‘It's the beginning of everything’: Perceptions of compassion in early childhood education

Abstract

Compassion is fundamental to learning, development and well-being in early childhood. Yet little is known about how those working within early years settings in England perceive it. Forming part of a wider ethnographic project that explores how compassion is realised and what constitutes a compassion enabling environment, this paper reports on how compassion is perceived by members of staff working in two early childhood education (ECE) environments in the North of England. Thirteen staff members engaged in one-to-one interviews. The interviews invited their descriptions of compassion and views regarding compassion’s purpose, place and role in ECE, what informs their perception and how they see compassion figuring in their settings. A reflexive thematic analysis of the data resulted in four main themes that highlight the perceived centrality of compassion in ECE and life beyond it, but also the challenges presented by professional pressures which permeate the early years professional landscape. Whilst underscoring the valued role of compassion in ECE, the findings further bring to the fore the experiential nature of compassion's embodiment and reflection as informing teachers’ perceptions of compassion in ECE, as opposed to learning about it through more formal modes of teacher education and training.

Keywords

Compassion early childhood education interviews teachers’ perceptions well-being

Introduction

The more I am thinking about this, really compassion is so needed … It does have a role and it does have a purpose and it is incredibly important and perhaps if people understood that a bit more, and did a bit more thinking around that and why it works and why it is something that needs to be part of everyday practice, then maybe it would happen more readily. (Juliet, early years lead teacher)

Compassion is a dynamic, relational process that is a necessary part of how we relate and interact with the world (Broadfoot, 2024; Nussbaum, 2014; Rajala and Lipponen, 2018). A body of evidence points towards its evolutionary basis, with compassion having evolved as an innate capacity essential for good health, bonding and collective flourishing (Carter et al., 2017; Darwin, 1888; Gilbert, 2020; Goetz et al., 2010; Spikins, 2017). Benefitting social connectedness, peace, justice and holistic well-being (Seppala et al., 2013; Zessin et al., 2015), set in today's context, a focus on compassion can be considered of high local and global relevance (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2015, 2021).

While variously defined, broadly, compassion is conceptualised as feeling concern for and actively supporting the well-being of self, others and the environment through alleviating pain/distress/anxiety, meeting needs, helping, defending and preventing/protecting from harm (Gilbert, 2017; Kanov et al., 2004; Seppälä et al., 2017; Singer and Klimecki, 2014). In early childhood education (ECE) in the United Kingdom (UK), studies suggest that compassion has been identified within the sector as part of ECE professional identity among other dispositions and values such as love (Morris, 2018; Osgood, 2010, 2019), and as an important attribute for working with young children (Campbell-Barr, 2017; Taggart, 2015). Furthermore, compassion has been presented as a core constituent of pedagogical approaches, including the pedagogy for connection (Barrable, 2019a, 2019b), pedagogy of compassion (Taggart, 2016, 2019a, 2019b) and pedagogy of hope (Warwick et al., 2017), as well as part of education for sustainability and global citizenship (Barrable, 2019b; Broadfoot, 2024; Broadfoot and Pascal, 2020, 2021; UNESCO, 2020, 2023; Warwick, 2016). Taggart (2019b) further argues that compassion is central to a setting's social purpose and is a feature of a healthy ECE organisational system (Taggart, 2015). However, little is known about how compassion is perceived by ECE teachers themselves in terms of its place and role in the ECE context, how they see it figuring in the daily life of their settings and what challenges there may be. Seeking to address this, in this paper I report on how compassion is perceived by members of staff working in two ECE settings in the North of England. This formed part of a larger ethnographic study which aimed to explore what opportunities for experiencing compassion there are in ECE environments and the possible barriers to this, and to illuminate what constitutes a compassion enabling environment. I will first describe the context in which this study took place to provide further background for the findings and discussion, and I will then detail my methodological approach. The findings and discussion will follow before closing with some final reflections.

England's ECE context: Tensions in the ECE professional landscape

In England, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework (Department for Education (DfE), 2024) is the mandatory education policy all ECE settings must follow. The policy was revised in 2021 but its language has come under scrutiny due to retaining attention on performativity, ‘delivering’ curriculum and care and improving outcomes (Roberts-Holmes, 2019), which in turn have implications for the early years environment, where there are multiple enduring problems (Bonetti, 2019; Cameron, 2020; Roberts-Holmes and Bradbury, 2016; Social Mobility Commission (SMC), 2020; Taggart, 2019a). This has led to wide-spread call for improvements in the sector, with issues relating to performativity pressures (SMC, 2020), sustained historical underfunding (Early Years Alliance (EYA), 2021, 2022) and poor working conditions, including payment, support, time and lack of training opportunities (Archer and Oppenheim, 2021; Bonetti, 2019; Cameron, 2020; Longfield, 2021; Pascal et al., 2020; SMC, 2020). Collectively, these issues appear to form what I refer to as ‘micro-stressors’ in the daily lives of ECE workers (Cameron, 2020; Roberts-Holmes, 2020). This is of relevance to compassion as stressors, even the seemingly minute, when accumulated, can have negative effects on practitioners’ well-being and capacity to be attuned and responsive to the children in a warm, consistent manner (Brace, 2021; Page and Elfer, 2013), or more specifically, express compassion.

This corresponds with contemporary debate and issues surrounding professionalism within ECE and how it is/might be conceived in relation to care. Despite the elevated status of other care-based professions, such as nursing and social work, there is an apparent lack of recognition of the workforce as professionals due to the care-work involved (Taggart, 2016), which some suggest is fuelled by the prevailing neoliberal conception of knowledge that overshadows more tacit, but I would argue equally valid, experiential forms of embodied knowledge (Campbell-Barr, 2019) such as compassion. This has given rise to tensions relating to relational aspects of ECE versus the political realities of statutory requirements and positioning of care in government rhetoric. Specifically, what the UK government refers to as ‘free childcare’ (i.e. ECE), so called in light of their early years funding policy. Positioned as a service for working parents, it turns care into a commodity rather than care as an integral process enabling young children to flourish in education as their right (Moss and Cameron, 2020). As aforementioned, running alongside this is emphasis on measurable outcomes, delivering curriculum and performativity. This is both ‘seen to affect and possibly reduce the role of care’ (Nilsson, 2025: 16) and a site of stress for practitioners (Taggart, 2015) as their own professional values, and in some cases, personal, collide with what is required.

