3,904
Views
5
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Article

Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): a cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China

ORCID Icon
Pages 109-124 | Received 04 Mar 2019, Accepted 20 Oct 2019, Published online: 23 Oct 2019
 

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses whether practitioners’ gender subjectivities influence pedagogies and practices in early years education and care (EYEC) settings and whether an increase of men’s participation can improve gender diversity in EYEC. It draws on poststructuralist theories, understanding gender as the product/outcome of the social formation of subjects and the process of subjectification. This is illustrated through accounts for how individual practitioners from Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China discursively construct their gender subjectivities, in accordance with the respective cultural discourses that shape work with young children in EYEC in the three contexts. Thirty-four practitioners from 17 EYEC settings (1 male and 1 female practitioner from each setting) in the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Tianjin were interviewed. The study finds that participant practitioners’ constructions of gender subjectivities vary within and across contexts, and gender-binary discourses are to different extents prevalent in all three contexts. This paper argues for a cross-cultural approach to gender-sensitive teacher training, to interrogate popular discourses that advocate for men to fulfil complementary roles in EYEC to women and to challenge gender binary thinking that persists in EYEC and beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Higher National Certificate (HNC) in Early Education and Childcare.

2. High Diploma (HD) in Early Childhood Education.

3. The local kindergartens account for about 85.5% of all kindergartens in Hong Kong (Census and Statistics Department Citation2018).

4. Bachelor in Early Childhood Education.

5. Most Chinese male kindergarten teachers are inclined to work in public kindergartens as a result of better salaries and welfare benefits (Xu and Waniganayake Citation2018).

6. A ‘care’ practitioner in a Mainland Chinese kindergarten is someone whose main responsibilities include housekeeping, cleaning, serving meals, and so on – things that are regarded as more ‘caring’ than ‘educational’.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.