Being there with children: workplace, teacher body and a caring self

ABSTRACT

Based on an in-depth, qualitative study of toddler teachers in the United States, this article examines relationships between the materiality and the social dimensions of a classroom space as teachers’ workplace that mutually construct everyday work and lends meaning to their professional identities as a caring self. Findings highlight the teachers’ body in the single portable as a specific site of early childhood practice that is grounded in the concept of presence. This article presents teachers’ commitment to a caring self as a legitimated form of capital that they mobilise, in their struggles for social recognition. This article also demonstrates that living a caring presence demands a high level of physical and emotional work that entails regulation of teachers’ bodies. Those demands are more intense when working in space that does not have a separate, private back-stage region where teachers have the opportunity to be offstage.

KEYWORDS:

• Caring self
• presence
• professionalism
• teachers’ body
• teacher identity
• workplace

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Koeun Kim

Koeun Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at Sungshin Women's University, Seoul, Korea. Her research interests include young children's discursive-material schooling experience, teachers' work, and critical reflection for preservie teachers. She has published her work in several important international journals, including the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, and Race Ethnicity and Education.