Such tensions closely link with discord between, on the one hand, the neoliberal conceptualisation of professionalism, which conveys practitioner as technician delivering curriculum (Archer, 2021) and improving performance and school readiness (Roberts-Holmes, 2019), and on the other, the statutory requirement for responsiveness to children's needs (DfE, 2024). A growing body of studies (Albin Clark et al., 2018; Campbell-Barr, 2017; Cousins, 2017; Morris, 2020; Osgood, 2010, 2019) suggest the latter is perceived by practitioners as reflecting more closely the reality of practice. This includes their own professional identity and moral situating related to love, compassion and care. Recognised as a form of professionalism within the sector, this has been described as part of an ethic of care which reflects the plurality of responses practitioners make (Osgood, 2010). Underpinned by an ethical responsibility to care, these responses are grounded in and guided by context, as opposed to a set of universal ethical principles in the Kantian sense (Campbell-Barr, 2017; Taggart, 2019a). For example, Morris’s (2018: 173) study highlighted compassion in practitioners’ ethical care of children in the interest ‘of providing protection and better outcomes’, believing that through enacting ethical care, they are improving lives. Relatedly, Osgood (2019: 203) invites a ‘thinking again’ about ECE professionalism as something ‘that is sensed as constantly shifting [and] materialised through the everyday’. This foregrounds embodied encounters and links with Taggart's (2019a, 2019b) assertion that during their interactions with others in ECE, practitioners develop ethical phronesis (practical wisdom drawn from experience which informs situational deliberation) where compassion is key to ethical practice. It is therefore argued that the dominant technocratic approach to assessment in teacher education and training courses creates difficulty in assessing pre-service teachers with regard to tacit or relational aspects of practice such as compassion (Campbell-Barr, 2017, 2019; Taggart, 2015), which leaves it absent from teacher education and training curricula (Taggart, 2015). Instead, what is relied upon is a historical assumption of maternal instinct that is presumed to translate into caring practice (Taggart, 2019a), which inadvertently marginalises men in the sector (Peeters et al., 2015).

In light of increasing concern for both young children's and ECE teachers’ well-being (Cumming, 2017; Longfield, 2021; Seaman and Giles, 2021), and the recognised importance of fostering children's innate capacity for compassion to empower them to be and live well with others in peaceful, caring, sustainable ways (UNESCO, 2021, 2023), I sought to bring ECE practitioners’ voices into the conversation by inviting their perceptions of compassion. Given the troubled landscape in which we currently operate, I also invited them to share what informs their perceptions and what challenges they consider there to be.

Methods and ethical considerations

The research reported on in this paper forms part of a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) of an interpretivist orientation in two ECE sites in the North of England: a nursery for three- to four-year-old children and a reception¹ year group for four- to five-year-old children in a school. With origins in hermeneutics and phenomenology (Blaikie, 2007), interpretivism posits a view that it is through a process of interpretation that knowledge is developed (Waring, 2017), and therefore meaning is subjective (Porta and Keating, 2008). On an ontological level, these meanings are considered to be varied and multiple (Creswell and Creswell, 2018), which, as opposed to one objective reality, is based on the belief that the social world is constituted by multiple realities (Waring, 2017).

In keeping with the ontological orientation of this study, semi-structured interviews were considered best suited to the research question addressed in this paper (Bryman, 2016). The ECE staff working in the aforementioned settings were therefore invited to participate in the interviews to learn about how they perceive compassion. Here, I take ‘perception’ to mean ways of seeing: the way individuals regard, understand, relate to and interpret compassion. Considering the way we see things as often informing values and behaviours which are ‘affected by what we know or what we believe’ (Berger, 2008: 8), through the interviews I also sought to learn about what informed the participants’ perceptions. After elaborating on my interview approach, I discuss ethical considerations and the method of data analysis.

Interviews

In total, 13 members of staff consented to participate in the study. They had varying amounts of experience working in the sector, different qualification backgrounds and were all female (Table 1).

Table 1.

Participating members of staff.

Interviewed participants
Name^a	Position	Age	Experience^b	Educational background
Helen	Nursery Headteacher	50–54	30–34 years	BEd (Hons) in Education and Music
Juliet	Nursery Senior Lead Teacher	40–44	5–9 years	BA in Early Childhood Studies, Primary PGCE (QTS)
Monika	Nursery Early Years Educator	35–39	10–14 years	MA in Teaching and QTS
Katy	Nursery Early Years Educator	35–39	15–19 years	BA in Early Years Education and Level 3
Lorna	Nursery Early Years Educator	40–44	20–24 years	PGCE with QTS
Emily	Nursery Early Years Educator	40–44	1–4 years	BA (Hons) in Performing Arts, Cache 3 Children's Workforce
Florence	Nursery Early Years Educator	25–29	5–9 years	BA (Hons) in Education and Training. PGCE with QTS
Ann	Nursery Chair, Senior Leader	60+	40+ years (Early Years Teacher, 25 years as Headteacher)	BSc in Zoology and Physiology
Camilla	School Headteacher	45–49	25–29 years	BA in English, QTS
Philippa	Early Years Lead and Reception Class Teacher	50–54	20–24 years	BSc in Biosciences and Chemistry BA in Geography, PGCE with QTS, MA in Education
Samantha	Reception Class Teacher	30–34	10–14 years	BA (Hons) in Early Years Education with QTS
Liv	Reception Class Teacher	25–29	1–4 years	BA in Primary Education with QTS, MA in Education
Ingrid	Reception Teaching Assistant	20–24	1–4 years	Foundation in Supporting Teaching and Learning (Level 5) At the time of interviews undertaking a top-up BA in Education and Training (Level 6)
Denise	Reception Teaching Assistant	40–44	5–9 years	BA in Childhood Studies

Note. ^aNames are pseudonyms. All members of staff are referred to as ‘teachers’ in this paper. ^bExperience refers to their work experience in education.

