Care, Learning, and Change: A Pedagogy of Transformative Care in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: 61.040 - Being and Becoming Citizen Teachers: Examining the Ecology and Complexity of Democratic Teacher Development

Abstract

Current public perceptions of early childhood educators in the United States remain grounded, as they have historically, in the private realm of care (Wilinski, 2017). Unlike the public commitment to education for children above the age of five, there is an “historic and artificial division between education and care” (p. 29). Early childhood educators, most often women, work across multiple settings including home-based centers, public centers, and private centers and schools. The public’s concept of care often focuses on the physical care of young children, including feeding, toileting, dressing, among others. In addition to the care of the child’s wellbeing, these educators have also been charged with socializing children and developing self-regulation skills. More recently, with the expansion of Head Start and universal pre-kindergarten, early childhood educators are now expected to prepare children with the academic skills needed in kindergarten and beyond (Wilinski, 2017). Despite these added expectations, early childhood educators remain undervalued by society. For example, almost one half of the nation’s early childhood workforce are receiving some form of public assistance (Whitebook, Phillips & Howes, 2014).
On the other side of this divide, in the public context and upper-levels of schooling, teachers are troublingly characterized as the transmitters of standardized content knowledge to their students (Mirra & Morrell, 2011). This positioning arguably limits and restrains teachers’ freedom and expression (Grumet, 2011). As early childhood educators continue to be charged with more rigorous academic standards, will these restraints also be placed upon them? If so, how can such work with young children, involving both care-providing and teaching, be sustainable? In addition, Mirra and Morrell (2011) call for a vision for “the future of teaching and teacher education that positions teachers as agents of change” (p. 419). Does this additional positioning, that of a change agent, increase the challenges facing early childhood educators? If so, how? This project explores these questions and examines how a new framework, a pedagogy of transformative care, connects the components of caregiving, change-making, and learning in the inclusive education of all young children.
This paper will report on the narrative inquiries made by a learning community made up of ten undergraduate pre-service early childhood educators. Using a critical reflective practice framework (Author, 2018; Brookfield, 1998; Larrivee, 2000; LaBoskey, 2004), these pre-service educators were asked to write weekly journal entries that addressed specific experiences from their fieldwork settings (a pre-school classroom in a local early childhood magnet school). A collective analysis of these weekly reflections revealed how the students’ mentor teachers were engaging in both the teaching and care of young children. The students described how their mentor teachers were working closely with families and community members to make change, were proud of their care-providing practices, and saw themselves as playing an essential role in a child’s academic development. A discussion of these themes are connected and aligned with a pedagogy of transformative care for teaching and teacher education.

Author

• Margaret Clark, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts