Spaces for coping with change: Kindergarten educators’ emotional refuges

ABSTRACT

This case study of a US suburban Kindergarten illustrates the challenges and opportunities posed by the shifting context of Kindergarten toward a narrowed academic focus aligned to state goals. In this neoliberal policy context, teachers experienced difficult emotions as they supported children's and families’ cultural and linguistic talents and skills. Emotional refuges and emotives are key concepts used to theorise teachers’ experiences. The Findings of the study indicated that a subset of teachers used the available storylines to ‘compartmentalise’. In doing so, they created an emotional refuge in which they might conserve traditional aspects of Kindergarten such as developmental discourses and practices, yet also segment their own lives to cope with the stress and strain invoked by the change. A second storyline was ‘intensifying’ in which a set of teachers actively engaged with the neoliberal paradigm. Yet, the navigation of emotions was complex and created moments of collectivism as well as some tensions amongst educators based on their individual positions. In order to enhance teachers’ abilities to teach and cope with change, the possibilities of emotional navigation are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Kindergarten
• neoliberalism
• emotional refuge
• emotive
• early childhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).