PGCE: Post Graduate Certificate in Education; QTS: Qualified Teacher Status.

Rather than conducting the interviews intermittently during the daily flow of ethnographic work (i.e. informal conversations during participant observation), the interviews were held on a one-to-one basis. The intention of this was to create space for the ECE members of staff to share their perceptions and enable a deeper exploration that the prolonged conversational nature of the interview affords. In keeping with the flexible design of the ethnography in which these interviews were situated, the order and phrasing of questions were flexible (Bryman, 2016). This was beneficial as it allowed us to follow the flow of dialogue while affording opportunity for participants to clarify their understanding of the questions, and for me to clarify my understanding of their expressed perceptions, thereby supporting credibility (Kvale, 1996). Moreover, I was able to ask additional questions, including follow-up, probing, specifying and interpreting (Kvale, 1996), all of which deepened our discussion and allowed for member-reflecting, which again acted to ensure trustworthiness of the study (Shenton, 2004; Tracy, 2010).

The interview protocol comprised four main parts that correspond with the study's aims and research questions. With particular interest in the teacher's perceptions, the interview questions covered: descriptions of their early years environment and compassion; their perception of compassion's purpose, place and role in ECE; what informs their perception of compassion; how they see compassion playing out in their setting; and whether they identify any supporting factors or challenges to compassion. The interviews were approximately one hour in length, with four of the 13 lasting two to two and a half hours. Aware of potential emotional and cognitive load, I checked with the participants during this time that they were happy to proceed. All interviews were audio-recorded using a small Dictaphone placed on the table. Alongside this, I made hand-written notes to record salient thoughts and non-verbal forms of communication (Finlay, 2012). However, mindful of the discomfort this might cause, these were brief. Shortly after the interviews, I transcribed the audio recordings verbatim to enable a thorough analysis of the data. Other key elements of the interview's design were listening and objects. I shall unpack each and their appropriateness in turn.

Listening

What Forsey (2010) refers to as ‘participant listening’ is an important technique used by ethnographers which they advocate is applied during formal interviews that can take place within ethnographic fieldwork. Calling for a democracy of the senses, this entailed trying to remain sensorially aware so as to sensitise and attune myself to in-the-moment happenings during the interviews as well as to moments-that-had-been (wider context) in the lead up to them. This ‘active listening’ drew my attention to the interactional, communicative and emotional aspects of our interview encounter, such as the way the participants and myself communicated non-verbally (facial expressions, bodily). This also steered me to be reflexively mindful of my non-verbal expressions and tone (Kvale, 1996), as Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) suggest that during the interview encounter participants may look for some indication of whether the answers given are ‘correct’. I also considered important to incorporate compassion through engaging in receptive (Ellis, 2017) ‘deep listening’ (Way and Tracy, 2012), given the emotive nature of compassion and what sharing their experiences might elicit for participants.

Objects

The staff were invited to bring an object in the form of an image or other material item to support in reflecting on and articulating their perspectives of compassion. This was in anticipation that conveying views of something as complex, emotive and, as they described, abstract as compassion may be difficult. Resonating with Berger's (2008: 10) suggestion that ‘every image embodies a way of seeing’, Harper (2002) proposes that images invoke deeper elements of human consciousness, with photographs often being used in research to explore perspectives. This is based on the assumption that photographs play a role ‘in promoting reflections that words alone cannot’ (Guillemin and Drew, 2010: 176). The object's introduction within the interview was left open and tailored to each interview context (Woodward, 2020). Chosen objects included photographs, journals, drawings, a video, a hamper, a painting and books.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was granted by Durham University’s Ethics Board before undertaking the research. Following which, informed consent was sought prior to the interviews (Robson, 2002). All members of staff working in the settings were invited to participate in the study, which I did in person to help humanise the process. A detailed letter was shared, which explained the purpose of the interviews and made clear that involvement was voluntary and that they had the right to decline or withdraw any time. During all phases of the research, I ensured data were kept confidential through anonymising and secure data storage in respect of the General Data Protection Regulation (Intersoft Consulting, 2018) and the Data Protection Act (2018). This extended to information the participants did not wish to have recorded. Additionally, recording equipment during the interviews was paused to protect non-participants when they entered the room. As part of an ethnographic project, of note is the time at which these interviews took place – mid/end of my participant observation that spanned a five-month period – as it enabled trusting relationships and rapport to be established. I considered this an important aspect in my research design given the emotive nature of compassion and potential vulnerability of the interview encounter.

Reflexive thematic analysis

I interpreted the interview transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA; Braun and Clarke, 2019, 2021). This offers a recursive and reflexive approach to analysis whereby the analytic purpose is to generate themes which are conceptualised as ‘stories about particular patterns of shared meaning across the dataset’ (Braun and Clarke, 2019: 593), as opposed to domain summaries of the array of meanings concerning a certain topic. Flexible and interpretive, the process involves six iterative phases that permit researcher movement between them (Braun and Clarke, 2022), which I found allows for the mapping and tracing involved in multi-sited ethnography (Falzon, 2009). These phases involve: familiarisation; coding labels (which I later used to generate themes); generating initial themes; developing and reviewing themes; refining and defining themes; and writing up. Further complementing ethnographic methodology, RTA recognises the active role of the researcher and appreciates the subjective, context-dependent nature of meaning-making and re-presentation. I made use of both latent and semantic codes (Braun and Clarke, 2019), which was particularly useful for coding participants’ expressions of how they perceive compassion, which at times they found tricky to articulate and ‘unpick’.

