This is an overview of our presentation "How do cultures of reflection orchestrated through a professional development initiative facilitate change in the situated work practices of Family day-care practitioners?" Session Title: 01 SES 10 B: Habitus, Culture, and Creativity in Reflection

1. AARHUS UNIVERSITY
RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
HOW DO CULTURES OF REFLECTION ORCHESTRATED THROUGH A
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE FACILITATE CHANGE IN THE
SITUATED WORK PRACTICES OF FAMILY DAY-CARE PRACTITIONERS?
Roddy Walker & Bente Jensen
Ecer 2021 Pre-conference material
Session Title: 01 SES 10 B: Habitus, Culture, and Creativity in Reflection
Time: Wednesday, 08/Sept/2021: 11:00am - 12:30pm
Session Chair: Carmel Conn

2. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
• We introduce an ongoing research project into the influence of a systemic professional
development (PD) initiative for managers and practitioners in the family daycare sector in
Denmark. This project comprises a quantitative measurement of child outcomes and a
qualitative study into the processes of organisational and professional development that
manifest through the PD initiative. A more detailed project description can be found here:
• https://childresearch.au.dk/en/signature-project-vls/kvalitet-laering-og-trivsel/apiif-
pilot-abecedarian-programme-implemented-as-innovative-renewal/
• The presentation will focus on detailing the qualitative study, and some preliminary insights,
considering how the PD initiative strives to establish cultures of reflection amongst participants
and how these reflective practices are seen to interconnect with the situated work practices of
family day-care practitioners.

3. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
PRESENTATION OF PD INITIATIVE: “EDUCATIONAL QUALITY IN
DAYCARE”
• “Educational Quality in Daycare” is a systemic, practice-based professional development (PD) initiative in Denmark
focusing on enhancing learning and well-being for all 0-2 year olds in family daycare through responsive social
relationships and strengthened child-adult interactions. 11 municipalities are participating in the initiative.
• The two-year PD initiative - comprising 4 structured modules over 2 years - seeks to encourage ”bottom up” learning
processes: resources and guidelines are presented, but the specific operationalisation of the initiative remains at the
discretion of each municipality. This participant-driven design directly involves municipal managers, middle
managers and family day-care practitioners from each municipality in planning and unfolding the PD initiative
locally.
• Practitioners do not receive formal training or coaching as such!
• Instead, the initiative offers access to theoretical resources and tools informed by the Abecedarian
approach to adult-child interactions through an interactive I.T platform. Their engagement with the
resources is primarily supported through participation in structured professional learning communities, with
regular meetings facilitated by their managers encouraging opportunities for structured individual and
collective reflections.
• Through more traditional workshops, managers are introduced to the underlying concepts of the
Abecedarian Approach and support in application of these resources, as well as in the facilitation of
reflection in learning groups. Likewise, the I.T platform offers tools, models and agendas to managers, for
structuring meetings and facilitating reflection in learning groups.
Individual family
day-care
homes
EQD
Workshops
Learning
groups

4. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
THEORETICAL + ANALYTICAL APPROACH
• Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory (Schatzki 2002) offers an approach that can focus attention on how organizational
practices interconnect (Loscher, 2019) and inform one another across the three learning contexts, as well as zooming in
on specific practices to examine how they are organized. Schatzki understands the social world as being comprised of
interconnected “practice-arrangement bundles,” where organized social practices and material conditions shape
activities, thereby enabling consideration of how and why practices change or stay the same (Buch, 2020).
• Social learning theories (Lave and Wenger 1991; Dreier 2008) train analysis on persons populating these practices and
the learning processes unfolding. This allows consideration of dynamics in specific communities of practice, but also
individual professional learning trajectories across practices of both work and reflection.
• This analytical framework allows consideration of professional development from an organisational learning
perspective, emphasising “processes of participation and interaction” (Brandi & Elkjaer, 2012).
This encourages analytical exploration of emergent interconnections between:
- practices of the professional development initiative
- managerial planning practices,
- reflective practices in learning groups
- everyday work practices of individual practitioners.

5. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
METHODOLOGY: ETHNOGRAPHIC
APPROACH
Individual family
day-care
homes
EQD
Workshops
Learning
groups
Empirical material produced:
• Participant observation in EQD Workshops
• Participant observation in managerial planning meetings and meetings in learning groups
• ”Shadowing” daily work of practitioners from a learning group in each municipality, over 4 intervals.
• Interviews with selected practitioners and managers at the start and end of the PD initiative.
• Documentation from participants engagement with the I.T platform
The qualitative study adopts an ethnographic approach, following the learning contexts as they unfold in
3 selected municipalities. Inspiration is taken from:
• Multi-Sited Ethnography - multiple sites of observation and participation (Marcus 1995)
• Institutional Ethnography- focus on how texts offer coordination of social interactions (Smith, 2005)
3 learning contexts

6. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
IMPACT OF COVID 19
The PD initiative was originally designed to be driven predominantly by practitioners themselves in stable learning
groups, where the I.T platform was to support and facilitate their engagement with the theoretical tools and resources
inspired by the Abecedarian approach to adult-child interactions.
Group meetings were expected to be undertaken within already existing local organisational routines, where the I.T
platform was to facilitate reflection processes.
However, the impact of COVID 19 meant that these routines and meetings were disturbed, with all meetings in
municipalities moving online. This included activities in the professional development initiative, which began in August
2020. Restrictions have recently begun to relax and more normal routines are returning.
This has had implications for the manner in which reflective practice have unfolded in the three municipalities.

7. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
2 KEY QUESTIONS (SO FAR)
The project is ongoing, and the PD initiative is currently at the half-way point. Analysis of the empirical material
remains explorative and findings are therefore emergent and tentative.
Two guiding research questions are:
• How do the reflective practices in learning groups manifest, and how are these informed by the coordination
offered through the resources and guidelines of the professional development initiative?
• How do situated work practices of family daycare practitioners manifest, and how do these relate to reflections
arising in learning groups and the resources and guidelines offered on the PD initiative?

8. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
PRELIMINARY INSIGHTS
Ongoing observations and interviews suggest….
• Opportunities for coordinated reflection in learning groups are seen to support participants'
engagement with the resources of the PD. This establishes a common frame of reference and shared
language that makes examination and consideration of specific practices, such as reading with
children and different approaches to linguistic interaction, possible.
• Opportunities for reflection encourage experimentation with these practices in the workplace,
informing the manner practitioners approach their work with children and re-energising routine tasks.
• The cultures of reflection orchestrated through the PD initiative provide opportunities for professional
practices to be rejuvenated, where participants' understanding of the importance of their own role
and their capacity to support the educational development and well-being of children can be
revitalised.

9. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
METHODOLOGICAL AND ANALYTICAL
CONSIDERATIONS GOING FORWARD
• The theoretical framework focuses attention on how practices interconnect and inform one another across the three learning contexts, as well as how specific
situated work practices are organized, and how and why they change or remain the same:
• "Practices, in turn, are understood as organized human activity – as doings and sayings that are organized in specific ways. Practices are organized by the
practical understandings of human agents, rules, teleoaffective structures and general understandings (Schatzki, 2002, 77)“
• These practices “transpire amidst material arrangements. In Schatzki’s account, material arrangements are not part of social practices, but interact with
practices in the sense that they can constitute, channel and prefigure social practices.” (Buch 2020,75). This draws analytical attention to the manner in
which practices in the three contexts are organized, the material conditions they are engaged with, and how they unfold – how they change or remain the
same.
• Social learning theories (Lave and Wenger 1991; Dreier 2008) train analysis on persons participating in these practices and the learning processes and
trajectories unfolding during the PD initiative.
• This analytical framework allows consideration of PD from an organisational learning perspective, emphasising “processes of participation and interaction”
(Brandi & Elkjaer, 2012) – how the PD strives to facilitate such processes, and the manner in which they play out in-situ.
• The ethnographic approach allows detailed consideration of how the identified practices of the learning contexts interconnect, by following entities (persons,
ideas, tools, texts) as they move within and between them.
• The tenet of Dorothy Smith (2005), that texts offer coordination of social interaction, and that such texts “happen” in these interactions provides an interesting
avenue to investigate the role that guidelines and resources from the PD initiative play in the observed interactions and thereby the manifestation of the different
practices followed in the study.

10. RODDY WALKER & BENTE JENSEN
AARHUS UNIVERSITY
DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
REFERENCES
Brandi, Ulrik, and Bente Elkjaer. 2012. "Organizational Learning Viewed from a Social Learning Perspective." In Handbook of
Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, edited by rk Easterby-Smith and rjorie A. Lyles, 21-41. John Wiley & Sons,
Inc
Buch, Anders. 2020. "People and practices in organizational learning." Forskning og Forandring 3 (1):70-88. doi:
10.23865/fof.v3.2103.
Dreier, O. 2008. "Learning in Structures of Social Practice." In A Qualitative Stance Essays in honor of Steinar Kvale, edited by S
Brinkmann and C Elmholdt, 85-96. Aarhus Universitetsforlag.
Loscher, Georg, Violetta Splitter, and David Seidl. 2019. "Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory and its implications for organization
studies." In Management, Organizations and Contemporary Social Theory, edited by Stewart Clegg and Miguel Pina e Cunha,
115-34. Milton: Routledge.
Marcus, George E. 1995. "Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography." Annual Review of
Anthropology 24:95–117.
Schatzki, T. 2002. The site of the social: a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, Pa:
Pennsylvania State Univ. Press.
Smith, Dorothy E. 2005. Institutional ethnography: a sociology for people, The gender lens series. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

11. AARHUS
UNIVERSITY