Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Children’s well-being has received extensive research attention and has a central role in early childhood policy and curricular guidelines. However, the well-being of early childhood educators has received fragmentary research attention and is unacknowledged in policy and curricular documents. Given the seemingly self-evident links between educators’ well-being and positive experiences and outcomes for children, why is educators’ well-being invisible within the discursive landscape of early childhood education and care? In this article, the authors offer explanations for this invisibility by identifying and critiquing a number of discourses that have shaped, and continue to shape, early childhood education and educators’ positions within it. They use Foucault’s idea of dividing practices to demonstrate how these discourses have formed regimes – and, ultimately, a discursive landscape – that make the issue of educators’ well-being invisible. The authors then begin the work of challenging this discursive landscape by using theoretical resources from Deleuze and Guattari, and Tronto, to argue for placing care, and a logic of ‘and’, at the centre of supports for educators’ well-being. They offer examples and questions to prompt ongoing critique and action.

Keywords

Discourses early childhood education early childhood educators early childhood workforce Foucault well-being

Introduction

Discourses of children’s well-being abound in early childhood education and care (ECEC).¹ Understood as ‘feelings of security, confidence and optimism’, and the capacity for exploration, persistence and resilience (Emmett, 2013: 27), children’s well-being has received extensive research attention and has a central role in early childhood policy and curricular guidelines. This role is evident in numerous national curriculum documents in anglophone countries – for example, Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009); England’s ‘Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage’ (Department for Education, 2017); Scotland’s ‘Getting it right for every child’ (Scottish Government, 2014); Ireland’s Aistear framework (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2009); and Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Te Whāriki curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2017). In contrast to this multifaceted and well-evidenced attention to children’s well-being, the well-being of early childhood educators has received fragmentary research attention (Cumming and Wong, 2019; Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014). Indeed, with the exception of the International Labour Organization’s (2014) ‘Policy guidelines on the promotion of decent work for early childhood education personnel’ and parts of Australia’s National Quality Standard (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2018), there appears to be no explicit attention to educators’ well-being in policy documents or curricular guides – including those mentioned above – across national contexts.

There are also very few definitions of well-being in the research literature concerning early childhood educators. Following an extensive review of this literature, and drawing on sources from philosophy, psychology and physiology, we recently proposed the following definition of well-being as:

A dynamic state, involving the interaction of individual, relational, work-environmental, and sociocultural-political aspects and contexts. Educators’ well-being is the responsibility of the individual and the agents of these contexts, requiring ongoing direct and indirect supports, across psychological, physiological and ethical dimensions. (Cumming and Wong, 2019: p. 276)

Links between educators’ and children’s well-being seem self-evident. If educators’ well-being is compromised, they are unlikely to be able to offer high-quality education and care, which is the key to high-quality experiences and outcomes for children (Tayler et al., 2016). This rationale is supported by research evidence showing both the positive effects for children of educators’ well-being (Nislin et al., 2016; Ylitapio-Mäntylä et al., 2012) and the negative effects when educators’ well-being is compromised (Cassidy et al., 2016; Ota et al., 2013).² Further, compromised educator well-being can be financially costly for early childhood services (Kusma et al., 2012), families and the educators themselves (Løvgren, 2016). Why, then, is educators’ well-being invisible within the discursive landscapes of ECEC?

In this article, our purpose is to offer explanations for this invisibility and then begin the work of challenging it. We start by identifying and critiquing five dominant discourses within which ECEC has been, and continues to be, constructed. We argue that this discursive landscape enables dividing practices (Foucault, 1982) that marginalise educator well-being by creating divisions between and within individuals, and obscuring collective issues. In order to challenge this landscape, we use theoretical resources from Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and Tronto (2013, 2015, 2017) to argue for a reformed discursive landscape in ECEC, with space for consideration of and attention to children’s and educators’ well-being.

Dividing practices

Dividing practices are concerned with the objectivisation of the subject – that is, how individuals see and understand themselves. From a Foucauldian perspective, the subject is ‘either divided inside himself [sic] or divided from others. This process objectivises him [sic]’ (Foucault, 1982: 208). The processes of ‘division’ are operationalised through dominant discourses that create binary regimes of truth. Accordingly, there appear to be only oppositional ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to do, think or be – such as the very thought that there is a better qualification, or that education or care is more important than the other. The apparent ‘truth’ of the ‘right’ side of binaries is directed towards individuals and topics that are the subject of the most dominant discourses, whilst also deflecting attention away from social issues and diverse alternatives that bring into question the rightness of these ‘truths’.

