Identity Changes in Portuguese Pre-school Teachers Over the Last Ten Years

Author(s):

Amélia LopesMargarida Marta

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 03 B, Teacher’s work, Training and Professionalism I

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-25

14:00-15:30

Room:

M.B. SALI 6, Päärakennus / Main Building

Chair:

Eric Mangez

Contribution

In many countries in Europe, pre-school education dates back to the heyday of the welfare state. In Denmark and Italy, the public sector has a role as service provider and as financier. The Netherlands opted, in 2005, for a politics of the market to deliver services for children less than 4 years (Moss & Humblet, 2007). In Sweden, pre-school education was essentially public until the 1990s, since when the state has promoted the privatisation and marketization of the public sector (Löfdahl & Perez Prieto, 2009). In Portugal, however, the network of pre-school education was included within the public sector only after April 25, 1974. Currently, Portuguese pre-school education has coverage of about 70%, of which, however, 50% is provided by the private sector (in existence since the nineteenth century).

In a previous study (Marta, 2003, Marta & Lopes, 2008), it was observed that the professional identities of teachers within each sector were sharply differentiated and that the collective identity of public sector preschool teachers was similar to that claimed internationally today for pre-school education in general (OECD, 2000). These results stressed the importance of analyzing the impact of work contexts (public or private) on the quality of education offered, in particular its contribution to a quality public education.

Since this study has examined pre-school teachers with careers solely within the public sector or solely within the private sector, the specific objective of the study we will present is to explore the impact of the work experiences in the public sector on the construction of preschool teachers identities, by means of examining preschool teachers with work experiences in both sectors.

The study adopts the notion of professional identity construction advanced by Claude Dubar (1997) and Lopes (2009) and the notion of individual and collective identity proffered by Louis Guérin and Zavalloni (1984) and Lopes (2001, 2008). According to Dubar (ibid.) the construction of professional identities proceeds from a double transaction: the one subjective, internal or biographical, between what the individual has been and wants to be; and other objective external or relational, between the individual and others with whom he interacts. According to Lopes (2009), the relational transaction is established at different levels of the ecological system, which possess specificities and are simultaneously interdependent, so that at each level studied, all the others make their presence.

Also according to Lopes (2008), professional identity is individual and collective. At the individual level it is "one of the social identities of the person, dependent on personal identity as a whole" and of the collective identities possible for the professional group present in the culture, which are defined as "systems of action and interpretation [on the part of] actors in social interaction" (ibid., p.3). Along the same lines, Louis-Guérin and Zavalloni (1984, p. 17) state that (professional) social identity expresses "the interaction between the social and personal components of identity." Zavalloni (1979) considered it as a cognitive structure, linked to representational thought, whose content and dynamics emerge from personal biography and social history.

Method

In this study the Representational Contextualisation Method (Zavalloni & Louis-Guérin, 1984) was used. The method involves two steps. First, respondents fill out an inventory concerning psycho-social identity and are then interviewed on the basis of their responses. Completion of the inventory provides information as to how the individual identifies his group membership and how he perceives this in terms of identification/opposition and as having positive or negative value. The interview provides access to the images raised by groups of belonging, to their implicit referents (subjective social identity) and to the differential meanings of the characteristics attributed to groups, as they apply to the individual and / or others, allowing the identification of convergences and differences between individual identity and collective identity. In the study an adapted version of the inventory was used, taking into account the objectives of the study. Thirty-six preschool teachers having work experiences in the public and private sectors completed the inventory and were interviewed.

Expected Outcomes

The results indicate that even in mixed careers, work experience in the public sector results in an identity of preschool teachers dedicated to professionalism, inspired by principles of innovation and democracy, focused on community and participation, and oriented towards active methodologies of pedagogical work. Organizational changes over the last ten years increased bureaucracy and reduced the opportunities for reflective and collaborative work, but have strengthened the institutionalisation of pre-school education as an integral part of public education, contributing to the professionalisation process of pre-school education. This reinforcement has also produced changes in the private sector with an impact on private sector preschool teachers’ identities. The fear of a potential loss of demand reflected in greater attention to the educational character of activities, which in turn has led to a greater recognition of professional specificity of preschool teachers. The results indicate, therefore, that important steps have been taken in recognising the educational dimension of early years’ education in Portugal. The changes over the last few years seem not to have resulted in a loss of public pre-school education identity, but rather in the enhancement of the educational character of pre-school education in general, public or private.

References

DUBAR, C. (1997). A Socialização: construção das identidades sociais e profissionais. Porto: Porto Editora. HUMBLET, P. & MOSS, P. (2007) A relação público e privado: como fazê-la resultar. Available at: http://cadernosei.no.sapo.pt/ie/2007,001.htm. Access on 30 June 2008. LÖFDAHL, A., & PEREZ Prieto, H. (2009). Between control and resistance: planning and evaluation texts in the Swedish preschool. Journal of Educational Policy, 24(4), 393-408. LOPES. A. (2001). Libertar o desejo, resgatar a inovação – a construção de identidades profissionais docentes. Lisboa: Instituto de Inovação Educacional. Lopes, Amélia (2008). La construcción de identidades docentes como constructo de estrutura y dinámica sistémicas: argumentación y virtualidades teóricas y prácticas. Profesorado – Revista de curriculum y formación del profesorado, 11, 3. http://www.ugr.es/local/recfpro/rev113COL1.pdf. LOPES, A. (2009). Teachers as Professionals and Teachers’ Identity Construction as an Ecological Construct: an agenda for research and training drawing upon a biographical research process. European Educational Research Journal, vol 8 Number 3 www.wwwords.eu/EERJ, 461. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.461. MARTA, M. (2003). Impacto dos contextos de formação inicial e de trabalho na construção da identidade profissional das educadoras de infância. Porto: Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto. (Master Dissertation) MARTA, M., & LOPES, A. (2008). Construção de identidades profissionais em educação de infância: comparação de percursos no sector público e no sector privado. In Infâncias Possíveis, Mundos Reais. Cdrom. ISBN: 978-972-8952-08-2. OCDE (2000). A educação pré-escolar e os cuidados para a infância em Portugal. Ministério da Educação: Departamento da Educação Básica. ZAVALLONI, Marisa (1979). Identité sociale et éco-égologie, vers une science empirique de la subjectivité. In Pierre Tap (Dir.), Identité individuelle et personnalisation (pp. 195- 209). Toulouse: Privat. ZAVALLONI, Marisa, & LOUIS-GUERIN, Christiane (1984). Identité sociale et conscience – Introduction à l’égo-écologie. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

Author Information

Amélia Lopes

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences University of Porto

Educational Sciences

Porto

Margarida Marta

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences - University of Porto

Educational Sciences

PORTO

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