Findings

This section is structured by themes relating to how the members of staff describe compassion, the place/role they see compassion has in ECE, the challenges they perceive there to be for compassion and what informs their perceptions. To bring their voices into conversation, it shares the words of members of staff alongside my own.

Theme 1: Descriptions of compassion varied between the nursery and school staff

Initially, when the ECE members of staff were invited to describe how they see compassion, they appeared to find difficulty in articulating compassion in a discursive form, describing it as ‘obvious and it's abstract’ (Monika), ‘hard to unpick’ (Philippa), ‘in everything!’ (Denise) and that ‘it just doesn’t necessarily need to be words’ (Helen). This relates to the nursery staff’s descriptions of compassion as ‘a way of being with others’ (Katy) and as involving feeling, thinking and doing: ‘it is not just feeling it but doing something about it’ (Ann). Together, the stories of compassion in ECE that they shared suggest that compassion is less spoken of than it is embodied and enacted daily in varying ways.

‘Understanding’ was a frequently used descriptor by both the nursery and school staff. This was in terms of being open to understanding others, trying to understand another's context and feelings and non-judgement. Drawing on a recent scenario, Juliet described this occurring between children in the nursery (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Juliet's object conveying compassion in nursery.

For the nursery staff, alongside understanding was togetherness. This was described as a ‘strong connection’ (Lorna) that is felt (acting as a motivator) and fostered by being there for others in a caring, thoughtful and respectful manner. This was perceived as orientated towards both human and nonhuman others as ‘all life matters’ (Emily), and it reflects the value they each placed on nonhuman life-forms. They also described this in the sense of collective compassion and reflecting together about what can be done to make a positive difference both locally and further afield. While loss and death were mentioned in relation to compassion, participants also expressed a view that compassion ‘doesn’t have to always be sad’ (Monika). For the school staff, descriptions of compassion varied, with it being spoken of in terms of their roles (leadership, class teacher, assistant) and linked with Theme 2 – their experiences within those. Among them, however, they conveyed a perception that compassion feels warm, means being open to understanding others, inclusive, listening deeply in a non-judgemental manner; and for children, having loving but clear rules and boundaries to keep them safe, getting to the root of what is causing them distress and ‘getting that happiness back’ (Ingrid).

Theme 2: Influential experiences with others overtime and reflective awareness inform perceptions of compassion

Another common theme was learning and gaining understanding of compassion through experience in an informal manner (rather than through formal teacher education and training² courses). That is, through experiences observing or interacting with, and reflection around, other people, books and world events over time in different contexts.

Philippa, Denise, Monika, Emily, Juliet, Helen and Florence spoke of their upbringing and the influence of the values instilled in the process, as well as the teachings they reflectively drew from them. For example, Emily spoke of her family’s Christian values as well as her auntie’s and brother's enactments of compassion for others. For her, this prompted a belief in putting others before oneself and doing what we can to help, no matter who they are. Similarly, Juliet spoke lovingly of her parents, who instilled in her a view of compassion for all, ‘a sense of community … and to sort of look after each other’, and to have a love and understanding of children. Contrastingly, for Helen and Florence, it was their experience of not experiencing compassion growing up that informed their perception of it. For example, for Florence, a lack of validation and understanding of her emotions, with no time or space given to express herself, acted as a key factor informing how she perceives compassion and how it might manifest in interactions with colleagues and children. For Helen, it was through reflection in adulthood that she identified a compassionate role model to learn from. This person is her colleague Ann, whose own perception was informed by both early career experiences in settings where she encountered little understanding or care for young children's developmental needs and also her experiences with local families. Here, she spoke of having a reflective awareness of what life is like for them living in an economically deprived area, and how her thinking had also been informed by influential texts (Why Love Matters by Sue Gerdhardt (2004) and a botany book) in relation to this. Similarly, Liv, Denise and Juliet referred to their experience with books as shaping their perspectives of compassion, its purpose and how it can manifest in practice. These include messages in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2019) for Liv (Figure 2), the Bible for Denise and books about woodland creatures for Juliet. Juliet also cited the influence of HG Wells’s story The Time Machine as depicted in the film of the same title, which conveys a care-free environment with lack of compassion. Having watched it repeatedly during childhood, Juliet said this prompted her further in-depth reflection of why compassion needs to be instilled in education.

Figure 2.

Liv's object and perception of compassion in ECE.

Samantha and Liv spoke in terms of experiences teaching three- to seven-year-old children. Samantha spoke of this in context of compassion having a central place in ECE in supporting the foundation for children to be and interact well with others, and for the challenges they may face – in education and long term – given ‘all sorts of different things that have happened kind of in the world … an ever changing world’ (Samantha). Liv shared stories from her teaching experiences, including disclosure of abuse, explaining how these experiences highlighted the diverse contexts in which children live. This fostered a belief that taking a compassionate and open approach with children enables them to trust and open up to her, and for compassion to further be realised in turn. This shaped her view that compassion should be ‘at the forefront of teaching’, giving children the opportunity to experience it for their well-being, to help foster it and to guide teachers since ‘taking that first step is often what is going to help the children’ (Liv).

Camilla's description of compassion as warmth and making time to see/hear what people are feeling through active attention stemmed from her experiences as headteacher and reflections regarding people's experiences within school. This was linked with the importance she places on children’s, staff’s and parents’ well-being and relationships. She also spoke of compassion for oneself in leadership, which came from the experience of having responsibility for others’ well-being and, with that, the ‘call’ of modern technology with the felt pressure this elicits as there is not ‘somebody to look after me so to speak’ (Camilla).

