2019-12-13 /

Integrative report: Professionals and organisations

ISOTIS key message: Great need for increased and effective approaches to professional development, as professionals feel ill-prepared to work in highly diverse contexts

Increasing societal cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity calls upon competent professionals who can support children and families to foster equity and inclusiveness. This report integrates the findings from the ISOTIS studies on professional development (PD), developed in the scope of the project work package 5. These findings highlighted the need for further and continuous professional development, as professionals feel ill-prepared to deal with the challenges deriving from working in highly diverse contexts. Throughout the work, reflection and enactment were consistently identified as key mechanisms for changing professionals’ intercultural competences.

In addition to intra-individual processes, the importance of context at different levels became evident. Foremost, the importance of establishing a clear vision and mission at the organizational level, which should be translated into concrete guidelines for professionals to support them in aligning their everyday practices with the organization’s vision, as well as the need for clear guidelines on addressing diversity and inclusiveness in (national) curricula.

Other conclusions point to the insufficiency of traditional PD approaches, based on a one-off course or training. Rather, professionals need to engage in continuous and dynamic forms of PD, such as regular team meetings to reflect and discuss the work with children and families and how to tailor the work to the children’s and families’ needs in view of optimal child development. Professionals’ openness and readiness for change are key to initiating change for the better and need to be explicitly addressed by the expert guiding the professional development activities.

.