meeting, for dialogue., where the academy, representatives and managers of public policy and also the Professional associations and the unions with their representatives”.

"These results also inform the initial teacher training that they should begin to form skills, knowledge, knowledge, attitudes in students so that they understand that the profession and professionalism not only has to do with the pedagogical practices that are developed in the classroom, but also with practices of professional collaboration with other colleagues, with other peers in these professional associations”, concludes the academic.

Images of the event: