Doan – reasons for CoP research

When I started to think about the kind of research that I wanted to look into, I was really drawn to what I would describe as a startling statistic out of ECEBC, the Early Childhood Educators of British Columbia. And that was that we lose up to 50% of beginning educators in the first five years of work. It was really difficult to come across that statistic. It really led me to think what is actually happening for educators when they start working in the field after they have left the post-secondary setting. 

So, in 2012-2013, I did research with educators across B.C., really with the hopes of trying to understand what are their experiences as early childhood educators in those first few years. In fact, really in that first year, once they’re fully certified. And what my research uncovered really was that, for educators, they find the work overwhelming, yet deeply satisfying. So they really love what they’re doing, but the overwhelming part comes in when educators might be in their first days of work, being handed the keys and told, you know, you’re on the opening shift tomorrow and you’re opening and you’re going to be greeting families and the children and meanwhile the educators might be thinking I’ve never, I only met them yesterday, and I don’t really know everybody. And it goes on from there. There’s a lot of aspects of the work that is overwhelming, yet there’s still joy in the work.  

Another main theme that came out of the research was that the support educators receive is haphazard or hit and miss. New educators might receive support in their job, and they might not. It’s not something that’s standard, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. And the third major finding that came from the research was that new educators said they wanted there to be some kind of program of support for new educators, something that would support them in their first year. And one of the terms is induction. And when we think about induction, really we’re talking about peer mentoring, access to professional development observations and feedback. So really getting away from this experience that some educators had, which was sort of one person said, here’s the room, here’s the children, take care of them, and really kind of left on their own. Very little feedback in their first year. Getting away from that, that sense of isolation, to being in some kind of supportive environment where people are checking in, and also having the opportunity to actually ask questions to give and receive support.