Challenges to effective early years practitioner professional development in disadvantaged communities and strategies for improvement

Abstract

In recent years, practitioner professional development has garnered increasing attention from researchers, resulting in a substantial body of empirical studies from around the world. This paper aims to contribute to the clarification of the concept of professional development and increase knowledge accordingly. Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning theory provided the theoretical underpinning for the study. It examined the challenges that impede effective professional development provisioning and the strategies for capacitating the 211 practitioners spread across 45 Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) centres. The setting was the communities in the participating district. The design employed convergent mixed methods research, enabling the use of a questionnaire instrument supplemented by semi-structured interviews. I used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 software to analyse the quantitative data, and the results of the means and standard deviations obtained answered the research sub-questions. The qualitative data were analysed thematically. Results and findings indicate that numerous constraints exist in providing effective professional development for practitioners. An analysis of practitioners’ responses identified several strategies to facilitate the provision of their professional development, meeting their needs. I argue that mitigating the challenges confronting community-based practitioners is crucial to achieving quality ECCE, which in turn contributes to sustainable community development.