Bodies in the early childhood education classroom: a Bourdieusian analysis of curricular materials

ABSTRACT

To our knowledge, no studies have used Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions to frame investigations on how early childhood education (ECE) teaching materials construct body differences in a way that justifies gender inequality. For Bourdieu, the power to classify and grant properties and signs to subjects, does not reside only in the power to impose, but also in the degree to which the vision is anchored within reality. Therefore, the aims of this study is to assess the representation of the body in the curricular materials of ECE classrooms in 10 public centers, by means of quantitative content analysis and to provide, using Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework on the construction of the body, a qualitative critical analysis of the gendered discourses on the construction of the body that the visual depictions of the bodies transmit in ECE classrooms based on the perceptions of a group of ECE educators and students. Our results show that these images do not represent children as individuals, but rather as subjects with socially constructed labels that favor stereotypical roles. Both teachers and students relate their own training with the curricular practices they perform in their classrooms suggesting that visual representations are both abstractly embedded into institutional practices as well as practically integrated into educational work through curricular materials. In conclusion, they recognize that the fight against taxonomies and labels with which the body is constructed is a process linked to the identity and autonomy of the agents who are participating in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Body
• gender
• curricular materials
• Bourdieu
• early childhood education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.