We Cannot Continue as We Are: The Educator in an Education for Survival

Abstract

The article takes a broad view, locating discussion about the early years educator in a wider debate about the future of the educator at a time of great crisis, when even the future of our species is in question. The state we are in calls for fundamental review of the purposes and concept of education and, therefore, the values, qualities and practices needed of all educators. The article reflects on these subjects, proposing an education for survival, democracy and flourishing, and a concept of education in its broadest sense, implying an educator capable of working with diversity and democracy, an ethics of care and encounter, an attitude of research and experimentation, and pedagogical approaches to match. The article ends with several linked questions. We need well-educated educators, but what do we gain by the focus on ‘professionalism’? Should our focus be on education and the educator: the purpose of the former and the requirements of the latter? If we talk about ‘professionalism’, does that not risk diverting us from the real task in hand, an education and educators able to respond to the crisis facing us? Might we not end up reconceptualising the concept of professionalism so much to accommodate what is important, such as the idea of multiple knowledges and democratic practice, that we render the concept meaningless?

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