Beyond the competences: the value of professional agency: a project research on teachers professional development in pre-school contexts

Abstract

The educational professionalism in pre-primary contexts appears now involved
in a transformative process that includes new strategic and important
dimensions into professional development. Its contributes to redefine the
aspects of teachers’ continuing training, which cannot be limited on skills
learning, but must include and increase the value and features of professional
agency and the contexts of its training. The project research we are going
to outline examines the correlation between the agency’s capability processes
and the pre-primary teachers professional development. The first evidences
about the increased value acquired by the extracurricular aspects of
networking and governance lead to suppose the focusing of enlarged learning
contexts on vocational training. Its suggests a need to define new training
and educational policies, able to include informal and enlarged dimensions
for the enhancement of agency and teaching professionalism.