The ideas in overview
Beliefs and understandings about how and what children learn and how best children learn will always remain central to early childhood professionals' work Furthermore, these values will not remain static, but rather, will change over time as early childhood professionals gain new perspectives from their engagement with young children and families. Karen Gallas's words, for example, illustrate new levels of excitement and challenge for her as she gained experience as an early childhood professional. Her experience highlights how the early childhood professional can use a commitment to social justice to engage with, rethink and change the distinct body of knowledge shared by her profession:
When I entered the classroom as novice teacher I was sure that my work would create new worlds of possibility for children ...[A]s the years progressed, concept of teaching well' altered and good teaching became more than believing that I was covering important curricula and that children were mastering subject matter. The social and political began to loom large as driving concerns. Children's desires for affiliation, their need to play and create new worlds, pressed in. Issues of power and entitlement, of alienation and failure, of silent o silenced complicated the process.
(Gallas 1998: 1-2)