How to Destabilize a Workforce: Tensions and Contradictions That Reduce Early Childhood Teachers' Professionalism

• In Event: 64.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 64.086-12 - Portrayals of the Early Childhood Workforce

Abstract

Early childhood teachers daily contact with children and their families puts them in a unique position to push back against the rhetoric of brokenness. The problem is early childhood teachers are regularly compromised in their efforts to tamp down the noxious forces that find young children and their families wanting. The significance of teachers’ disempowerment and the need to countermand it cannot be underestimated. Change, however, will not come about without a better understanding of the problem’s origins and modern manifestations. This paper asks: Why is the early childhood classroom workforce’s professional standing not more closely aligned with the reach and impact of its work? Evidence comprises historical data, contemporary educational standards, as well as telling manifestations in popular culture.

Author

• Patsy Cooper, Queens College, City University of New York