Reflecting on being professional
Becoming an early childhood professional is an exciting, complicated and neverending journey of discovery into the ways that theories, practices and people come together in the daily world of early childhood education. Building meaningful relationships with children, their families and their local communities is part of that journey, Building a sense of who you want to be as a professional in the lives of children and their communities is also part of that journey, It should not come as a surprise at this point in this book to learn that there is more than one way to think about being professional.
Words that have been used to characterize an early childhood professional include:
early childhood educator (for example, Nimmo 2002)
early childhood teacher (for example, Katz 1995);
early childhood pedagogue (for example, Dahlberg et al 1999)
early childhood practitioner (for example, Carr 1998)
Broadly, all of these words describe a person who:
has specialized knowledge that enables him or her to work with children aged between birth and 8 years of age,