Male preschool teacher students negotiating masculinities: a qualitative study with men who are studying to become preschool teachers

ABSTRACT

The overall interest is to understand how men who study preschool teaching negotiate masculinities. Earlier research shows how male teachers negotiate masculinities when being in and entering a predominantly feminine work area, such as early childhood education [see, for example, Brody, D. L. (2015). The construction of masculine identity among men who work with young children, an international perspective. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 23(3), 351–361; Pirard, F., Schoenmaeckers, P., & Camus, P. (2015). Men in childcare services: From enrolment in training programmes to job retention. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 23(3), 362–369; Simpson, R. (2014). Doing gender differently. Men in caring occupations. In S. Kumra, R. Simpson, & R. J. Burke (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of gender in organizations (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press)]. It this article Connell's notion on hegemonic masculinity is reflected on in terms of negotiation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 38 men attending the preschool teacher-training programmes at three Swedish universities. The result shows two main themes for negotiation that were called ‘Becoming and being a “breaker”’ and ‘Coping with sticking out’.

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinities
• male student
• negotiation
• preschool
• early childhood education
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mia Heikkilä is senior lecturer and researcher in education at the School of Education, Culture and Communication at Mälardalen University, in Västerås, Sweden. Her reserach interests are gender in preschools, play and learning and gender equality in society. Her recent publications are: Hellman, A., Heikkilä, M., & Sundhall, J. (2014). ‘Don’t be such a baby!’ competence and age as intersectional co-markers on children’s gender. International Journal of Early Childhood, 46(3), 327–344, and Heikkilä, M. (2015). Lärande och jämställdhet i förskola och skola. Stockholm: Liber. A research based textbook on gender equality issues in preschool and compulsory school in Swedish.

Anette Hellman has a Ph.D. in Education and work as a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg. Her research interests include issues related to critical childhood studies such as norm and normality constructions in children’s everyday lives and masculinity and care in Preschool. She is the national project leader in Sweden for the project “Learning Spaces for Inclusion and Social Justice: Success Stories from Immigrant Students and School Communities in Four Nordic Countries” founded by NORDFORSK.