Education in ECEC services. Didactic and relational competences

In today’s society, the childcare centres are considered a context of learning and a space for relations between adults and children, and no longer a welfare site for the care of children. Therefore, compared to the past, many aspects have changed, from the idea of child and family to the role of the practitioner. This paper focuses on the professional competences of the practitioner in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services, or better to say of the female practitioner, since in services from 0- 3 years of age, both nationally and internationally, it is mainly women who do the work. In Italy, over the last three decades, this professional figure has gained a holistic knowledge that is a meeting point between didactic and relational competences, and defines a new professionalism that has been built and developed both in a theoretical and an empirical way, innervated by pedagogical knowledge, methodological devices, operational tools and relational strategies that, by intersecting, substantivize the educational work.