Professional Knowledge and Everyday Practice

Professional care work in preschools in Denmark is faced with a knowledge crisis, due to increasing influence by regulations from state and market. As a consequence the professionals seem more inclined to focus on how to meet demands for documentation, rather than focusing on developing their professional knowledge with regards to collective reflection and creating coherent practices and everyday lives for children and families. I propose an alternative perspective on development of professional knowledge, which takes aspects of professional knowledge and everyday practice, that are not traditionally valued, nor by “users” or the professionals themselves, into account. With inspiration from a Danish researcher of everyday life and her concept of ‘the unnoticed/unrecognized’ (det upåagtede) (Bech-Jørgensen 1994), this paper will discuss how understandings of professional identity and professional knowledge must involve an understanding of the importance of routines, habits and practical tasks.
The analysis takes its point of departure in observations and interviews in a daycare institution with a combined nursery and preschool (age 0-6 years) In order to grasp the knowledge quality of the ‘unnoticed’ aspects of the professional work the field work was inspired by the German researcher Rudolph zur Lippes concept of ‘gesture’ (gestus) (Lippe 1987, Nielsen 2010). With an attention towards gestic knowledge in professional care work the attention is directed at bodily action and communication which is recognized as rythms in everyday practice. This understanding of knowledge can only be observed in context and must be analyzed in the light of context. Gesture is part of specific situations and is in this way both part of and an answer to a situation as a whole.