Theme 3: Compassion is perceived as central to life in and beyond ECE

This overarching theme depicts the place and role the staff collectively perceive compassion to have. Their interwoven words in Table 2 describe this centrality.

Table 2.

Teachers’ perceptions of compassion's centrality.

Interwoven voices of compassion in ECE
‘Because it is so well embedded in what we do (Camilla), it's in everything from (Philippa) giving her a little tissue and trying to crack a little smile out of her before we walked down the stairs (Ingrid), you know, encouraging children to try new things or not be upset that something hasn’t worked the first time (Philippa), [to] simple things as out on the playground. You know, sometimes you see a child just by themselves and you just go and ask that child a question (Denise). Multiple times everyday through lots of little things from helping with a zip [or] looking after our environment … Just, yeah. I don’t know how you can go through the day without (Philippa), compassion, it is part of everyday … [and] their everyday learning all the time. And it is a very important part because as they get older, it only becomes more challenging (Samantha). I think compassion teaches children the vital ways of life (Lorna), you kind of need that basis … to build relationships to get along, to know what is right and wrong (Katy), just navigating the world (Florence) [and] how children deal with their um, deal with life really (Liv). It's a life skill I think it is really important that you learn if it isn’t natural and you know, it is something you need to work at or be more considerate about. It is something you need through life, not just in education, not just during your learning in education. We are learning for life’ (Helen).

Interwoven voices of compassion in ECE

‘Because it is so well embedded in what we do (Camilla), it's in everything from (Philippa) giving her a little tissue and trying to crack a little smile out of her before we walked down the stairs (Ingrid), you know, encouraging children to try new things or not be upset that something hasn’t worked the first time (Philippa), [to] simple things as out on the playground. You know, sometimes you see a child just by themselves and you just go and ask that child a question (Denise). Multiple times everyday through lots of little things from helping with a zip [or] looking after our environment … Just, yeah. I don’t know how you can go through the day without (Philippa), compassion, it is part of everyday … [and] their everyday learning all the time. And it is a very important part because as they get older, it only becomes more challenging (Samantha). I think compassion teaches children the vital ways of life (Lorna), you kind of need that basis … to build relationships to get along, to know what is right and wrong (Katy), just navigating the world (Florence) [and] how children deal with their um, deal with life really (Liv). It's a life skill I think it is really important that you learn if it isn’t natural and you know, it is something you need to work at or be more considerate about. It is something you need through life, not just in education, not just during your learning in education. We are learning for life’ (Helen).

Overall, a perception of compassion was conveyed by the teachers as ‘the beginning of everything’ (Monika) for how we relate to and navigate the world, live together in harmony, contribute and make a positive difference on individual, community and global levels. Within this theme, there was a strong sense that compassion is needed in the world to make life, communities and environments better. There are three subthemes which I will go through in turn.

Acknowledgement and thoughtful consideration of others’ lifeworlds and our impact, oriented to bringing something positive to lives, relationships and environments

This subtheme describes the purpose and role compassion is perceived to have in ECE and the way the members of staff see compassion playing out in the relations among them (Table 3). For the school staff, this subtheme was attributed to both children and adults; for example, in listening to colleagues or saying themselves ‘I’m here for you’, even if they are unable to help directly with what is causing distress, stress or otherwise. In relation to children, they described compassion's role as helping children to consider the complexities of social-emotional lifeworlds and with thinking outside of themselves. This was expressed with a view that it needs to start early in life to support with understanding others and moving out of an ‘I’ frame into ‘we’. That is, to help children think about others and the influence that their own behaviours have. Relatedly, the staff spoke of compassion as needing to be frequently guided in ‘real life’ scenarios outside of formal teaching. Particularly when grappling with emotions such as jealousy and resentment. Similarly, the nursery staff conveyed a perception that compassion's role in ECE is to bring something positive to life/living and well-being and to support relationships through caring support of varying scales. Within their setting, they perceive this playing out through multiple possibilities for intergenerational and interspecies encounters that foster children's understandings of others and the world, as well as in the relations among adults and beyond the setting. The purpose of compassion here was viewed as uplifting others: compassion is ‘more than just helping someone to just live, I think it is helping them to live well and bring something positive to their life’ (Florence) and to help ‘make communities work’ (Juliet). An example of this is Ann's story in Table 3 which tells of what the nursery did to support local people with how they feel about themselves, their children and their own futures.

Table 3.

Teachers’ perceptions and stories of compassion in ECE.

