Towards Coexistence? Navigating Interpretivism and Positivism in an Early Childhood Professional Development Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Over the past 30 years, early childhood education has emerged as a critical program and policy initiative of Canadian provincial governments and jurisdictions. With the recent announcement by the Government of Canada regarding plans to create and implement a national childcare system, tensions have been on the rise regarding early childhood educators’ (ECEs’) professional development. Informed by socio-constructivist and socio-cultural theories, this study examines the experiences of 18 ECEs and 10 coaches while being trained to use the Pyramid Model (PM) for promoting social-emotional competence in early childhood education. The study investigates the tensions and coexistence of two distinct educational philosophical paradigms—interpretivism and positivism—within the project implementation process, particularly how these paradigms influenced ECEs’ professional development. An action research methodology was utilized, and six focus group interviews were conducted with ECEs and coaches between 2023 and 2025. Findings reveal a perceived conflict between the PM’s positivist approach and the interpretative lenses that ground the early learning framework used in the province. However, as implementation progressed, participants began merging practices from both paradigms while engaging in meaningful professional reflexive processes. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how professional learning unfolds in complex, multi-paradigmatic contexts. The study highlights the need to create professional learning spaces where ECEs can collectively become participants and agents of change. By exploring the interplay between philosophical paradigms and professional development practices, this research aims to inform future efforts in ECEs’ professional development initiatives and to shed light on the complex dynamics at play when contrasting paradigms become explicit within professional learning opportunities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.200 | 0.088 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.152 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.031 | 0.027 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.026 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".