Always in Transition? Australian Early Childhood Teachers’ Experiences of Negotiating “Identity”

• In Event: Negotiating Identities in the Transitions of Early Career Teachers: International Perspectives

Abstract

There is increasing recognition in early childhood literature of the important roles played by discourses and subjectivities in shaping early childhood teachers’ practice and ‘identity’. Yet, as other papers in this symposium suggest, there has been less attention paid to teachers’ experiences of negotiating the discourses and subjectivities that contribute to ‘identity’, and, what these experiences might tell us about what ‘sustains’ teachers.

Objectives:
In this session we present work from the initial stages of a study exploring how educators in early childhood centres in Australia are negotiating multiple discourses and subjectivities informing early childhood practice.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework:
We use Foucauldian (Foucault, 1980) and critical poststructural perspectives (such as Green & Reid, 2008; Wetherell & Edley, 1999) to frame our understandings of discourses and subjectivities, and for conceptualising the processes through which early childhood teachers might be negotiating identities. We also use the idea of an ongoing exchange of ‘temporal registers’ (McLeod & Thomson, 2009) between past/present/future to explore and destabilise linear notions of career transition from ‘preservice’ to ‘inservice’.

Methods, Techniques, Modes of Inquiry:
Our study is based upon post-modern research principles that recognise the value of multiple perspectives, experiences and ( inter-) subjectivities (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999; Punch, 1998). The study has four, qualitative, data collection stages - document analysis, online forum engagement, interviews and arts-informed research. Participants are early childhood educators who are in the process of upgrading their qualifications from Community College diploma, to university degree status. Data analysis is ongoing and iterative throughout the data collection stages, reshaping and redirecting the nature of enquiry in response to the themes and issues raised by participants. Data from each stage is analysed as a discrete body of data, as well as part of a complete data ‘archive’ through which additional intertextual interpretations (Rose, 2007) can be made.

Data Sources, Evidence, Objects or Materials:
Document analysis (of, for example, readings from coursework being undertaken by participants, and Australian policy and regulatory documents relevant to the field); transcripts of online forum interactions and interviews, and materials from the arts-informed research workshop (such as written and photographic observations, and the visual media produced by participants during the workshop).

Results:
We will present early findings from the online forum stages of our research, using reflexive accounts from participants, and contextualised by document analyses.

Scholarly Significance:
Our project engages with a group of early childhood teachers in the process of personal, status and knowledge ‘transition’ via further study. Their reflexive accounts present a cross-temporal and inter-relational perspective of identity negotiation that offers important insights into the complexities of early childhood professional practice.

Authors

• Tamara Cumming, Charles Sturt University

• Jennifer Sumsion, Charles Sturt University

• Sandie Wong, Charles Sturt University