Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): A cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China

Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): A cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China

• Xu, Yuwei University College London

Early Years, (0), - , 2019

Routledge

2019

• P Social Context of Education
  • PI Education of Girls & Women, Gender Roles; Gender; Femininities; Masculinities; Sexualities
• P Social Context of Education
  • PB Comparative Education

Gender Early Years Education and Care Diversity Cross-Cultural Gender Binary

• Scotland
• Hong Kong
• China

• 1997.7 onwards

• Pre-Primary Education

This paper discusses whether practitioners' gender subjectivities influence pedagogies and practices in early years education and care (EYEC) settings and whether an increase of men's participation can improve gender diversity in EYEC. It draws on poststructuralist theories, understanding gender as the product/outcome of the social formation of subjects and the process of subjectification. This is illustrated through accounts for how individual practitioners from Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China discursively construct their gender subjectivities, in accordance with the respective cultural discourses that shape work with young children in EYEC in the three contexts. Thirty-four practitioners from 17 EYEC settings (1 male and 1 female practitioner from each setting) in the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Tianjin were interviewed. The study finds that participant practitioners' constructions of gender subjectivities vary within and across contexts, and gender-binary discourses are to different extents prevalent in all three contexts. This paper argues for a cross-cultural approach to gender-sensitive teacher training, to interrogate popular discourses that advocate for men to fulfil complementary roles in EYEC to women and to challenge gender binary thinking that persists in EYEC and beyond.
[Copyright of Early Years is the property of Routledge.]

• English

Journal Articles

• 09575146

• 10.1080/09575146.2019.1683816

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/54037fd1

2020-08-26