Research into the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has evolved from a post-Second World War interest in the potential detrimental effects of non-maternal care to a current interest in identifying the features of ECEC that best contribute to supporting child development (Fenech, 2011). Quality ECEC has become an unquestioned norm in international policy rhetoric on the delivery of ECEC services (Campbell-Barr & Leeson, 2016), with the ECEC workforce routinely identified as central to delivering quality services (Melhuish, 2004; Sylva et al., 2004). The focus on the workforce has a given logic as those working in ECEC are the ones who will determine the pedagogical practice, interactions with children, provision of resources etc., but there remain questions as to what are the features of the workforce that contribute to quality ECEC. Qualifications are frequently identified as an important attribute, yet the dominance of a modernist paradigm, where multi-level modelling and statistical analysis is used to determine the quality variables that will contribute to positive impacts on child development (Dalli, 2014), results in a preoccupation with qualification levels. Whilst higher level qualifications (frequently degree level) are identified as having a positive association with child outcomes, the focus on the qualification level provides little insight as to the contribution of the training to securing quality ECEC. European lifelong learning agendas adopt a competence based model that focuses training on developing the ‘knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context’(European Commission, 2007). The competence based approach continues the modernist framework seen in understandings of quality and whilst there is an element of freedom in definition of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that should be advocated in the training of future members of the ECEC workforce, both research and policy have offered little contribution to understandings. The research presented adopts of post-structuralist approach to ECEC workforce training as a contribution to forming an understanding of the knowledge, skills and attitudes advocated for the ECEC workforce and their evidence in national training requirements. 

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