Rethinking early childhood teaching profession with Paulo Freire

• In Event: Teacher as a profession: Measures to attract and retain more teachers

Proposal

Early Childhood Education (ECE) has long been considered as a feminized field since the majority of the global workforce is female (Osgood, 2006). Early childhood teachers are often mistakenly perceived as doing only "natural" childcare work without acquiring much-specialized knowledge and skills. The traditional image of early childhood teachers created by the masculine society has caused much pressure and misconception on women teachers. Drawing on Paulo Freire's ideas, this paper aims to push back against the deficit view and hegemonic discourse on early childhood teaching profession and to promote equal access for early childhood teachers to get social recognition and pursue better careers. More specifically, this paper mainly explores the tensions between the specific Chinese context and the universal/hegemonic definition of the early childhood teaching profession based on Freire's ideas.

Usually, there have been top-down regulations on teachers' performance and assessments to improve their profession by providing well-designed teaching packages. However, the autonomy and agency of teachers have been restrained during this process, and how teachers can make a difference in the larger system has been ignored. Freire reminds us to be skeptical of those ideologies that "take away from teachers the necessary ability to protest in favor of their students by demanding better working conditions from school administrators and politicians" (Freire, 2018, p. 9). It is essential to ensure the space for teachers to resist absolute power and authoritarianism.

Although Freire's central concern is not on early childhood field, his ideas on educational practice in general can shed light on any age level of education and be a rich inspiration in each specific context. Unlike the wide recognition in adult education and social movement studies, a few ECE scholars worldwide engage Freire's ideas in this stage of education. In this paper, I will collect and analyze secondary data sources by searching the literature for issues related to Freire's impact on ECE, especially on the teaching profession and teacher workforce. A few existing works have used Freire's idea to explore the alternative possibilities in the early childhood field across countries instead of focusing on the efficiency of education and the developmental division of childhood. However, there is very limited literature to explore and elucidate the ways of thinking and practices in ECE in China. Traditionally, Confucianism has profoundly influenced family values and teaching methods in China. Chinese educators advocate moral self-cultivation as an indispensable component of education. There are some critiques that Confucianism, associated with hierarchical relationships historically, promotes authoritarianism and unquestioning obedience (Rao & Sun, 2017). In this context, how can we apply Freire’s ideas and principles to analyze critical issues and make changes in early childhood profession? How should we empower and guide early childhood practitioners to collectively demand better conditions and make the workforce more sustainable?

Freire has shown us that it is possible to make a difference when we take part in critical reflection and critical action, and his ideas have brought many possibilities to rethink and reframe the early childhood teaching profession in a more critical way that can benefit children, teachers, and the overall ECE field greatly. Freire explains that there is hope that change can happen, but it must come from the intellectuals working in education (Sims, 2017). As teacher educators and researchers, we may hold that privilege in conjunction with the responsibility of advocating for a better world that provides equal opportunities for all teachers and children to participate (Sims, 2017). Realizing those long-term challenges, then taking action to fight for better working conditions for this group of teachers and creating a virtuous circle for the overall development of ECE has become much more critical.

Author

• Yue Qi, Penn State University