Creating space for professional dialogue in early childhood education

Early years professionals spend their working lives creating communities for children and families. Finding time and space to build a community around our own professional work can be considerably harder.

A professional community offers more than connection and support. It creates opportunities for reflection, which is central to high-quality early education. Every day, educators make decisions about what they notice, how they respond, which experiences they value and how they work with children and families. Time spent examining those decisions with others is an important part of professional practice.

Yet opportunities for this kind of exchange are not always easy to find. Insightful practice is being developed every day in nurseries, schools and other early years services, but the knowledge gained often remains within individual organisations. Research does not always reach the people who might use it, while policy and guidance can arrive without enough opportunity for colleagues to discuss what they mean for children in practice. The early years sector encompasses a rich range of roles, services and perspectives, yet the demands of everyday work can keep these professional worlds apart.

I believe professional knowledge grows when it is shared, questioned and developed through conversation. Professional dialogue is not simply an opportunity to exchange successful ideas. It allows us to examine our assumptions, consider different interpretations and reflect on whose knowledge and experiences are recognised within early years practice.

Early Education as a professional community

As a Senior Lecturer in the Carnegie School of Education, I work with students and professionals from across early childhood and the wider education sector. Moving between teaching, research and professional practice has shown me how differently the same questions can be understood, depending on the roles we hold and the contexts in which we work.

That experience is one reason I became involved in the committee working to relaunch the North, East and West Yorkshire Branch of Early Education, alongside my colleague Lou and other early years professionals from across the region. The branch will relaunch with a conference at Leeds Beckett University on Saturday 19th September 2026.

Founded in 1923, Early Education is a national charity which champions young children’s right to high-quality early education and supports those working with young children and families. Its membership reaches across occupational and organisational boundaries, creating a professional community around a shared commitment to young children.

Local branches bring that national professional community into a regional context. They give colleagues opportunities to move beyond their usual networks, develop relationships and take part in conversations shaped by a wider range of knowledge and experience.

Birth to Five Matters as a focus for professional dialogue

One of those wider professional conversations concerns the role of guidance in early years practice. Guidance does more than describe children’s learning and development: it influences what educators notice, what they value and the decisions they make. Used thoughtfully, it can prompt questions and reflection. When reduced to developmental statements or boxes to be completed, it risks narrowing the complex processes it was intended to support.

The second edition of Birth to Five Matters offers a timely focus for this conversation. Developed through collaboration across the sector, the guidance places professional knowledge, reflection and judgement at the heart of early years practice. Its attention to the unique child, positive relationships and enabling environments encourages us to understand children in context, including their connections with families, cultures and communities.

No guidance interprets itself. Its meaning in practice is shaped by professional knowledge, local contexts and the children and families with whom educators work. Dialogue allows us to test our own understanding against the experiences of others and consider how the same principles might be approached in different settings. Birth to Five Matters can therefore become a focus for shared reflection rather than simply a document to consult.

Our conference programme will approach this professional dialogue from two connected perspectives. Nancy Stewart, Project Lead for the Birth to Five Matters Review and Vice President of Early Education, will share the thinking behind the second edition and explore its implications for practice. In the afternoon, early years consultant Jo O’Raw will turn attention to the relationship between home and setting, including how educators can recognise and build upon children’s home learning. The programme moves from examining the guidance itself to reflecting on how its principles are experienced through everyday relationships with children and families.

From conversation to community

The conference will create time for professional reflection alongside opportunities to meet colleagues and develop new connections across Yorkshire. We hope it will contribute to an active regional branch shaped by the interests, questions and experience of the people who become part of it.

The event will run from 10.00am to 3.00pm and includes a buffet lunch and refreshments. Tickets are £15 for Early Education members and students, and £20 for non-members.

I am looking forward to welcoming people from across the early years sector to Leeds Beckett and learning from the knowledge, questions and experiences they bring. My hope is that the conversations and relationships begun on the day will continue through the relaunched branch. That, for me, is the real value of professional community: it reminds us that high-quality early education is shared work.

Find out more and book a ticket