In relation to ECEC, an example of dividing practices could be the ways that early childhood educators are positioned – and hence ‘divided’ – through work arrangements and conditions. Historical and sociopolitical discourses positioning preschool as ‘educative’ and long day care as ‘caring’ can divide educators by association – as described by Grieshaber and Graham (2017) and Gibson (2013), for example. The same discourses shaping early childhood education as care or education can also influence the funding, regulation and recognition of services and educators, with long-lasting implications. For example, in the Australian policy context in the 1970s, interdepartmental debates about responsibility for ECEC led to disputes as to whether this responsibility was best located within the social welfare department or the education department (Logan et al., 2014). The administration of childcare funding remained with the Commonwealth government, for a long period part of the welfare portfolio, whereas preschool funding moved to state governments as part of departments of education.³ Hence, educators became ‘divided’ according to the type of service provision in which they were employed and the funding arrangements applicable to their early childhood service. Relocating responsibility into the Commonwealth government department for education has only partly remedied the legacy of these divisions within educators’ and the public’s consciousness.

The divisions illustrated in these examples show how attention can be obscured from larger issues that affect all educators – for example, what constitutes quality educator preparation – by those that (appear to) divide them. In terms of this article, we contend that attention to children’s well-being has become discursively constructed as the only ‘right way’ to orient practice, thereby rendering educators’ well-being invisible. Further, we argue that dividing practices have created a regime of truth whereby educators overlook responsibility for their own well-being (as well as that of their colleagues) in the interests of children alone, believing that this is ‘right’.

Discursive regimes contributing to the invisibility of educators’ well-being

Since its inception, ECEC has been consistently shaped by liberal/progressive, scientific, gender, nationalist and economic discourses (Wong, 2007). Although multiple discourses exist, and the discourses are themselves fluid and constantly shifting, they form a discursive landscape wherein multiple constructs of ECEC can emerge (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983; Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002). This landscape has given rise to various ways of viewing education, children and women that, we argue, have contributed to a lack of attention to educators’ well-being.

Liberal/progressive discourses

Liberal/progressive discourses that focus on individual freedom, choice and creative self-expression have been highly significant for the construction of ECEC. For example, it was liberal/progressive discourses of the late 19th century that gave rise to an increased interest in children and calls for educational reform. These discourses created a space within which free kindergartens could emerge as models of new, ‘progressive’ pedagogy. Liberal/progressive discourses still pervade contemporary western ideology (Olssen et al., 2004; Stirrup et al., 2017). These discourses continue to uphold child-centred, play-based and individualistic aspects of ECEC, which are not only considered by many ECEC advocates to be central to current ECEC pedagogy, but are also evident in the curriculum documents governing ECEC in many national contexts (including those mentioned in the introduction; Wood and Hedges, 2016). However, the child-centred focus of ECEC, albeit important, has potentially diverted attention away from those who care for and educate children.

Liberal/progressive discourses also underpin the focus on social justice in ECEC (Olssen et al., 2004). In the past, these discourses not only gave rise to new ways of viewing poverty, but also constructed children as vulnerable and innocent. ECEC thus emerged as a way of both ‘rescuing’ and ‘forming’ children, and also ‘reforming society’ (Wong, 2007). Similarly, contemporary liberal/progressive discourses that have a social justice ethic, and call for fairness and equity, create spaces for constructs of ECEC to emerge as socially just education that aims to ameliorate the effects of disadvantage and change inequitable practices – for children, their families and society. However, rarely do the rights and interests of educators figure within these social justice discussions. Educators’ well-being is not only positioned below that of the children in their care, but is also most often invisible as an issue for attention.

Scientific discourses

ECEC, perhaps more than education at any other time in a child’s life, is also highly shaped by scientific discourses, especially those concerning child development (Wood and Hedges, 2016). However, the invisibility of educators’ well-being as a key aspect of improving children’s development and well-being has meant that there is little scientific evidence with which to inform policy and practice concerning this important issue. With the rise of scientific enquiry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came increasing recognition of children’s development, and the importance of the environment as an influencing factor upon it. Scientific discourses have continued to inform ECEC, as our understandings about how children grow and learn are informed by empirical research (Ryan and Grieshaber, 2005), most recently drawing on emerging and compelling evidence from neuroscience (Edwards et al., 2015). Moreover, there is sustained interest in the role that ECEC has in either enhancing or jeopardising children’s development and well-being. Scientific discourses, therefore, continue to uphold the construction of ECEC as education based on scientific knowledge, with the aim of improving children’s development in an objectively ‘measurable’ way.

The quality of educators’ practice is an acknowledged part of facilitating children’s well-being – an aspect of their development. Providing sensitive, responsive relationships, based on the principles of attachment theory, is often presented as a key practice in facilitating the development of children’s well-being. Citing Rolfe (2004), Emmett (2013: p. 29) recognises ‘the need for caregivers to have the necessary time, resources and emotional energy to provide that critical caregiving ingredient of sensitive responsiveness’. However, this view fails to recognise that having ‘the necessary time, resources and emotional energy’ is not always within educators’ control, due to a lack of regulatory or organisational supports, or compromised well-being. The invisibility of discourses of educators’ well-being means that the need for the provision of appropriate conditions for supporting their well-being goes unspoken. With the ongoing influence of gender and maternalistic discourses still operating (as discussed below), the discursive effect of guidance on practice (such as that above) is to place responsibility onto educators to make the time, resources and energy themselves in order to ensure that children’s well-being is maximised.

