Hello everyone, I am considering researching the following question for my dissertation for my BA(Hons) in Early Years Management

‘Will the employment of a graduate/EYP in every Early Years setting improve quality?’

Currently I am working with:-

1. A teacher who has EYPS in my setting, very experienced, a wealth of knowledge gained from her own children, teaching, nursery nursing (she is also NNEB) and childminding.
2. A member of my staff (level 3) who has 6 years experience and is doing an early years degree with EYPS at Uni on day release.
3. A Psychology graduate with no experience in early years, who is doing EYPS using nurseries for her placement and doing some voluntary work with us to gain experience.
What a wide range of experience and ability...yet they will all have EYPS

What do you think?

I would be really interested in finding out more about the original thinking and rationale behind the introduction of EYPS, if anyone could point me in the direction of any previous research, literature etc I would be very grateful. Are there any links to the European pedagogues?

Once I have put together some further information and produced a questionnaire for prospective EYPs and those who are practicing EYPs would any of you help me by completing one?

Thanks

Julie

PS If those of you who have completed a dissertation in the past think that this is not a good choice of research project I would appreciate your advice too.

Hi Julie,
A very interesting area to research, although of course it is very early days in the EYPS story. My main question would be "How are you going to measure the improvement of quality before/during/after the employment of an EYP?"

In answer to your question about how it all came about, I was part of the early discussion groups set up by the CWDC to see what was needed in terms of an early years leader, what we could call that person, what qualifications and experiences would we want of that person, and what would their daily role look like, given the huge variety of settings children could attend. Quite a tall order!

I remember the discussion about whether or not we would want this leader to be a graduate lasted a very long time. I know it has created lively discussion here and elsewhere that by making graduate-ness a requirement it prevented a very large number of talented people from doing the EYPS without many further years of study. My feeling at the time, and to date, is that if we want to achieve parity with QTS then we had to have the EY leader as a graduate too.

The study that most influenced the EYPS programme was the EPPE project, and I would definitely start there with your background reading. This stated that the quality of settings was higher when a QTS was present. This finding got twisted a little over time, to meaning that the presence of a graduate would have the same effect.

Another great document which summarises the EPPE and REPEY projects, and looks at the leadership/management roles is "Effective leadership in the Early Years Sector" (The ELEYS Study) by Iram Siraj-Blatchford & Laura Manni, which is around £10 from www.ioe.ac.uk/publications

In terms of the European pedagogue, certainly the term was discussed at length during my involvement, and the fact that social and educational pedagogues carried out the types of role that we expect from an EYP.

Good luck in your research; I'm looking forward to following this thread

Thanks Helen,

I have ordered "Effective leadership in the Early Years Sector" (The ELEYS Study) by Iram Siraj-Blatchford & Laura Manni, to supplement my reading and references to EPPE.

Julie