Men in Early Childhood Education and Care

155 Pages·2018·1.571 MB·English

by  Jo Warin

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
GENDER AND EDUCATION
Series Editor: Yvette Taylor
MEN IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD
EDUCATION
AND CARE
Gender Balance and
Flexibility
Jo Warin
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
Series Editor
Yvette Taylor
School of Education
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, UK
This Series aims to provide a comprehensive space for an increasingly
diverse and complex area of interdisciplinary social science research: gen-
der and education. Because the field of women and gender studies is
developing rapidly and becoming ‘internationalised’ – as are traditional
social science disciplines such as sociology, educational studies, social
geography, and so on – there is a greater need for this dynamic, global
Series that plots emerging definitions and debates and monitors critical
complexities of gender and education. This Series has an explicitly femi-
nist approach and orientation and attends to key theoretical and method-
ological debates, ensuring a continued conversation and relevance within
the well-established, inter-disciplinary field of gender and education.
The Series combines renewed and revitalised feminist research meth-
ods and theories with emergent and salient public policy issues. These
include pre-compulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘early years’ and
‘lifelong’ education; educational (dis)engagements of pupils, students
and staff; trajectories and intersectional inequalities including race, class,
sexuality, age and disability; policy and practice across educational land-
scapes; diversity and difference, including institutional (schools, colleges,
universities), locational and embodied (in ‘teacher’–‘learner’ positions);
varied global activism in and beyond the classroom and the ‘public uni-
versity’; educational technologies and transitions and the (ir)relevance of
(in)formal educational settings; and emergent educational mainstreams
and margins. In using a critical approach to gender and education, the
Series recognises the importance of probing beyond the boundaries of
specific territorial-legislative domains in order to develop a more interna-
tional, intersectional focus. In addressing varied conceptual and method-
ological questions, the Series combines an intersectional focus on
competing – and sometimes colliding – strands of educational provision-
ing and equality and ‘diversity’, and provides insightful reflections on the
continuing critical shift of gender and feminism within (and beyond) the
academy.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14626
Jo Warin
Men in Early
Childhood Education
and Care
Gender Balance and Flexibility
Jo Warin
Department of Educational Research
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
ISBN 978-3-319-89538-3 ISBN 978-3-319-89539-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89539-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940870
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Preface
A tiny minority of early childhood teachers are male. This pattern is the
same all over the world with a global average of 2% or 3%. Even where
there have been efforts and funding to change this pattern it has remained
stubbornly resistant. This matters. The intransigence of men’s absence
from this all-important caring and teaching work indicates the deep roots
of our highly gendered world. This book is written in a spirit of optimism
that views men’s potential contribution to early childhood education as a
necessary piece in the jigsaw of positive gender transformation. This book
is timely, responding to the growing tide of interest in men’s absence from
work with young children, a concern that is currently expressed by early
childhood practitioners and policymakers, including government, in the
UK and elsewhere. I draw on two decades of gender-focused empirical
research I have led and participated in. I focus particularly on a recent
ethnographic case study undertaken in an English preschool that has five
male staff, together with an interview-based study carried out with
Swedish male preschool teachers. Drawing together this data and
informed by the large and growing body of relevant international research,
I argue that that in order to make the most of men’s presence in the early
years workforce we need to recruit, and train a gender-sensitive workforce
to deliver a gender-flexible pedagogy. Recruiting and retaining more men
will simply reproduce the current gender order unless these men, in col-
laboration with female colleagues, are willing and have the capacity to
v
vi Preface
challenge the gender order as it appears within their preschool environ-
ment, in children’s behaviours and in their own. At its most radical and
transformative, the recruitment and promotion of more men in early
childhood education is a significant strategy that can help us envision a
de-gendered society in which we move beyond the gender binary.
Lancaster, UK Jo Warin
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge funding support from Childbase Partnership,
and from the Swedish Research Council.
I would like to say a very big thank you to Chris Marlow, research
assistant on the ethnographic case study at Acorns. I would also like to
express my gratitude to the staff team there who welcomed us and allowed
us to observe and engage in insightful conversations.
I warmly acknowledge the international group of colleagues (now
friends) in the ‘Gender, Teaching and Care’ group who helped to set up
the Gothenburg study and provided a stimulating network of interest
and support over many years. I especially want to thank Geir Jonas, Karl,
Linus and Per for giving me their time so generously and engaging in
such interesting conversations.
Above all, my thanks go to Pete for his totally reliable and indefatigable
generosity in supporting me in a multitude of ways during the course of
writing this book.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: Why More Men in ECEC? 1
2 Scripts for Promoting Men’s Presence in the Early Years:
Gender Balance and Gender Flexibility 19
3 Identities and Masculinities in Early Childhood Education 41
4 Fathers and Male Preschool Workers 59
5 Men and Care: Diversity and Equity 79
6 ‘Testosterone Play’? 99
7 Recruitment, Training and Retention 119
8 Conclusion: Men’s Presence in ECEC as a Pathway
Towards Positive Gender Transformation 139
Index 147
ix
1
Introduction: Why More Men in ECEC?
Abstract I introduce the book’s aims and an overview of the interna-
tional and historical context for a consideration of men’s involvement in
early childhood education. I position my own commitment to this
research area providing brief autobiographical information, which
includes a description of several relevant empirical studies I have under-
taken over the last two decades and that I go on to discuss in this book to
ground the arguments developed here.
Keywords Early childhood education and care (ECEC) • Men in ECEC,
early years • Early years workforce
Aims of This Book
This book is intended to produce a clear argument for advocating the
participation of more men in early childhood education. This is especially
necessary, given the current push for mixed-gender staff teams to work
with young children. This initiative is currently coming from practitio-
ners, policymakers and academics alike in the UK, where I am based
© The Author(s) 2018 1
J. Warin, Men in Early Childhood Education and Care, Palgrave Studies in Gender
and Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89539-0_1