Gender, maternalist and professionalism discourses

ECEC has long been shaped by discourses of gender and maternalism (Ailwood, 2008; Aslanian, 2015; Lundkvist et al., 2017). In the late 19th century, when ECEC emerged in many national contexts, New Woman discourses were on the rise as women took on increasingly active public roles in politics, employment and education. However, the most powerful gender discourses constructed women as essentially different from men, with a natural maternalistic tendency to care for young children. This discursive space enabled ECEC to emerge as legitimate employment and education for women, but, at the same time, served to reinforce the notion that ECEC was both work done by women and work done for women (Wong, 2007).

In the 21st century, despite significant shifts in gender discourses, the feminisation of the care and education of young children has been resistant to change, and continues to construct the care of children as primarily a women’s concern and requiring little professional preparation (Ailwood, 2008; Aslanian, 2015). Much as they did over a century ago, gender, and especially maternalistic, discourses continue to uphold the construct of ECEC as women’s work – that is, as work ‘naturally’ conducted by women but also done for the benefit of women. For example, Bown et al. (2011) identified the far-reaching influences of maternalistic discourses for the development of ECEC policy. Their study found that politicians’ perceptions and understandings of ECEC were driven by maternalistic discourses, even though this effect was not publicly acknowledged – hence the enduring nature of maternalistic discourses of the perpetually strong and reliable educator whose first concern must be to altruistically give all to children (Bown and Sumsion, 2007).

These associations between the (contestable) natural instincts of women as carers of young children or ‘substitute mother’ (Moss, 2006) continue to serve to (1) undervalue the educative function of ECEC, especially for the very youngest children; (2) devalue the professional status of educators and the need for qualifications for the work; and (3) minimise the psychological and relational aspects of care work. As Halfon and Langford state:

These assumptions allow for ambivalence towards the child care workforce and adequate compensation for their work, reinforced by the devaluation of the skills and emotional labour necessary to care for other people’s children and an emphasis on the intrinsic satisfaction of caregiving as a just reward for the work. Like mothering, it is assumed that all women can call upon their natural abilities to do this work. (Halfon and Langford, 2015: 137)

Discourses of professionalism can similarly act as dividing practices in ECEC. Basing claims of professionalism on the educative aspects of ECEC and their grounding in scientific evidence can result in a binary, opposing education (as professional) to caring (as unprofessional) (Halfon and Langford, 2015). This binary can be exacerbated by the differentiation of educators by qualifications and the relatedly ‘differential systems of training, payment and employment conditions’ (Oberhuemer, 2005: 9). Halfon and Langford (2015: 134) argue that these conditions ‘work against developing and supporting the child care workforce, diminishing their collective and professional identity, voice and power’. Low rates of unionisation in many contexts, and a tendency to see advocacy for educators’ rights as somehow shameful (Bullough and Hall-Kenyon, 2017; Halfon and Langford, 2015), are evidence of the extent to which dividing practices – acting through gender, maternalistic and professionalism discourses – continue to fragment the field and keep the issue of educators’ well-being invisible. Regimes of truth concerning the ‘naturalness’ of educators’ work then distract attention away from the rights of educators to have their well-being considered, as well as to having multiple forms of professionalism recognised.

Nationalist discourses

Historically, nationalist discourses, which propagate and uphold particular ideas about what is appropriate and in the best interests of nation states (Wodak, 2017), have been highly influential in constructing ECEC (Lundkvist et al., 2017; Wood and Hedges, 2016). For example, when Australians felt threatened by a possible ‘invasion’ from the ‘north’ in the early 20th century, those operating within nationalist discourses argued for the importance of a strong economy to ensure national stability. Children were seen as valuable assets and there was increased concern with their welfare – but they were also viewed as potentially dangerous and requiring strict supervision. This discursive space constructed ECEC as ‘national work’ – an important way of saving children by providing safe and healthy work-related childcare, and as a means of producing productive future citizens and reducing the costs associated with crime and punishment (Wong, 2007).

