Early Childhood Studies: Enhancing Employability and Professional Practice

Description

Early Childhood Studies: Enhancing Employability and Professional Practice explores essential aspects of best practice within children’s services in order to enhance employability skills, identifying how and why key aspects of best practice have emerged within children’s services. The key elements of professional practice at the centre of the multidisciplinary work in today’s children’s services are considered, including: Each chapter draws together practical teaching experience with sound academic analysis to support those training to work in the early childhood sector, and those already practising, to raise their employability potential by identifying and evaluating best practice. This book considers aspects of best practice that are essential for the development of key employability skills for those working with children and families. The book’s approach is ‘reflexive’ in the sense that the content explores where understandings of best practice have come from. The book considers important aspects of professional practice: ‘different childhoods’; ‘the developing child’; ‘enhancing learning’; ‘professional skills’; ‘inclusion’; and ‘holistic practice’. These aspects of professional practice are discussed in a reflexive way through considering why they have become so important for those working with children and families. Within each chapter, the theme of employability and best practice is developed. The book is essential for existing practitioners so that they can develop their skills and for those who intend to become children’s practitioners. The content is differentiated accordingly to take into consideration these differing learning needs. ‘Employability’ and ‘best practice’ are key concerns within Early Childhood Studies. Many current students studying Early Childhood Studies go on to become primary school teachers, social workers or other health-care and education professionals. The understanding of ‘best practice’ has emerged through reflexivity as aspects of professional work have been considered and subsequently modified. The book explores the development of the understanding of best practice in key areas of professional work in early years. The content raises the employability potential of current and future children’s practitioners by identifying shared understandings of best practice in key areas of early years. Cover Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Different Childhoods and Best Practice 2 Raising Awareness of the Developing Child and Best Practice 3 Best Practice and Enhancing Learning 4 Enhancing Best Practice through Professional Skills 5 Inclusion and Its Emergence as a Key Aspect of Best Practice 6 The Rising Importance of Holistic Practice in Early Childhood Studies Conclusion Tribute to Geraldine Oliver Answers to self-assessment questions References Index