Name	Perceptions and stories
Philippa	‘I think it is about acknowledging that children might be feeling certain things that they have brought with them from home, and being sympathetic and listening to that and trying [to] and at least noticing it … Being aware of colleagues and what has maybe happened to them at the weekend and knowing what has maybe been happening to them … actually just acknowledging they might be having a difficult time and asking and showing some concern, even if there is absolutely nothing you can do, but that might actually just make them feel a little bit more, I don’t know, cheerful! You know, that someone is aware of what is going on for me, has acknowledged it and understands that things are hard for me at the moment, even if there isn’t anything we can do’.
Helen	‘In talking to the children about it [a tsunami], what we did was like “so what can we do about it?” and it was Ginnie, she was here a few years ago but has now retired, she led a little project with mainly her own children in the Willow group, exploring some quite vivid images and footage of the devastation that was caused and asking the children how, you know, “what about all the children living in the town or country at the time?” and “what could we do about that?” And so they set about having ideas about sending them some toys or send them soap or send them some, so individually with their families did some fundraising. So one of them did like er run, like a sponsored run, another one did washing cars, another one did jewellery with her parents and sold it and so there was lots of little pockets of children doing something to send to these [children], and you know, when the RAF [Royal Air Force] carry loads of packages and drop them, it was linked to that and so that is a nice example of how the children got involved and were proactive for the sake of those less fortunate’.
Lorna	‘Recently, there's been a couple of incidents where I have felt people being compassionate towards me and one of them erm was Emily, and she sent me a lovely text – she has recently lost her dad – and she sent me a lovely text saying, “you know, I know what you are going through, it is really hard” and I said, “I just don’t understand why it is hurting me so much” and she said, “the reason why it is hurting you so much is because you love so much”. And that really helped me. Those words really, really have supported me. Erm, another form of compassion [was shown by] Monika. She has just been asking how I am all the time and being really upfront and like, “is everything okay, how is your dad?” And some people can shy away from those questions, and she is asking the questions and I know it is difficult because she has recently lost her dad, and I really find that helpful and compassionate’.
Samantha	‘I think it's trying to teach children to become considerate of others … trying to teach them how to acknowledge a feeling towards a situation but equally kind of get … the further background information behind … how they feel about something, but also in terms of social situations, how we should approach that … for us as well, you know, we need to understand the feelings of children as well and understand their well-being’.
Ann	‘In those days, Woodview [the village in which the nursery is siutated] was still pulling itself up from pit closures and there were so many of the parents in those days, local parents, who were down on their heels and depressed … the poverty was much worse than it is now, and they were not enjoying their children at all. And I was spending so much of my time with parents because they were having so many problems at home. They would come and just talk to me and end up crying … And they didn’t have anywhere to go because they didn’t want to get involved with social services, they didn’t want to ask for help, they didn’t want any of that, they just were in a bad place. And so that is why we went to the lengths of building a family centre which was a non-stigmatising space where they could go and have support and do things with their children’.

Compassion in ECE is perceived to be foundationary and a basis for life and living well

This sub-theme describes a perception of compassion's purpose in ECE as being foundational for supporting children's learning, holistic development and overall well-being whilst providing them with a compass for navigating life. In this manner, the members of staff conveyed a view of compassion as: underpinning learning and teaching; something that helps build relationships and members of staff to orientate their practice; supporting understanding of children's feelings and ‘teaching children compassion as well’ (Liv), with acknowledgement that ‘they are only four and five year old, you know’ (Ingrid). This is seen to support holistic development, where they look to the ‘bigger picture’ (Samantha) to scaffold children's ability to navigate relations and different situations.

Compassionate environments are formed together and begin with adults

Within this sub-theme, the nursery and school perceptions diverged slightly by way of emphasis. Here, the school staff emphasised perceiving compassionate environments as beginning with adults, while the nursery staff, though also perceiving the latter to be influential, spoke of perceiving compassionate environments as being formed together.

To elaborate, ‘togetherness’ was conveyed in the nursery staff's perception of compassion in ECE with regard to being, doing, playing, deciding and working through things together. This includes colleagues demonstrating compassion to each other as well as shared reflections and dialogue during their frequent group times with the children. During which they ask the children what they think, how they feel and what could be done to help, then put it into practice, understanding that ‘having that community spirit helps with compassion’ (Emily) and ‘you need everyone on board for it to work’ (Lorna). Animals as well as plants are seen as an important part of this togetherness in terms of being viewed as life that should be respected and cared for. The school staff expressed a view that compassion in ECE is most influenced by the adults in the setting, specifically, the ways in which they are with each other and the children, and in teaching the ‘layers of compassion’ (Camilla). They emphasised role modelling compassion so ‘children develop those skills themselves’ (Philippa), as ‘it is never going to be a prominent aspect of the children's education otherwise’ (Liv). This was considered part of the profession. Denise, Ingrid and Philippa were very aware of this, relaying to me the care they took so as not to contradict the very behaviours they hoped the children would show. This perception was also held by the ECE leaders in considering compassion is ‘what my role as a leader should show’ and that it is important to encourage compassion to ‘cascade down ’ through the school. The sense of indirectly modelling compassion to colleagues and the perception of learning compassion by observing were picked up by Liv and Ingrid, who spoke of their early career experiences. They said this helped them learn what compassion in ECE might look like in practice, which they could enact when the opportunity arose and learn further through that experience.

With adults and sense of togetherness considered to influence compassion within ECE, some members of staff spoke of past experiences in uncompassionate ECE environments, where other teachers were indifferent or disassociated from ECE and individualistic; who “not collaborate well, care nor support each other” (Lorna). Using The Time Machine story to help depict her perception, Juliet spoke of a care-free approach as atomistic and chaotic, full of sadness and hurt, with people feeling lost within sterile environments where everyone/thing is uncared for. This echoed others’ descriptions of how ECE would be without compassion.

Theme 4: Professional pressures, time and adults are perceived as challenges to compassion in ECE

While opportunities to experience compassion and realise it were perceived by teachers to be in taking a slow approach to experiencing things together, such as through ‘pockets of time just to reflect and talk about things’ (Lorna), conversely, a lack of time and the busyness of the ‘all-encompassing’ (Juliet) profession were considered major challenges. This was in addition to professional pressures, expectations and the (then) recent COVID-19 pandemic, as well as divided school communities and disassociated teachers and their approach.

To elaborate, adults, including those in the wider school, were considered to set the tone for how it feels to be in their environment, with teachers’ approaches that exhibit a lack of compassion being perceived as presenting as a challenge to experiences of it. Speaking from their own experiences, the teachers described this as including gossip or ‘back-biting’, which generated feelings of discomfort, loneliness and inhibition, and prevented certain members of staff from fully contributing ideas, expressing compassion towards the children and enjoying the full breadth of their roles. Juliet suggested speaking out in such cases ‘because that is how something spreads’. But, perhaps due to their positions, most teachers felt compromised or alone in ‘calling them out’ due to working relationships and fear of overstepping. The realisation of compassion was also seen to be compromised by adults who may not think deeply and holistically about ECE nor have the relevant experience from their pre-service education, which the teachers said led to assumptions and lack of support in fostering a compassionate environment.

