Gender flexible pedagogy in early childhood education

Abstract

Early childhood education (ECE) has long been recognized as one of the most gendered professions. This paper aims to examine how far ECE can become a space to deliver 'gender flexible pedagogy', a concept that incorporates ideas about staff modelling of alternative forms of masculinities and femininities, the value of a mixed gender workforce, and explicit gender teaching within curricula. The theoretical underpinnings of this concept are discussed drawing on data collected in discussions with pre-school teachers in order to understand the potential of this principle and identify how it can be practiced. The paper is based on two different interview based studies, one conducted in an Indonesian kindergarten and the other with Swedish preschool pedagogues. The findings suggest that gendered practices in ECE are 2 rooted in teachers' implicit gender beliefs influenced by larger socio-political discourses.Early childhood educators must develop an explicit gender consciousness before they can deliver a gender conscious pedagogy.

Conceptualising the value of male practitioners in early childhood education and care: gender balance or gender flexibility

“…There were promising, potentially gender transformative, instances in our data of staff modeling a flexible approach to the performance of gender. In line with Butler's approach these performances challenge and disrupt prescriptions for men to model masculinities and women to model femininities (Warin and Adriany, 2015) However, our data also contains clear instances of sexism and views that are quite clearly counter-productive . On occasions we witnessed a disappointing continuation of certain gender stereotypical practices.…”

“…An alternative rationale is based on the concept of 'gender flexibility', which not only implies a flexible approach to the performance of gender, but which can also inform the all-important pedagogic relationship between ECEC professionals and young children. It incorporates ideas about the resources and activities that young children themselves may be encouraged to engage in, with an emphasis on playful and experimental approaches to the performance of gender (Warin and Adriany, 2015). The paper will argue that this idea has much greater potential for gender transformation of the ECEC workforce.…”

Kindergarten Teachers’ Understanding on Social Justice: Stories From Indonesia

“…There is a sense of doubt among the teachers as to what extent they can bring social justice issues into their teaching practices. As Warin and Adriany (2017) argue, current practices in teacher training institutes in Indonesia are very much influenced by developmentalism, and hence, this situation should be seen as an invitation for teacher training institutes to expand their curriculum to go beyond developmentalism by including critical pedagogy in their curriculum. Only when the teachers receive critical pedagogy during their training, they will later on be able to transfer this knowledge to the children.…”

“…ECE is still dominated by females and excludes males from entering the profession (Brownhill, 2014;Hellman, Heikkilä, & Sundhall, 2014;Warin, 2006). Research by Browne (2004), Blaise (2005Blaise ( , 2013, Paechter (2007), Adriany (2013), Adriany and Warin (2014), Blaise (2005Blaise ( , 2013, Browne (2004), Paechter (2007), and Warin and Adriany (2017) also illuminate the extent to which ECE has been very much gendered. Some spaces in the kindergarten are dominated by boys, leaving girls with no access to them (Paechter, 2007).…”

Towards a reflective care in Education The ambivalence of professional caring masculinities in a Swedish Edu-care context

“…Traditional gendered norms about men as providers and breadwinners becomes visible in the quotation above from Tom, labelling men -but more seldom women -as 'lazy' or without ambitions. The way Tom challenge these norms might be interpreted as breaking with 'old' ideas of gender and a more fluid and flexible way of presenting oneself as male [23]. This can be compared with Jones's [24 ] study of male teachers which pointed out that conflicting discourses of masculinity operate in early years education settings making different masculinities appear simultaneously.…”