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The Impact of Context
The situational context of each participant is fundamental to understanding their
practice and self-image. All are early childhood educators working within the
geographical area known as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) within the province of
Ontario. The GTA refers to the City of Toronto plus the surrounding regions of Durham,
York, Peel, and Halton, and includes 24 municipalities, covering an area of 629.91 square
kilometers.
Layla works in a Reggio-inspired child care centre connected to a public school.
She has a two-year college diploma and has been working in the field for over 20 years.
Mary, too, is a seasoned teacher with many years of experience. She has a college
diploma and a related university degree. The centre that she worked at during the time of
this dissertation also claimed to be Reggio-inspired and is located in a strip mall. Rose
works in a centre within in a school. She received a university degree prior to obtaining a
college diploma in early childhood education and has been working in the field for almost
10 years. The centre does not claim to be Reggio-inspired, but does implement an
emergent curriculum based on the Project Approach. Felicia has the same years of
experience as Rose. Similarly, she employs the three phases of project work within her
classroom as suggested by the writings of Katz and Chard (2000). At the time of this
research, Felicia had recently begun to work within a child care program housed in a
community centre.
In conducting research within a phenomenological framework, describing context
is crucial to the documentation of experience (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). Time,
place, and space are fundamental elements for framing experience. Each of the four case
study teachers had a particular contextual situation. How did each perceive her situation?