Supporting Teachers’ Confidence to Work Ethically in Their Early Years Classrooms: Insights from the Reception Class Teacher Network

By Eleanor Milligan, Viki Veale, Lorna Williams, and Janet Morris

Reception class teachers operate within a challenging and evolving landscape. Their professional roles are influenced by a multitude of factors spanning government policies, institutional priorities, societal shifts, and the individual needs of children and families, many of whom are still grappling with the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog outlines the themes of a presentation on supporting Reception Class teachers’ confidence in working ethically in their Early Years classrooms, a presentation at the BECERA conference, February 2025. Insights from the Reception Class Teacher Network (RCTN) are framed within Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1979) and the wider body of research advocating for developmentally appropriate practices in the reception year.

Aim of the Reception Class Teacher Network

The Reception Class Teacher Network was initiated through the Joyce Morris Early Years Literacies Forum at the University of East Anglia. It is coordinated by Eleanor Milligan (University of East Anglia), Viki Veale (St Mary’s University Twickenham), Lorna Williams (University of Worcester) and Janet Morris (University of Greenwich). The network has two core aims;

to explore ways to bring teachers and researchers together to develop professional knowledge and confidence in ethical teaching practices in the Reception Classroom
to find ways to make the unique challenges and needs of this year group visible to school leaders, policymakers, and the wider world.

Enabling developmentally appropriate practices

The critical importance of play-based developmentally appropriate pedagogy remains central in early years education. However, as Moles (2001) and Osgood (2006, 2010) have pointed out, Reception class teachers are liminal professionals who face unique challenges in their professional practice. Despite the growing body of evidence supporting play-based approaches, these practices are often constrained by increasingly formalised school environments and systemic pressures experienced in the primary school (Sachs, 2016; Veale, 2023). This constant conflict between competing agendas leads to a cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) which shapes the professional experiences of Reception Class Teachers.

Pascal and Bertram’s (2023) work on professional development highlights that empowering practitioners to advocate for developmentally appropriate practices can instill the confidence needed to navigate these challenges and foster systemic change. Their writing serves as a cornerstone for designing initiatives like the RCTN, which foreground collaborative, evidence-informed professional development.

Creating space for reflection and research

The Reception Class Teacher Network adopts a participatory action research framework, emphasisng collaboration, empowerment, and reflective professional development (McNiff, 2016). It is rooted in the understanding that early childhood educators must navigate complex moral decisions in their daily work and strives to create spaces where practitioners can co-construct knowledge, share experiences, and foster sustainable professional growth (Wenger 1998)

During each half-termly network meeting, participants coordinators and guest researchers share their insights and reflections on a specific theme or aspect of early years pedagogy. Provocations are used to stimulate conversation and sustained shared thinking in breakout rooms, where teachers have space to talk openly and honestly. Opportunities to come together as a whole group enable themes to be identified and data to be analysed using a double hermeneutic (Giddens, 1993), involving both researchers and participants in interpreting the data to ensure the findings are deeply contextualized and grounded in practice.

Implications for Policy and Practice

The network continues to grow and evolve, as we do, two key implications have emerged:

Empowering Grassroots Initiatives: The Reception Class Teacher Network demonstrates how grassroots professional networks can advance ethical leadership, build teacher resilience, and strengthen professional agency.

Policy Advocacy: The collective expertise of early years educators has led to a set of co-constructed policy recommendations for shaping ethical, developmentally appropriate practices In Reception classes.

We were thrilled to share our insights for policy at a recent conference in Westminster, and are looking at ways of working with school leaders to support ethical practice in Reception classes.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that systemic change is required in order to ensure that all young children in England receive the best quality education and care. In the interim, robust support networks must be put in place for all those navigating the complexity of the competing agendas which shape our professional lives. By creating collaborative, empowering spaces like the Reception Class Teacher Network, we can help teachers develop the confidence and knowledge to advocate for ethical, play-based, and developmentally appropriate practices. We look forward to the BECERA conference and to sharing our story of how by connecting research with practice, the Reception Class Teachers Network is fostering a more just and ethical early years education system.

To find out more about the Reception Class Teacher Network (RCTN) visit our webpages: https://bit.ly/ReceptionCTNetwork

You can also connect with the network and the presenters on LinkedIn:

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Brown, J. S. (2011). The new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. CreateSpace.

Giddens, A., (1993). New rules of sociological method. Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. California: Stanford University Press

McNiff, J. (2016) Action Research for Professional Development: Concise advice for new and experienced researchers (2nd edition). Poole: September Books

Moyles, J. (2001). Passion, paradox, and professionalism in Early Years education. Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development. 21 (2) 81-95.

Osgood, J. (2006) Professionalism and performativity: the feminist challenge facing Early Years practitioners. Early Years. 26 (2), p. 187-199. 

Osgood, J. (2006) ‘Deconstructing Professionalism in Early Childhood Education: Resisting the Regulatory Gaze. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 7(1), pp. 5–14 

  Osgood, J. (2010). Childcare workforce reform in England and 'the Early Years professional': a critical discourse analysis. Journal of Education Policy 24 (6) 733-751. 

Pascal C. and Bertram, T. (2023) ‘Realising Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Education’, Early Education Journal, No 100: Children: living and learning

Sachs, J. (2016). Teacher professionalism: why are we still talking about it? Teachers and Teaching. 22 (4), p.413-425. 

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

Veale, V (2023). Right from the start: an exploration of the lives experiences of qualified teachers in maintained early years settings. Available at: https://research.stmarys.ac.uk/id/eprint/6189/1/Viki%20Veale%202023.pdf

If you’re interested in this, you might also like:

Machado, I. and Oliveira-Formosinho, J. (2024) ‘Professional development for praxis transformation in early childhood education and care: a systematic review’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 32(6), pp. 930–965. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2024.2381134.

Guerra, P., Cuadros, O. and Calderón, M. (2024) ‘Professional well-being in professional learning communities of early childhood teachers’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, pp. 1–15. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2024.2443648.

Sullanmaa, J. et al. (2022) ‘The interrelationship between pre-primary and early primary school teachers’ learning in the professional community and burnout: a person-centered approach’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 30(6), pp. 930–948. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2022.2046830.