“Who I am at work” - sources and determinants of childcare workers professional work.

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which childcare workers position their background in their work practice (sources) and explore how they perceive their work as childcare workers (determinants). This exploratory study focuses on the experiences and perceptions of childcare workers. 20 individual interviews were organized with qualified childcare workers. Transcriptions were analysed using thematic analysis to explore perceptions of sources and determinants of strategies, which is described in the context of U. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. The model reveals that the childcare worker's professional role forms the basis for their self-perceptions, with the mesosystem emphasizing the crucial influence of beliefs and behaviors from other childcare workers, directors, parents, and children on the shaping of their professional identity, while the exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem collectively contribute to the dynamic and time-dependent construction of this identity within the broader societal and cultural context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).The professional experience of childcare workers is analyzed in light of the needs for strengthening professional practice, advocating for the implementation of policies that ensure better professional status. The determinants influencing strategies in their work were identified as mental costs, attitudes toward the profession, successes and failures, and the atmosphere in the facility, emphasizing the importance of managerial support and the need for clearer tools to address challenges within the childcare profession.

Keywords

• determinants of childcare worker
• childcare worker
• ECEC in Poland
• professional identity
• professionalization
• sources of childcare worker