Professional Love in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): A Multiple Case Study of ECEC Policy in Australia and China

The notion of ‘love’ in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is complex. Professional love is represented by ideas associated with kindness, care, caregiving, empathy, and intimacy in ECEC relationships. It is context-specific and informed by formal (and informal) ECEC principles, policies and practices. To begin with, this paper analyses ECEC frameworks from Australia and China to show how ‘professional love’ is given meaning in these documents that guide ECEC practice. These two countries were chosen because of their important positioning in the Asia Pacific region in the field of ECEC. Case studies from these two national contexts aim to exemplify and deepen the analysis of how ‘professional love’ is understood in ECEC frameworks and how it informs practice. The case studies prompt us to critically examine the policies and practices within each country through thematic analyses. Furthermore, they offer a framework through which we can investigate different national policies and practices that may challenge or improve the national notions of professional love in ECEC. The findings show that these national frameworks offer an understanding of ‘professional love’ in a marginalised way. This study suggests that the concept of professional love should not be viewed as a fixed universal notion, but rather as a lens for educators to critically reflect on and as a basis for reflective dialogue.