“The Professional I Am”: California Preschool Teachers’ Agency and Meaning Making Across Policy Contexts

• In Event: Teacher Identity and Agency in Racially and Politically Contested Contexts

Abstract

This paper examines the understudied perceptions and experiences of early childhood educators in California. Life history interviews of six teachers working in differently-funded preschool programs were conducted to better understand the lived experiences of the ECE workforce. This study theorized education policy and labor as processual and situated in a racialized and gendered political economy. Despite variations in program context and teacher preparation, the teachers shared remarkably similar conceptions of their work, suggesting a professional ECE ethos shared through practice. This common purpose undergirded teachers’ descriptions of agentic meaning-making and resistance to political and organizational encroachments on their working conditions and professional autonomy – encroachments that may intensify as California works to further standardize early education in the state.

Author

• Micah Card, University of California - Santa Cruz