Affordance of voice in understanding early childhood educators’ embodiment in children’s education / La valencia de la voz en la comprensión de la corporeidad del profesorado de educación infantil

Abstract

Educators’ voices are significant in learning about improvements needed in early childhood education, especially in highly diverse and rapidly changing settings. Framing educators’ voice as a meaning-making tool of cultural embodiment lived through experience can clarify teachers’ thinking and their inherent reflection of the social-cultural environment in which they work, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offers a vibrant environment to address embodiment in a rapidly changing system with extensive cultural and linguistic diversity. This phenomenological study examines how early childhood educators in the UAE communicate their embodiment in practice. The findings identified educators as caring and accomplished bodies, stressful bodies and bodies longing for transformative practices. These findings suggest that understanding educators’ body-through-voice in context is significant for developing teacher-improvement initiatives across local and international settings, since it foregrounds insights into the multiple representations of the educators’ emotional experiences and identities of being and becoming practitioners of quality early childhood education.