Katrien Van Laere

Challenging the Feminisation of the Workforce: Rethinking the Mind-Body Dualism in Early Childhood Education and Care.

Despite the political and academic debate on the demands for more male workers in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), no European country has reached the benchmark set for 2006 to have 20% male early childhood workers. This has predominantly been countered by challenging the idea that care for the youngest implies an activity ‘that women naturally do’ and by consequently arguing for a higher status and better working conditions for caring jobs. In this article, we analyse the recent ‘schoolification’ of ECEC, and in so doing, we argue that the traditional explanations of the feminisation of the early years workforce do not suffice. In addition, we dwell upon contemporary feminism to challenge the mind–body dualism in discourses and practices of care and explore the concepts of embodied subjectivity and corporeality to further explore pathways to a more equally gendered workforce in early childhood provision.

The (In)Convenience of Care in Preschool Education: Examining Staff Views on Educare.

Abstract It is generally accepted that Early Childhood Education and Care should adopt a holistic view on education, in which education and care are inseparable concepts. Perspectives of staff members themselves are, however, often absent in these educare debates. We conducted six video-elicited focus groups with various preschool staff members (n = 69) in Flanders (Belgium), which is well known for its split system in which children between two and a half and four years old are confronted with the pivotal transition from an informal or formal caring environment (home or childcare service) to a formal learning environment (preschool). With Maurice Hamington’s theory of embodied and performative care as a theoretical lens for this empirical study, we propose a new direction for pre- and in-service training, in which the use of emotions, embodied exchange and social responsibility has a central place.

Early learning in preschool: meaningful and inclusive for all? Exploring perspectives of migrant parents and staff

ABSTRACT Over the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in research and policies to the importance of children’s early learning in preschool as a foundation for later life. This is considered especially beneficial for children living in disadvantaged societal conditions and those at risk of school failure. However, the perspectives of those most closely involved in a child’s learning, namely parents and preschool staff, are often absent in early learning debates. Ten video-elicited focus groups with migrant parents and three focus groups with preschool staff took place in the Flemish Community of Belgium. By conducting a ‘conventional content analysis’, we present similar and opposing meanings that parents with migrant backgrounds and preschool staff attribute to early learning in regard to managing bodily needs of children and (dominant) language learning in preschools. Based on these results, we recommend that preschool policies and practices should continuously conceptualise early learning in dialogue with parents so that inclusion and exclusion mechanisms can be tracked, revealed, and dealt with.