Correspondingly, from their experiences in previous settings the teachers also spoke of perceiving an uncompassionate environment as structurally directed, rigid, emotionally cold and closed to others’ needs, behaviours and voices, and that this was directed by the members of staff in those settings. Descriptions conveyed a community lacking conviviality, freedoms and reciprocity – or rather, lack of thoughtfulness and consideration for others, their lifeworld and our impact. In terms of children's realisation of compassion, participants perceived a ‘rigid regime' (Philippa and Camilla) of prescriptive learning and limited choice as preventing opportunity to experience compassion. Ingrid added to this the ‘red tape’ of school and government policies as preventing provision of opportunities, for example, engagement with animals and through that the possibility of realising compassion for other species. Many reflected that compassion could become lost in school environments and ECE unless actively valued by everyone, acknowledged, modelled and encouraged to flourish over time. Relatedly, Lorna shared that there are plenty of opportunities for children to experience compassion in the ECE environment, and worried about the adults who have fewer.

Professional pressures and expectation were perceived to have a combined effect of inhibiting compassion due to countering opportunity to be in-the-moment and attune to happenings around them, “you just can't stop and listen” (Juliet), because of completing check-points, meetings, planning for shows, visitors, and moving from place to place, pressured to get on with the next thing. This pressure was seen to mount at particular times in the year, with such busyness challenging the expression and fostering of compassion due to teachers being emotionally drained. In such times, they said they felt more likely to unintentionally brush people off, with stress and impatience inhibiting a state of calmness and the ability to absorb what is going on, which played on their minds. Emily added that this emotional drain is compounded by the lack of time for compassion for oneself. She also saw lack of time to always give what is perceived as needed for compassion towards an individual or situation as relating further to the number of children in ones' charge. Denise, while recognising such challenges, shone a light of hope, perceiving compassion to be the counterpoint to them (Table 4).

Table 4.

Perceived challenges.

Person	Perceived challenge and hope
Ingrid	‘You haven’t, don’t have the time to sit and talk with them and say, “well, I miss my mummy” [pretends to cry] and say [softens voice] “well, it's alright because you will see them soon, just wipe those tears away”. [voice goes back to normal] Sometimes you don’t have time to do that, so you just go [changes to strict tone] “Right, no. Stop crying. Come, we are going. No more”. So, it is not really fair that sometimes we say that to some children and sometimes I sit down with them and talk to them but not others’.
Liv	‘It's very important to have these wider conversations and understand what teachers and what educators want to bring into education and the curriculum, but teachers are just trying to get through the daily pressures that teachers face. At the moment, it's maths! [laughs], we are just trying to kind of get through maths um and have children understanding 9 and 10’.
Samantha	‘I think in what we can provide for them, I think sometimes, and it might sound crazy, but I think the amount of [slight pause] I think the expectations on us as teachers in what we have to be able to deliver and facilitate in the working day is challenging. I think we have a lot of time restraints, it provides challenge, it provides pressure erm … And I think, you know, particularly after COVID, I think it has been kind of … an acceleration of what we need to be catching up on and where children need to be … I have taught Reception the last two years and the last time I taught Reception waaaas in 2012 for three years. Time has changed an awful lot … since then, you know, that was 10 years ago. You know, the pressures have certainly accelerated in terms of what we have to do and what we have to deliver. Without really a lot of consideration of what children have been through’.
Denise	‘I think it can be overcome by others being compassionate to you and understanding … There is always an opportunity for us to be compassionate to others. There is, I think it is if we do it, there is always room for improvement. There is always room for us to learn about stuff. You know, as we are human beings and we should never stop learning’.

Discussion

The teachers' voices bring to light a perception of compassion as central to life in their settings and within their practice, in educating with and for compassion, as well as central to their wider relations which recognise the settings as situated in a wider context. Here, they convey an expansive view of compassion, key to which is an understanding that ‘it's just something you have got to live everyday. It is not something you teach in a PSHE [personal, social, health and economic] lesson and think “brilliant, I have done my job!” It is not like that. It has to be lived’ (Philippa).

Combined with descriptions of compassion as understanding, togetherness and warmth, this stands in contrast to the projected image of the ECE professional as a technician delivering curriculum (Archer, 2021; Moss, 2019), which my findings suggest feeds into the challenges to experiencing compassion. Manifesting as professional pressures comprised of performance, expectation of outcomes, inspection demands and ratios, they interlink with a corresponding challenge of time. The members of staff each spoke passionately and at length about this, often finding themselves caught in a double bind whereby timetables, felt expectations, individualism and divisions act against a possible current of compassion. For example, when trying to support children's holistic well-being and development through seeking to provide opportunities, meeting needs, speaking-up, giving time and fostering positive relationships within a setting. From what they conveyed, this pressure pot of micro-stressors means the ideal of promoting compassion is not always realised and can induce stress and ill-feeling towards the self, impacting staff well-being and feelings of isolation. This is something that is particularly apparent in light of Emily's and Lorna's comments regarding fewer opportunities for staff to genuinely experience compassion, and of Camilla's with regard to leaders. With the aforementioned challenges echoing other empirical literature (Bonetti, 2019; Broadfoot and Pascal, 2021; Cameron, 2020; Roberts-Holmes, 2020; SMC, 2020), the findings further illustrate how these issues pervade the ECE landscape in England and give weight to the call to reimagine ECE to better support teachers’ work conditions and children's flourishing.

