Study title

The training of childcare practitioners is a key part of the Government's plans for improving and extending childcare for young children (with a particular focus here on the under-fives). However, little is known about the experience of such training. This research will focus upon the processes by which students on childcare courses acquire, interpret and inhabit a 'vocational habitus' (Colley 2006, Colley et al. 2003). We will focus on two specific issues: first, the processes of becoming a 'professional' and what that means for the values, practices and sense of identity of the students, and second, the students' understandings and enactments of two sets of relationships, those with children and those with parents, the conduct of which, we suggest, lie at the core of the practitioner's vocational habitus. This qualitative study will involve interviews with two different types of students (school leavers and those already working in childcare) in two Further Education colleges within Greater London.