Challenges Faced by Early Childhood Professionals

Running Head: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

2EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Introduction
Early childhood profession involves individuals working directly with children up to
the age of 8-year-olds. The most basic profession for an individual with an early childhood
profession degree is that of a preschool teacher monitoring the early development of children
(Jennings, 2015). A profession with such importance must be carried out carefully however,
certain challenges are faced by early childhood professionals during their work. The present
report will discuss three such challenges and provide recommendations.
Discussion of challenges and its recommendations
The challenges that are going to be addressed in the report have come across while
gaining personal experiences and doing thorough research. These challenges include the
problem of implementing the plans made for the child development; the inability to include
enough play sessions while monitoring their education along with; the problem with
interacting with the parents and guiding them through the process of proper development
practices for their children.
Gap between policy and implementation
The most significant challenge in early childhood professions is the inevitable
discrepancy between policy-making and implementation of those policies (Campbell-Barr,
2018). The methods in elementary and primary schools need to be practical to be properly
implemented. Even though the policies seem beautiful on paper, implementing them becomes
a problem. This problem has been addressed in many kinds of research and has also been
monitored during personal training. Aldridge et al. (2016) stated that problematic or
incomplete implementation of policies can negatively affect the development of the children
under such implementations or at the very least be useless for their development.
The first challenge deals with the failure of the implementation of the policies that
appear to be attractive. The problem lies with the lack of practicality of these policies. To
solve this problem, early childhood professionals should focus more on drafting policies that
are more realistic that is, they can be implemented easily within less time span.
Decreased emphasis on the importance of play
The emphasis on the play is decreasing day by day, not only in the world but also in
early childhood classrooms. In order to complete the educational curriculum, early childhood
classes have been more focused on academics which pushes aside the time for play allowing
a very limited time for play within classrooms (Tremblay et al. 2015). Through play, children
are able to increase creativity and develop imagination, dexterity, cognitive, emotional and