Yarrow Andrew

What we feel and what we do: emotional capital in early childhood work

The ancient Greeks articulated three types of knowledge, episteme, techne and phronesis. Education has emphasised two of these – ‘pure’ knowledge and technical skills – while neglecting the latter. Within early childhood a key aspect of phronesis – practical wisdom – is emotion work, and its impact on the well-being of educators. Taking a sociological approach to emotions within early childhood reveals how these are shaped by issues of gender, social class and other dimensions of inequality, rather than being universal. Drawing on interviews with childcare educators in Australian services, I analyse how emotion work practices become embodied over time, and the role that this emotional capital plays in moderating workforce issues such as burnout or low morale. Making the practical wisdom of early childhood educators a more conscious part of pre-service and in-service education challenges existing educational approaches, and enables a more critical, reflexive and resilient workforce.

The Value of Childcare: Class, Gender and Caring Labour.

Despite increasing attention being paid to early childhood services as the foundation for lifelong learning, one issue seems to be consistently ignored — staff wages. The authors argue that this constitutes ongoing exploitation of childcare staff, and that this exploitation is a result of gendered and classed discourses around caring labour. As with other feminised fields, this caring labour involves a high level of emotional management, of the self and others, which remains undervalued as a skill within discourses of professionalisation. The authors suggest that only by recognising the unequal distribution of wages across the education sector and significantly increasing the pay of early childhood staff will early childhood services deliver the educational advantages hoped for by governments.

‘We spend more time with the children than they do …’: Education, care and the work of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong

Despite the ongoing global financial crisis, there is an increasing deployment of migrant workers across the globe, and in Hong Kong the foreign domestic worker occupies a ubiquitous presence in the lives of many families. Seven domestic workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand were interviewed to gain insight into their role in providing education and care for children in Hong Kong. This exploratory study focuses on the educational and care aspects of the work of foreign domestic workers. It considers the nature of their work and their relationship with the mother of the family. Findings reveal the difficulties of maintaining coordinated education and care of children in a culture where the dynamics of the unequal power relations are clearly demarcated. We raise new possibilities for interdisciplinary work to re-theorise the ways in which foreign domestic workers act as educators of young children and we call for new methodologies to enable their potential.

Beyond professionalism: Classed and gendered capital in childcare work

This article examines the value of work in childcare, and the ways this is impacted by historical schemes of value in relation to social class and gender. It critically examines the push for professionalism within the field, showing that this favours particular classed forms of cultural capital, while rendering other forms of capital invisible. Drawing on interviews with childcare workers in Australia – overwhelmingly female and with little access to symbolic capital – the data shows an ambivalence towards the professionalisation process and frustration about the lack of recognition for their work, either financially or culturally. The workers’ views highlight emotional and relational skills, which are at odds with traditional definitions of professional skills. The author argues that what is needed is a new concept of childcare expertise, which acknowledges the classed and gendered histories of workers, and the already significant worth of the work they do.

The unavoidable salience of gender: notes from Australian childcare work

Abstract This article explores the gendering of work in Australian childcare settings from a post-gender perspective. Much early childhood research focuses on encouraging men into the field, seeing their presence as beneficial to the perceived worth of childcare work. Such research ignores how women’s gendered experiences, as the overwhelming majority of the workforce, are already shaping the field, creating an image of this work apparently unpalatable to most men. I show how gendered relations have a profound impact, even in mono-gendered spaces like childcare, to the continuing disadvantage of women. Workers caught within binary understandings of gender appear to draw on normative gendered discourses to understand the social and economic positioning of the field, rather than more emancipatory framings. This article argues that perspectives that actively question biomedical understandings of gender can be useful in understanding and challenging the gendering of particular societal spaces, such as childcare services.

Worthwhile work? Childcare, feminist ethics and cooperative research practices

ABSTRACT Interdisciplinary research collaborations are often encouraged within higher education while the practicalities of such collaborations are glossed over. This project specifically addresses the praxis of research collaborations, exploring how feminist academics within different countries and disciplines came together to explore their mutual concern about the perceived worth and well-being of early childhood practitioners. Engaging in a formal methodological dialogue over eight months, seven academics discussed, analysed and dissected their different investments in research methods and intents, with the aim of agreeing to a common methodological framework. Unexpectedly, what emerged was not a product, but a process. We argue that this process offers much to those seeking deep collaboration in and through shared research. Building on a collective research interest, we found ourselves in a process of becoming, germinating the seed of a transnational research cooperative, based on trust and mutual respect, rather than the arid methodological contract originally envisioned.

Policy and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex students, : by Tiffany Jones. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015. 158 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-11991-5.

Tiffany Jones’ 2015 book achieves the rare feat of making policy analysis engaging and perhaps even compelling. This work explores policies and their implications for queer youth across the Australian states, but it has much to offer to those beyond these borders. Jones is concerned not just with the detail of these policies but also with the policies’ direct impact on young people in secondary education, and it is this commitment to analyzing policy at this systemic level that gives the book its strength. This is an impressive piece of scholarship and well worth seeking out for those involved in queer studies, critical education, or postfoundational methodological work in policy studies. For researchers, policy makers, or teachers concerned with sexand gender-diverse students, the first two chapters are of particular interest. In the first chapter Jones explains clearly why policy matters deeply, why we should pay attention to it, and how we should work to achieve better outcomes at local, national, and international levels. Jones explores the historical development of policies around sexualities education, showing the influence of the United Nations on policy development globally. Jones is particularly careful in her articulation of choices around language, especially in the framing of “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ),” and who this may silence or empower. Jones understands that language is contextual, and different language must be mobilized in specific settings, for specific purposes, and with specific audiences in mind. Graduate students will undoubtedly benefit from reading the skilled way she articulates the rationale for her work around policy in this chapter, as well as her lucid and insightful discussion of her research methods in the third chapter, “Studying Policy Impacts,” which draw on a coherent and well-reasoned postfoundational approach. The standout feature of this book is Jones’ presentation of an “orientation-based sexuality education discourse exemplar” (pp. 30–41) as a way to analyze her research findings. This exemplar seeks to rectify the limitations of existing framings of GLBTIQ policy work in education and to outline a comprehensive picture of the possible discourses that are driving sexualities education across our schools. Jones presents a startling 28 distinct policy discourses, grouping these under four broad political categories which describe their orientation to education, from conservative to liberal to critical and finally to postmodern. The titles of these discourses are often witty summations of a complex position (e.g., “Storks and Fairies,” “Post-identity feminist”), with a clear exposition of key ideas in each as well as an assessment of their likely impact on GLBTIQ students themselves. I was skeptical about the wisdom of arguing for such a large number of discourses, but Jones demonstrates in chapter 3 the thoroughness of her analytical processes in developing