Toward Trusting Partnerships Between Black Women Child Care Providers and ECE (Early Care and Education) Regulatory Agencies

• In Event: Advancing Critical Pedagogy and Praxis Across Educational Settings

Abstract

Background/ Purpose:
The 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) data indicate a 25% decrease in the number of family childcare educators since 2012. This drastic decline in the number of family childcare providers (FCPs) has multifaceted effects on access to culturally congruent care and education for Children of Color and children from low-income households (Barnett & Li, 2021; Datta et al., 2021). Educators explicitly named racist and linguistic discrimination as systemic inequities within state licensing, subsidy programs, and quality systems that contributed to their decisions to leave family childcare work. With the national shortage of early childhood educators (Datta et al., 2021; NCECQA, 2020) and the persistent need for diverse care providers, ECE governing agencies must develop trusting, culturally relevant partnerships with Black women family childcare providers.

Methodology:
These recommendations for culturally relevant partnerships are based on a meta-ethnography of two studies that explored the experiences of 21 state-licensed Black women family childcare providers (BWFCPs) within a mid-sized, midwestern urban metropolis. Narratives were collected virtually through a series of IRB-approved, semi-structured interviews and a focus group. Using reciprocal translational analysis to 'translate' concepts from the two individual studies (Barnett-Page & Thomas, 2009), we examined the individual perspectives of the BWFCPs by organizing free codes of each of the studies’ findings into descriptive themes.
After establishing these preliminary collaborative themes, we gathered second order interpretations from our interpretations of the narratives, and finally third order interpretations from the analysis of the participants’ narratives and our interpretation of these narratives.
This process helped reconstruct a more holistic, culturally informed counternarrative of the BWFCPs’ collective experiences.

Results:
Based on the principles of relational trust through the lens of critical race theory the following recommendations toward trusting, culturally relevant partnerships were drawn from the narrative data. We argue partnerships between ECE governing agencies and BWFCPs must be (1) rooted in the agency’s critical consciousness of sociohistorical and contemporary inequities that affect the daily lives of BWFCPs, (2) based on the recognition of the strengths, expertises, and “funds of knowledge” of providers as members of the cultural communities they serve; (3) foster social justice through shifting power dynamics to families and local providers; and (4) be rooted in the organizational integrity of governing agencies.

Conclusions/Implications:
These recommendations challenge the way wealth, privilege, and inequitable power in education have valorized white-centeric norms and values within the assessment of diverse childcare programs while disregarding perspectives of Black women educators and Communities of Color. The data demonstrates the need for ECE regulatory agencies to establish more trusting partnerships with BWFCPs. The narratives suggest this can only be done through the critical acknowledgement of historical and present institutional wrongs followed by a commitment to consistently demonstrate benevolence, organizational competency, and integrity over time. Finally, there must be a commitment to recentering our cultural knowledge and acknowledging providers and community members as agentic, competent leaders in the care and education of our children.

Authors

• Crystasany R. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

• Michele Turner, Madison College