Guys and “the Rest of Us”: Narratives of Gendered Educational Care Work

• In Event: Reframing Race and Gender: Perspectives on Black Male Achievement

Abstract

A history of framing the teaching of young children as a matter of “natural” female aptitude has led a number of researchers and educators to oversimplify men’s experiences as a foil or antidote to the ills of schooling. In this qualitative study of feminized early education and care environments, interview data (N = 4) are discursively analyzed to provide a more nuanced understanding of how male careworkers construct themselves and how female careworkers orient themselves to men and maleness. The purpose of this study was to examine how male careworkers construct themselves and how they are constructed by female others in the feminized world of teaching young children, paying special notice to women's voices in those constructions.

Authors

• Christine Ann Mallozzi, University of Kentucky

• Sally Campbell Galman, University of Massachusetts - Amherst