Recently, many have questioned whether ECE meets the definition of a profession (Feeney, 2012; Goffin, 2013, 2015). Some have concluded that it currently does not, and a review of the list in Table 11.1 provides evidence that this conclusion is accurate. While ECE has developed some of the characteristics in Table 11.1, not all are currently in place. For example, a Code of Ethical Conduct, put forth by the NAEYC (2011a), has existed for several years. However, there is no universal requirement that ECE practitioners know or abide by this code.

Similarly, in terms of standards of practice, many states have adopted guidelines defining the skills and knowledge necessary to provide quality childcare. However, each state can define these guidelines as they see fit, and various licensing requirements can be found across the U.S. As guidelines, they carry no authority over the continued practice of a practitioner who chooses not to follow them.

Moreover, these competencies are often set by the state legislature and defined by the state agency responsible for child care licensing rather than being defined and agreed to by the profession. This fact points to the absence of autonomy. Having autonomy is another marker of a profession. Licensed child care, a central mode of delivery in ECE, is heavily regulated by the state rather than by the profession, providing notable evidence for the lack of autonomy in ECE, another critical feature in a profession. Further, prolonged training with rigorous entry requirements must be more consistently applied for entry into ECE to allow it to be considered a profession.

This analysis should clarify that ECE has work to do before it can claim the title of a profession and before those engaged in this work can claim to be professionals. However, identifying this reality has not made it easy for ECE to move toward the status of a profession. While numerous efforts have aimed to solve the problem, large-scale success has yet to be achieved. The significance of the work of early childhood educators remains unrecognized, and they remain under-compensated; the field of early childhood education remains fragmented and siloed with no clear definition of its boundaries. Little specialized knowledge is required for entry (Committee on the Science of Children et al., 2015).

NAEYC’s Efforts: Power to the Profession and the Unifying Framework

A hopeful initiative has recently emerged. Beginning in 2017, NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children), the leading professional association for those engaged in the work of ECE, made a significant investment in achieving this goal. This initiative, titled Power to the Profession, and carried out by a task force representing 15 national ECE-related organizations, created a Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession (2020). According to Power to the Profession (n.d.), the framework is designed to “set a vision for how to drive the significant and sustained public investment that will allow all children, birth through age 8, to benefit from high-quality early education provided by well-prepared, diverse, supported and compensated professionals” (para. 3). The title of the framework, including the term profession, as well as the focus on preparation and support of the professionals illustrate the focus of moving ECE to this status, while also recognizing the need for public funding to achieve this long-standing goal.

Power to the Profession was a multi-year process that involved eight “decision cycles” in which decisions on the defining issues of the field were presented to stakeholders for feedback. At each cycle, practitioners in the field responded in writing to the proposal, engaged in focus groups, and other means of providing feedback. After this process, each proposal was revised and ultimately finalized. The results of the eight decision cycles were presented in the Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020). A summary of the recommendations in the framework can be found in the [appendix]appendix 2[/appendix]. In addition to summarizing the recommendations, the table includes how they addressed the eight criteria of a profession identified earlier in this chapter. The recommendations that make up the Framework are notable in their effort to address as many issues facing ECE as possible at one time.

Naming and Defining the Profession

The first issue addressed by the Task Force was what to call the profession (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020). Settling on what to call itself is a long-existent problem with ECE. Note that the title “early childhood education” is the selected name throughout this chapter. Nevertheless, many do not accept this and use other names, such as early care and education or early learning. The difficulty was not just about agreeing to a single name but determining which practitioners working with young children were part of the profession. A long-held aversion to exclusion has made it difficult to draw a boundary around who is “in” and who is “out” of the profession. However, this decision is necessary to define a field as a profession. After much deliberation, the Task Force chose to call the profession Early Childhood Education, and the professionals are called Early Childhood Educators. Further, the authors drew a boundary between the profession and the larger field of early childhood, delineating the professionals from other allied practitioners who, while still engaged in work that supports children and families, are not early childhood educators and not part of the profession.

Figure 11.2 presents the Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) illustration that depicts the relationship between the field of ECE–everything outside of the profession–and the profession designated by the orange section at the top of the circle. The profession, as proposed, includes three roles:

1. Early Childhood Educators who provide direct service to children birth to age eight and on whom the Unifying Framework is primarily focused
2. Professional Preparation Faculty and Trainers who instruct, observe, and monitor the practice of aspiring ECEs
3. Pedagogical and Instructional Administrators who guide the practice of ECEs

In addition to defining the profession and the professionals, the Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) identifies three designations of early childhood educators: Early Childhood Educator I, II, and III, as presented in Table 11.2. Creating these designations addresses a confusing jumble of titles and roles in the current field, creating a uniform approach to defining responsibilities (scope of practice) and preparation. The Task Force also recognized that the scope of practice attached to a specific level of professional preparation differs by setting. For example, in Birth to age five settings, a practitioner with an associate degree may be a lead teacher in a classroom. That same level of education is tied to an assistant teacher position in a K to grade 3 setting.