This also raises the question of pre-service teacher education which is troubled by technocratic modes of assessment (Campbell-Barr, 2017; Taggart, 2015) that cast a shadow over the relational and tacit aspects of the role (Osgood, 2010): Particularly in light of the perceived challenges to experiencing compassion being the pre-service teacher education, assumptions and dissociation of some members of staff. Manifesting as gossip, ‘back-biting’ or disassociation/lack of knowledge of ECE work, this was put down to lack of relevant experience and training, and not thinking deeply and holistically about ECE. The teachers described this as an uncompassionate approach which reflected a lack of compassionate practice as a team and for the children. With the absence of compassion from pre-service education and guidance (Taggart, 2015, 2016), the teachers’ perception that compassion is a necessary part of life in education and something they bring to their practice might be considered a ‘silent knowing’. That is, rather than being spoken of, compassion's presence in practice appears to be left to individual teachers with an implicit understanding that it is necessary and foundational. Which, as the teachers suggest, can present a challenge to experiencing compassion in ECE (for the children, staff, families and wider relations) if this is not shared by other adults working in the settings. Correspondingly, the findings convey that what informs teachers’ perceptions of compassion is their own lived experiences of it (such as through interactions with people and things) and reflection on compassion in context of life events/circumstances and contexts. This points towards the experiential nature of learning, embodiment and the value of reflection, which can inform situational deliberation and discernment (practical wisdom or ‘phronesis’) when it comes to compassion in practice.

So what are the implications? With experience and reflection collectively informing teachers’ perceptions of compassion in ECE ‘rather than using an approach to professional development that trains people to “fit in” and conform to a dominant system’ (McLeod et al., 2019: 227), teacher education/training and development might adopt an experiential and reflective approach that can work from the ‘ground up’ in embedding compassion as a way of being within a setting. This corresponds with understandings of professionalism in the sector as something sensed and ‘materialised through the everyday’ (Osgood, 2019: 203) through embodied encounters with others, allowing for the development of ethical phronesis (Taggart, 2019a). This resonates with the teachers’ portrayal of compassion as a ‘feeling, thinking and doing’, involving acknowledgement, understanding, consideration and bringing something positive to others’ lives. Here, the findings provide further grounding for the experiential and reflective approaches to compassion that are advocated for in ECE pre-service teacher education and ongoing professional development. These recommendations include: pre-service teachers experiencing compassion through the mentoring they receive and the role modelling they observe during practice-based aspects of their course (Luff and Kanyal, 2015; Quinones and Cooper, 2022); and contemplative approaches in the ethical development of ECE teachers, which Taggart (2019a, 2019b) positions as a means of helping build teachers’ compassionate internal working models. Furthermore, adopting an experiential and reflective approach accounts for compassion's dynamic, situational and relational nature; that it is a process, context-dependent and therefore not something that can be necessarily planned for – ‘you can’t predict when it is going to happen, when you are going to need compassion’ (Helen). Importantly, while the teachers perceived compassionate ECE environments as beginning with adults, they held a view that such environments are formed together. And this relational aspect needs to be held in view – compassion does not reside in individuals alone (Broadfoot, 2025; Lilius et al., 2011). It is embodied and plays out through relational encounters with others (Broadfoot, 2025). Taking this in light of the challenges cited by the teachers in my study, other practical implications include looking to the ECE organisation as a whole and collectively meeting the challenges, as my findings suggest, by taking a slow approach with compassion at the centre.

Reflections

Among the ECE members of staff involved in this study, there was a strong sense that compassion is needed in the world to make life and environments better in the short and long term, perceiving compassion as central to life within ECE and beyond. With this in mind, in ECE, they perceived fostering and enacting compassion to be at the heart of all they do. They also expressed that experiencing compassion is a valued part of their own general experience of ECE environments. These perceptions were shaped not through formal training but through lived experience, reflection and relational encounters, underscoring compassion's experiential and relational nature.

However, when speaking about challenges, they resoundingly saw time as an issue alongside busyness, some adults working within ECE, expectations and curriculum pressures. For in-practice teachers, carving out time ‘just to sit and talk about things’ (Lorna) was valued and might be one way of affording opportunity for collective compassion in face of the challenges encountered, whilst making space for reflection to continue to inform approaches with compassoin within a setting and for fostering connection. Considering compassion as togetherness, an example can be seen in the nursery's group time discussion (described in Theme 1), as well as in work discussion groups in ECE as suggested by Elfer et al. (2018) and on a more individual level adopting a contemplative approach to practice (Taggart, 2019a).

As noted in the Discussion section, the findings also have implications for how we approach pre-service teacher education and incorporate compassion within it through an experiential, reflective approach, and for recognising and celebrating the tacit and relational aspects of ECE professional practice. Making compassion more visible might be a first step in supporting recognition and valuing of it, such that it does not get swept to the wayside as ‘a thing to do’ or lost to a culture of performance and measurable outcomes. As the teachers voiced, compassion is a valued part of daily life and a ‘very important part’ (Samantha) of children's learning, with it supporting their relations with others as well as their facing and navigating challenges encountered through life. The teachers’ stories also illustrate how compassion plays a pinnacle role in their relationships with each other and in driving their actions to support those beyond their settings. This invites a reimagining of ECE that prioritises and explicitly integrates compassion, recognising its vital role in fostering children's well-being and development, as well as positive relationships among staff and the wider human and nonhuman community.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of staff who participated in this study and shared their perceptions and stories.

ORCID iD

Harriet Broadfoot

Consent to participate

Written informed consent was provided by all the participants prior to the research taking place.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical considerations

This research was granted ethical approval by Durham University's Ethics Committee (EDU-2021-01-25T14_48_39-mdcc43) 10 March 2022.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by an Economic and SocialResearch Council grant (reference no. ES/P000762/1).

Data availability

For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.

Notes

Author biography

Harriet Broadfoot holds a PhD in education and works in the School of Education at Durham University. Her research focuses on early childhood education, compassion, well-being, sustainability, global citizenship and early learning environments. Alongside research, she teaches across the BA Education Studies, MA Education and BA Primary programmes. Harriet is also a qualified early childhood education teacher and Montessori teacher with a longstanding background working with young children.

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