Global Education Review

International interest in the lives and development of young children has resulted in an increased examination of those who work with children and families. Premised on the grounds of supporting equality of opportunity, whilst laying the foundations to children’s lifelong learning, there is a scrutiny of what those who work with and alongside children and families are expected to know to be successful professionals. However, within technocratic models of accountability, the good professional is the one who can achieve the desired outcomes. Professional knowledge is reduced to that which can be described and documented, dwelling on logic and reason, with an underlying assumption that we are not professional if we cannot account for something (Shotter 2015). Further, the singular of ‘knowledge’ implies a solitary way of knowing, whereby there is one knowledge to inform working with children and families, as opposed to a complex intermingling of knowledges. A focus on knowledges not only opens up multiple ways of knowing, but also a consideration of the different ways of knowing and how these might be articulated (Campbell-Barr 2017).