Professionalization in early childhood education: how do educators craft their work?

Job crafting offers an exciting way to understand how people engineer their jobs to create more meaningful work. Work is meaningful if workers perceive their work as significant and serving an important purpose. To examine how four early childhood educators individually and collaboratively craft their work, the study reported here examines data from a case study in a Canadian daycare centre collected over a 16-month period by participating in theory/practice inquiry meetings and individual educator interviews. Educators develop an individual understanding of their job's requirements, individual beliefs and values but also acquire a shared understanding as they collaboratively craft their work in daily informal discussions. Explicit collaborative job crafting could contribute to professional development and improved job satisfaction for Early Childhood Education and Care practitioners. To develop an explicit collaborative understanding of their profession co-workers and supervisors need enabling working conditions such as opportunities and support for professional knowledge sharing, professional reflection, continuous training, and therefore ongoing professional development.