Note: Source Generated by author based on info in source cited in text discussing this table (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020)

Defining Professional Standards and Professional Preparation Delivery

The Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) also addressed the need for a unified system of professional preparation for EC Educators. The Unifying Framework recognizes the role of higher education in professions, informing the content of professional preparation and delivering high-quality preparation that successfully graduates competent professionals. The Task Force selected the updated and revised NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies (NAEYC, 2019) as the standards for professional preparation. Given that a profession is defined partially by the existence of standards for practice set and defined by the profession, choosing standards developed by NAEYC rather than a state licensing entity is appropriate. These revised standards were released shortly before the Unifying Framework and included a “leveling” of the standards, further illuminating the distinction between the three Early Childhood Educator designations (See Table 11.2). This “leveling” guides professional preparation programs to pitch coursework content appropriately to the different designations and further underscores the differences in the scope of practice.

This approach addresses the reality that many practitioners have worked in the field for some time without college coursework. These individuals may not be willing to undertake a college education but wish to remain employed in the newly named profession. These designations recognize the contribution of all professionals regardless of the scope of practice. The Unifying Framework additionally recommends that all early childhood educators complete a general early childhood education program before specializing in, for example, a focus on an age group such as preschool or toddler-aged children.

In addition to adopting professional preparation standards, the Unifying Framework calls on higher education institutions to be accountable through accreditation by a governing body to ensure the delivery of competently prepared early childhood educators. Moreover, the Unifying Framework calls on higher education to work to ensure seamless transition across educational systems, access to higher education by an ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse population, and diversity in faculty that prepares early childhood educators.

Finally, the Unifying Framework recommends that once all the requirements just described are in place (i.e., higher education access to all who seek it, effective higher education that produces competent educators, utilizing a uniform set of standards), then early childhood educators should be licensed upon completion of a program of professional preparation.

Professional Compensation

The Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) also addressed the requirement for increased compensation for current and future ECE professionals. They recommend “public school salary scales as a minimum benchmark for comparable compensation, assuming comparable qualifications, experience, and job responsibilities” (p. 41). The compensation for an early childhood educator should be comparable regardless of setting (i.e., private childcare, state-funded preschool, public school kindergarten). The Unifying Framework also calls out the importance of a benefits package for all EC educators regardless of setting. The Task Force stated that the other requirements were only possible by instituting increased compensation. In other words, any increase in education or responsibility resulting from the Unifying Framework would necessitate a matched increase in salary. The Task Force also recognized that employers that hire early childhood educators should be accountable for providing comparable compensation (salary and benefits). The Task Force indicates that such accountability is only possible with a financial investment from the federal government, which requires a recognition of ECE as a public good that serves all of society.

The Purpose of the Unifying Framework

As described here, the goal of the Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) was to address the issues that have kept early childhood education from claiming its status as an actual profession. By formalizing ECE as a profession, those who do this work will be well-prepared and well-compensated, finally receiving the status and recognition they have long deserved. While this is accurate, it does not explain why doing so is essential.

Those who have argued for defining ECE as a profession have claimed effectively that the well-being of children is what is at stake (Goffin, 2013; Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020). Suppose ECE remains a fragmented, unrecognized, under-compensated occupation. In that case, many children will not have access to the early education that research has consistently shown improves each child’s developmental and learning outcomes. NAEYC, the association that initially called the 15 representative entities that made up the Task Force, has a vision. This vision, sometimes called an audacious one, is to unify as a profession to argue for ECE as a public good that our tax dollars should support. These efforts aim to ultimately have ECE recognized as a profession so that those who do that work are well-prepared, well-compensated, and supported—doing so to ensure that the children who receive their efforts will have positive future trajectories.

Attributions

1. Figure 11.1: Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession © National Association for the Education of Young Children Fair use: screenshot excerpt referring to full report: “Power to the Profession, National Association for the Education of Young Children”.
2. Figure 11.2: Early Childhood Education Profession within the ECE Field © National Association for the Education of Young Children Used with permission.
3. Figure 11.3: Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators © National Association for the Education of Young Children Fair use: screenshot excerpt referring to full report: “Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators”.