From Home-Based to School-Based Providers: Examining the Stratified Early Care and Education Workforce

• In Event: Seeking Truth Through an Authentic Understanding of Teachers' Lived Experiences

Abstract

Theoretical Framework
Black feminist theory describes that the feminist push for women to enter the labor force and gain economic standing was in part based on a devaluation of work done in the home (“women’s work”), and predicated on the transfer of domestic and child care responsibilities to other women, often from subordinated racial ethnic groups (Tuominen, 2003). Present-day public policies contribute to the stratification of the ECE workforce by using public funds to bestow benefits (e.g., wages) to ECE providers in school-based settings, while providers in home-based settings continue to receive the least public support (ACF, 2021).
Methods
Using quantitative analysis of the recently released, nationally representative 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education Datasets, this paper provides a comparative national profile of four distinct groups of ECE providers, ranging from those whose work is closest to home environments to those whose work is performed within public school institutions; and comparing the characteristics and conditions of ECE caregivers and teachers across racial and ethnic groups.
Findings
This work examines four groups of ECE caregivers and teachers: 1) unregistered home-based providers; 2) registered home-based providers; 3) center-based providers; and 4) school-based providers. First, this paper compares groups of ECE providers along: 1) demographic characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity; age; language; nativity; education; years experience); and 2) economic conditions (e.g., income, social support receipt, and neighborhood poverty level). Second, to better understand how groups of ECE providers differ in their work with children, this study examines the dimensions of: 3) child enrollment (e.g., number, age, race/ethnicity of children in their care; children with special needs); 4) care provided and time spent with children; 5) fees and schedule; 6) provider beliefs and attitudes (e.g., modernity, HAMRE, depression); and 7) professional development activities. These comparative analyses use school-based ECE providers as the reference group because this group is the furthest removed from the home-based setting. Third, within each of the four groups of providers, this paper compares the economic conditions, education, years of experience, fees, schedules, and professional development activities of workers who identify as non-Hispanic Black or African-American, Asian-American or Pacific Islander, other race and Hispanic, to workers who identify as White.
Significance
This study provides a foundational overview of the national ECE workforce and identifies differences and similarities in demographic characteristics, conditions, beliefs and practices, across the four groups of the ECE workforce. It is important that efforts to enhance young children’s early care and learning experiences by supporting the early care and education workforce be grounded in an understanding of the diversity of providers, and the ways in which existing systems and policies continue to reflect and reproduce sexist and racist ideology.
 

Author

• Zoelene Hill, New York Academy of Medicine
  Presenting Author