My first round of interviews focused on identifying personal
values and professional values of the Lead Practitioner. I also asked questions
to get them thinking about what the “softer outcomes” were that the Care Inspectorate
look for. Initially, I was looking at these in order to find a way of making my
research have an impact upon policy. These interviews, although a good place to start, really
didn’t feel like I was asking the right questions for the research question
that was in my mind. I was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. So about half way
through my first round of interviews I began to reflect upon what it was that I
really wanted to find out. My interest lies in looking at how love impacts upon
the professional identity of the Lead Practitioner and also upon the profession
as a whole.
Work by Dr Jools Page led me to re-structure the plan I had
for my second round of interviews. I took the research diaries which I had
asked the participants to keep and looked at the content of their first
interviews. At this stage it is purely a rudimentary analysis of the interview
transcripts. I could see three themes developing from the interview transcripts
and the diaries. The first being a need for a definition of love that makes
sense for early year’s practice, the second being individual values/ personal experiences of love and the third
being Professional Identify. This felt like a breakthrough in terms of my
thesis and the chapters I would begin to build upon. Making this breakthrough
has really freed up the way my mind is working in terms of my research. I can
see now where I might go with the findings I have.
I was very focused on trying to understand love and focused
on the work of Page, looking at Professional Love. However, when I realised the
questions I asked in the first set of interviews didn’t quite meet my research
intention I started to think about why. Firstly, I needed to build on the work
of Dr Page, not simply agree with it. Because I don’t completely agree with it.
I believe her theory is a good place for practitioners to start thinking about
professional love, but I don’t think her idea of “de-centring” is quite right.
I wanted to find out if love is something that is borne out of personal
experience and if that can be brought to the childcare setting. Practitioners I
spoke to kept telling me that the love that they experienced in the setting was
somewhere in between Professional Love and Family Love. One said “oh for goodness sake, let’s just call it
love”. So in my second set of interviews I focus on the Lead Practitioner’s
own experience of love. Using the Duplex Theory of Love by Sternberg I was able
to look at the discourse of love and how Lead Practitioners understood love in
the childcare setting. Many talk about practitioners having “it”. When pressed on what “it” is, I began to see a pattern of
different skills and knowledge.
Then came my second breakthrough. I had a really interesting
second interview with one of my participants (P8). She has taken a 180 degree
turn from saying “no” to love as a professional standard to saying “yes”. She
said that practitioners should say that they “love” children and that “it” is made up of lots of component
parts. When I pushed her on what to call this love she just said “Oh for goodness sake, let’s just call it
love” but that we had to tell people what we meant by love. I returned to
Dr Page’s research which created a model for Professional Love and how to help
practitioner’s practice it. The model encourages the practitioner to de-centre,
to remove all personal needs for love in order to start to build relationships
with the child. My research, however seems to suggest that personal experiences
perhaps have an integral part to play in how a practitioner practices “love” in
the setting (find examples). It would therefore seem remiss to have the
practitioner step away from their needs and personal experiences but rather
have them be reflexive in their practice in terms of love. I am not altogether
convinced that having the practitioner de-centre is a good thing to do. Being
aware of their own experiences is a good idea but putting their own needs to
the side might not be. Many of the participants talked about reciprocal
relationships with the children and staff being really important, also the
relationships between staff and staff as being crucial to loving relationships
between staff and children.
I sent out a pre-interview questionnaire based on the duplex
theory of love which examined the language of love and also I asked how might
love be shown in practice. This proved a really useful tool in deciding what
questions to ask the participants for their second interview. Further examination
of both of these in the interviews set me thinking about how to come up with a
way of illustrating “love” to show parents and practitioners what early years
love looks like. P8 talked about how she wanted to see a “loving setting” and
be able to include that in the setting’s ethos. This questionnaire also
encouraged a dialogue about words such as intimate and passionate, participants
considered their meanings in relation to their own personal relationships and
those of the children and colleagues they work with. I then read in Dr Page’s research findings report that she
felt that Sue Gerhardt (2004) said “defining
love in professional roles is problematic because there is no skill set that
can be applied, taught or measured”.
This struck a chord with me because on one hand I felt that it seems a
shame that such a basic human emotion needs to be re-defined into a skills set
in order for it to be seen as an acceptable practice for a professional child carer
to demonstrate but on the other hand, my participants were definitely breaking
down “it” into a set of skills and
knowledges.
At this point there was a pattern emerging to the way that
participants looked at the practice in their settings and how they could see
love. One participant even took me through an issue she was having with one
room in her setting where she could see that there was no love in the room, and
on a tour of the nursery without her saying it was very evident which room it
was. She said the staff functioned well enough, did all that was required of
them, but “it” was just missing.
Clearly there is a skills set, but what is “it”?
Many of the participants talked about “it”.
This is something that was examined in the second interviews.
Professionals were all
clear that love probably did exist but in a variety of forms. But the word
“love” as a concept was deemed unacceptable because of the connotations derived
from the language and society’s understanding of love (sexual, romantic). I am working on developing a matrix which strives to bring “love” right back into the discourse of
childcare by showing the skills set which is already in place and practice,
therefore freeing professionals to simply demonstrate love freely without
concern for what people might think they are doing.
I agree with Gerhardt saying that perhaps love cannot be
taught however looking at the skills set love clearly can be applied and if not
taught in a classroom perhaps it can be learned through vocational methods (I
had an interesting discussion with P7 regarding this). The matrix will also allow for the further development of monitoring and evaluation tools therefore making
love a measurable skills set. This is turn means we can bring what is a basic
emotion, love, into the professional identify by turning it into a skill which
can be applied, learned and measured.
This matrix is the beginning of my thought process on this,
and it will be developed further. I have handed out to a small sample of
parents, a questionnaire which seeks to get their input into love in the early
years setting and profession. Early results from this include comments such as:
”I think the feelings of the staff are
easily detected by the child and love creates a warm and supportive
environment”; “”I wouldn’t be upset if someone else loved my child”; “”I
certainly believe the staff are incredibly fond of my child…if fondness and
affection translates to love, then yes I guess one could say they love them”;
“if they (the staff) did not in practice show “love” my children would not be
asking for their teachers on days off”; “yes I feel that when I leave they
almost take over my role as parent, it is important that they care for my child
in a way that resembles home”; “I feel with love for the children and their job
our children are safer”. There are a number of questions on the
questionnaire which I will analyse, and still have some questionnaires to
collect, but first impressions are that the parents clearly want their children
to be loved and are happy with the idea, which is something that the
practitioners were at odds with. This will be interesting to examine further.
In trying to define love it has become clear that
a number of different elements are already evident. None of this seems new, so
I still question why practitioners seem so reluctant to use the word love in
their practice? Conversations I have had that child carers already, embrace all
the practice of loving the children but they are still reluctant to say that
they do. My first and second round of interviews have attempted to examine why.
And hopefully asking the parents/carers will shed some light on this also. P8 suggested the love for your own children/family is
forever but for the children in your care it is only for a short while, I for
one, am really impressed by a professional who can reach that level of passion,
intimacy and love for the children that they work with in such a short space of
time. That is a real skill, and I think that is why we should recognise it as a
professional value/standard.
The interviews provided data which supported each of the
areas in the matrix. Participants talked about how they were able to identify
“it” at interview stage, how the language of passion and intimacy was difficult
but clearly something that they did in practice. They talked about issues such
as child protection, adult safeguarding, parental interpretation of love. They
spoke about how important love was in terms of the relationships that they had
in their teams. And also the importance of reflexive practice in terms of recognising
how love impacted upon the children and the other relationships in the setting.
All of which helped develop the matrix. I have hopefully asked questions in the
second round of interviews which help build on the three themes which in turn
lead to the development of the matrix.
Suzanne Zeedyk (Hassan and Barrow, 2017) implores the Scottish Government to have courage and embed love into relationship led policies which impact directly upon outcomes for children. The current policy to increase the number of funded childcare places for children aged 3 -5 aims to support parents back into work, but Zeedyk warns that "childcare operates during the most critical period of human development, laying down the physiological foundations that the individual will draw on for the rest of their life". She goes onto say that if childcare isn't of high quality then potentially these policies could damage children. She cites two authors who warn that "nearly all daycare settings provide inadequate care for babies" (Narvaez, 2014) and Mate (2010) who contends that "emotional nurturance is disrupted by Western Society".
I find all of this quite sad, what has happened to our society that we find it hard to 'love' the children that we care for? I recently spoke with a friend who works in adult social care. She too was researching emotional labour. Her research looked at "friendships" between carers and adult recipients of that care. Her observations showed very similar results to my findings. Practitioners in social care responded in a number of ways ranging from the view that you could have friendships with clients to stating that it was definitely not appropriate for carers to hold those friendships. This pattern is also reflected in my questions to childcare professionals. They either felt very comfortable with demonstrating that they loved the children to those who said that they felt uncomfortable and that it wasn't professional to show or say that you loved the children you cared for. There are quite compelling arguments from the world of science stating that love and attachments are important for children's brain development. So why do we find it such a challenge to see love as part of our professional identity?
Zeedyk challenged a group of delegates at the Parenting across Scotland conference in 2015 to have courage to talk about love in practice. Lead Practitioners need to find the courage to give their staff permission to deliver "it" and to give the parents courage to know that the love that their childcarers are showing their children is a love comparable to their own parental love but not a replacement for. Children will thrive if they are shown love on a natural, regular basis and policy needs to reflect this, policy makers need to have the courage to embed love in professional practice within childcare. They need to acknowledge but not be bogged down by fear, fear that every adult who comes in contact with a child will cause them some harm. This fear is depriving children of much needed love for their emotional and brain development. If we could find the courage to love the children we care for and if the Scottish Government could find the courage to embed love into the early years sector then we truly would be providing services that hold children at the heart! Let's be brave.
Am I any closer to condensing all of this to 5 minutes, probably not! But hey, all you need is love. All together now.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ze_e4R9QY
References
Dr Jools Page (2017) Professional Love in Early Childhood Education and Care. (accessed 11 August 2017, http://professionallove.group.shef.ac.uk).
Sue Gerhardt (2004). Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain. Taylor Francis: East Sussex and New York.
Zeedyk, S (2017) The Early Years Agenda. Hassan, G and Barrow, S (2017) A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On. Luath Press Limited: Edinburgh.
Zeedyk, Suzanne (2015) Parenting Across Scotland Conference Key note speech, Our human need for love: why it is the problem and why it is the solution. (can be accessed via Youtube).
Navaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. W. W. Norton & Co. cited in Zeedyk, S (2017) The Early Years Agenda. Hassan, G and Barrow, S (2017) A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On. Luath Press Limited: Edinburgh.
Mate, G. (2010). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. Knopf Publishers. Cited in Zeedyk, S (2017) The Early Years Agenda. Hassan, G and Barrow, S (2017) A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On. Luath Press Limited: Edinburgh.
