Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is now firmly on government agendas in many countries, including England, and the need to develop a professional workforce is generally agreed. The reform of the children's workforce in England acknowledges that increasing the skills and competence of this workforce is critical to its success. Two new professional roles, as routes to creating a more professional workforce, are discussed in this article: the Senior Practitioner and the more recent Early Years Professional role. The article provides a critical review of policy developments leading to the creation of these roles and discusses the tensions and challenges of developing new professional roles within the context of meeting externally prescribed requirements and standards. The article questions whether such standards and requirements help to create this new professionalism or whether, as some critics have argued, they inhibit professional autonomy and promote a model of technical practice. The article draws on a broader international study of professionalism in ECEC and uses data from the English part of this project to illustrate that practitioners working in this English context can and do develop a sense of professional identity and engage in practices which can be described as "professional". (Contains 1 note.)