The nursery school: an educating community and the challenges of complexity. Perception of professionalism, training and updating in the words of educators

Abstract

This paper reports the analysis of the results of a qualitative survey concerning various issues including: the perception of professional identity, training needs, criticalities on the workplace, expectations and emotional experiences of the nursery school educators of the Municipality of Naples involved in the action-research project “Detection of Training needs, Implementation of a Model for Professional development for educators and Retraining of Educational Services offer for the Children of the Municipality of Naples”. This project is aimed at building a participatory planning of educational action, through a path of self-reflection. The narrations built by educators through the use of words, which are collected through focus group sessions, have been oriented in multiple directions and characterized by different intensities and reflections. In particular, educators have focused on the definition of their professional role, highlighting the historical and cultural change of this figure, with conspicuous consequences on their relationship with children’ families in terms of credibility and authority that educators report as less significant nowadays. The relationship of educators with families proves to be a vital aspect of their work that contributes to increase the complexity of the work with children. Group reflections have highlighted strengths and drawbacks of educators’ training paths in the past and in the present, with reference to the compulsory educational offer of professional updating courses that frequently are not well organized (o regulated) by institutions on the basis of the real needs of the operators.  This leads us to approach another important issue which concerns the relationship within the working group of educators, in which various professional figures seldom prove to be in a conflictual relationship. This issue in especially due to the absence of the key figure of the “pedagogic coordinator”.