"If I Leave, Who Stays?" A Narrative Inquiry of Early Childhood Educators' Attrition Decisions

• In Event: Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures in Early Childhood Teacher Education

Abstract

This study investigates early childhood education (ECE) teacher attrition through a narrative inquiry centering four former ECE educators. The work explores how interplays between gender, race, and labor might impact workplace decisions for ECE educators, who are more likely to be women of color than any other group of teachers (McLean et al., 2021). Drawing on Marxist feminist theory, the analysis identifies poor workplace conditions and a high level of affective connection to work as key drivers of attrition decisions for the teachers. Further, findings indicate that teachers’ attrition decisions can result from shifts to more oppositional performances of identity, which push back against gendered and racialized workplace expectations.

Authors

• Lucie Cyliax, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Stephanie C. Sanders-Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign