The Personal is Professional: Professionalism and the Birth to Threes Practitioner

Abstract

This article puts forward the idea that in order to sufficiently meet the needs of very young children and thereby develop quality provision, early years practitioners must develop a professional approach that combines personal awareness with theoretical knowledge. It argues that the development of such abilities is enabled in process-oriented training over an extended period of time and describes the ‘Key Times' Project (London Metropolitan University with the London Borough of Camden, 2000–2005) as illustration of a process that impacted positively on practitioners' professional self-worth through valuing self-awareness in relation to the physical and emotional dimensions of practice.