Supporting practitioners to promote motor development of babies in Early Childhood Care and Education centres: A PALAR approach

Abstract

This study was a journey of personal and professional learning through a participatory action learning and action research process between community and university co-researchers who formed an action learning group to successfully reach the objective of this study. The co-researchers collaboratively created practical guiding activities, compiled as an educational intervention, to support and equip practitioners in under-resourced early childhood care and education centres in informal settlements. The educational intervention was developed to be used as guidelines by early childhood care and education practitioners to stimulate the motor development of babies in their care. The research project was embedded in a critical, transformative paradigm within the cultural-historical activity theory, following a participatory action learning and action research design to generate and analyse data through a qualitative approach. The data generation involved Zoom meetings, online questionnaires, WhatsApp, document analysis, informative discussions, and collaborative reflective journals. Three cycles of planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and creating unfolded in this research process. In the first cycle, the members of the action learning group explored their current knowledge of and skills in the motor development of babies in under-resourced early childhood care and education centres in informal settlements. In the second cycle, the action learning group explored the challenges experienced in early childhood care and education centres in promoting motor development in the view of the co-researchers. In the third cycle, the action learning group had the opportunity to explore what guidelines could collaboratively be developed to equip practitioners with knowledge of and skills in the motor development of babies aged zero to 18 months in under-resourced early childhood care and education centres in informal settlements. A scholarship of teaching and learning developed in the action learning group as we were transformed by participating collaboratively and gaining knowledge and skills in the process of reaching the mutual goal of the study. The biggest challenge of this study was the global pandemic called the “2019 Coronavirus disease” or COVID-19, which was declared a national disaster in South Africa on 26 March 2020. The COVID-19 regulations stipulated that all schools, centres, businesses, and so forth should be closed, and for a long time, we could not enter early childhood care and education centres and no face-to-face contact was allowed. Therefore, the data generation strategies had to be adapted while keeping the principles of participatory action learning and action research in mind to ensure the success of this study. During the global pandemic, we, as an action learning group, managed to successfully develop an educational intervention to support practitioners of under-resourced early childhood care and education playrooms in informal settlements to promote the motor development of babies.