Teachers’ Profile and Role in Supporting Early Childhood in Schooling

Training to be a teacher has both benefits and challenges that many must face throughout their careers, be it at the pre-school level or higher education level. Among these challenges are issues such as classroom management, managing interpersonal relations with colleagues and parents, and heavy workloads.

Added to this are the challenges posed by the disciplinary diversification of professional tasks for both pre-school and primary school teachers. 

Pre-schools receive children who are divided into two categories: the first covering ages 0-3, i.e. the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, and the second covering ages 3-6, with school preparation being the main activity. 

Children's pre-schooling context 

In Senegal, the ratification of all the conventions of the United Nations and its agencies, such as UNESCO and UNICEF, has put the spotlight on early childhood, particularly the two main categories of children. As a result, a number of programmes and policies have been developed to strengthen pre-schooling. The most recent of these being the National Policy on Integrated Early Childhood Development (NPIECD), with the two categories in this policy being toddlers aged 0-3 and children aged 3-6 – with the focus being on the developmental needs of the child at these ages, and the skills to be developed. 

In Senegal, teacher training for pre-school is coupled with that of primary (ages 6-12). There is a training framework known as ‘Centre Régional de Formation pour le Personnel de l'Éducation’ (CRFPE), during which, after graduating, the teachers promoted have the choice of teaching, or even working in either of the two cycles: pre-school or primary. This shows that the content of the training provided covers the entire childhood period from 0 to 12 years of age, i.e. from pre-school to primary school, bearing in mind that the skills to be developed change at the different stages of a child’s life.  

One finding is that trained teachers lean more towards the second phase of the pre-school cycle, i.e. ages 3-6, without taking charge of children in the first category, an essential pillar of overall personal development. For the most part, the teaching staff working with the first category of children are rarely trained. Despite this, the teachers who work there carry out a variety of activities with the children, irrespective of the category they belong to. 

Teachers' classroom activities 

Within the framework of pre-school, or even integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) as defined by national policy, children aged 0-6 are placed in different structures available at national level. These are: the very young children (CTP), the public nursery school (EM) and the private nursery school (EMP). Whether in CTPs, EMs or EMPs, the main activities are focused on six areas: care, education, health, hygiene, nutrition, and safety. Thus, the activities carried out for children in the first category are essentially different from the teaching-learning activities carried out for children in the second category, on the understanding that intellectual development is also different. However, it comes regularly to have in one classroom, two or three sections together for one teacher’s responsibility. 

While category one teachers are essentially focused on the six areas of activity for children aged 0-3, category two teachers intervene according to the age of the child learner corresponding to the section attended. There are three sections: Petite section for 3-year-olds, Moyenne section for 4-year-olds and Grande section for 5-year-olds. A pre-school teacher can work simultaneously with two sections or joint classes. This is the multigrade classes (PCM) scheme or programme that some states have set up to address both teacher shortages and the massification of learners across the pre-school and primary education cycles. 

Bearing in mind that ECD plays a considerable role not only in school preparation, but in the lifelong development of human capital, special attention must be paid to ensure all children, regardless of their background, are cared for equitably. 

 Even though in Senegal, pre-school is accessible to any parent wishing to enrol their child, the data shows that it covers barely 30% of the 0-6 age group. To increase the number of children attending pre-school, we need to rethink the ECD system by looking at teacher training and classroom management activities. 

The training of pre-school teachers should not be tied in with the training of primary school teachers. The skills to be developed should not be taught by a single training programme to the same category of teaching staff. In the pre-school cycle, teachers should be able to specialise in either the first or second category of children, based on specific and relevant content, to ensure not only knowledge and mastery of the components, but above all the ability to manage the classroom through concrete activities. 

Classroom management activities in the pre-school cycle require both knowledge and proven skills that will be developed during teacher training. Usually, teachers who work in pre-school classes are trained for the second category, but less so for the first category, whereas classroom management for children of all ages requires both solid and specific knowledge and skills. Classroom management also means taking charge of children according to their individual needs and personalities, but also being able to identify potential dysfunctions, disorders, or handicaps of any kind. Clearly, not all children react in the same way to different stimuli, but the teacher must be equipped to administer this early care.  

By focusing on teacher training through an improved system and classroom management through activities geared to the development of children's skills, we can better understand and design the profile and role of pre-school teachers. 

This commitment to early childhood binds us together as producers of knowledge, consumers, creators of meaning and those responsible for implementing educational research. The aim is to share ideas from this work with the hope of improving the profiles and roles of teachers in education, and to remind ourselves of the strong importance of education in achieving sustainable human capital. 

ESSA and the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge, are currently working in partnership on an Early Childhood Development (ECD) project with funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The project focuses on understanding the ecosystem of ECD researchers and their needs in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (with desk-based research for Mozambique). 

As part of this project, we sponsored ten ECD researchers to attend the Eastern Africa Regional Early Childhood Conference (EARECC) in Tanzania in March 2024 to give them the opportunity to share their work, network and explore research collaborations.  

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