In a similar way, in contemporary society, the uncertainties of a globalised economy have increased nationalist discourses and, once again, the ‘dialectic of the global and the local’ asserts the need for a strong workforce who are able to compete in an increasingly competitive market (Rose, 1999: 144). Neo-liberal discourses uphold these nationalist discourses by asserting the role of the state in producing ‘enterprising and competitive entrepreneur[s]’ (Olssen et al., 2004: 136) who will contribute to the national wealth. And so, just as it was over 100 years ago, nationalist discourses create a space where ECEC is constructed as contributing to national wealth by providing work-related care, an investment in the future potential of children and a way of reducing the cost associated with antisocial behaviour (Lundkvist et al., 2017; Wood and Hedges, 2016). Within such discourses and their focus on ways ECEC can contribute to the nation, attention to what might be beneficial for educators tends to be overlooked. Educators are, by and large, absent from policy, and expenditure on educator well-being is only considered appropriate insofar as it contributes to nationalist agendas.

Neo-liberalism, economic and market discourses

The provision of ECEC has also been shaped intimately by economic and market discourses, which have also contributed to a discursive landscape where attention to educators’ well-being cannot find traction. Neo-liberal economic discourses, with their emphasis on individual consumption and private enterprise, have created a space where ECEC has been constructed as a commercial venture, in response to private demand (Press et al., 2018). Privatised, for-profit provision of ECEC is now the main form of service ownership in Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Ireland (Penn, 2013) and South Korea (Kagan, 2018).

Research from organisational sciences disciplines (such as human resource and change management) has demonstrated the benefits for productivity and, in some cases, profitability of employee well-being (Grawitch et al., 2006). Based on recent research by Logan et al. (2020), organisations that employ staff to manage educators’ well-being understand its importance to the organisation, and to children. However, organisational initiatives are mostly reactive, rather than proactive – so, they become available when something has gone wrong, rather than working to prevent challenges by embedding the concept of well-being in policy and practice. In this regime, educators are positioned as resources, as part of the organisational complex, divided from positive discourses of well-being by an emphasis on fixing rather than preventing. Accordingly, the issue of their own well-being may be invisible to educators until something is wrong, or the impacts of a difficult situation can no longer be tolerated. In addition, implicit deficit discourses of well-being can also divide through an emphasis on the individual. Here, educators may see challenges to their well-being as their responsibility to fix or potentially the result of an individual deficit (Corr et al., 2015). In this case, educators may be divided from each other by focusing on and attending to individual problems, rather than recognising systemic failings.

Where ECEC services are also predominantly owned by small businesses (such as in Australia and the UK), and services are owned by those from outside the ECEC sector, there may be a lack of attunement and attention to the well-being needs of educators. Research concerning small-business ownership in general suggests that spending on health promotion and injury prevention is lower than in large organisations, and little knowledge of workplace health and safety issues relevant to their sector (Cunningham et al., 2014). These tendencies may be exacerbated by the lack of legislative pressure requiring early childhood education service providers to explicitly attend to supporting educators’ well-being.

The predominance of for-profit ECEC services may further marginalise the well-being needs of educators if the costs associated with attending to educator well-being are seen as antithetical to profit-making, as well as to the cost-effective provision of services for families. In relation to labour costs, for example, Penn contends that:

Caring cannot be made more productive; the caring capacities of members of staff can be improved but cannot usually be extended to cover more children … The only way in which labour costs can be reduced is by paying staff less, at or below a minimum wage; employing the least qualified workers who can be paid less; covering ratio requirements with temporary or untrained staff or students on placement; minimizing benefits concerning sick leave, in-service training, holidays and pensions; and adopting anti-union policies to minimise resistance to such conditions. (Penn, 2012, cited in Halfon and Langford, 2015: 133)

Ultimately, as Halfon and Langford argue:

child care … delivered through a market essentially works against supporting trained and skilled professionals. The true cost of a professional workforce is too much for the market to bear, or parents to pay, resulting in a downward pressure on training, wages and supports. (Halfon and Langford, 2015: 133–134)

More recently, Tronto (2017) has argued that the provision of a market-driven system of care is unable to discern the best ways of caring compared to a democratically driven system of care. Here, Tronto’s (2017: 31) understandings of care as ‘everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our “world” so that we can live in it as well as possible’ are closely connected to support for individuals’ well-being in a democratic society. Nevertheless, Tronto (2017) raises concerns about the ability of market-driven systems of care to adequately deliver care for their employees if they cannot reasonably continue to maintain profit for the organisation. These concerns resonate with an ongoing uneasiness about the ability to supply and retain a well-qualified workforce in the ECEC sector. Indeed, a market-driven approach to ECEC provision may not be conducive to supporting educators’ well-being unless steps are taken to proactively address this concern.

The dominance of neo-liberal discourses and market solutions produces a binary whereby problems such as inequitable pay and conditions for educators come to be seen as only solvable by employers paying educators more – and recovered by charging families more. This discourse can become further entrenched as ‘the only’ solution because the highly feminised early childhood workforce may see the pursuit of decent pay and conditions for themselves as mutually incompatible with meeting the needs of children and families (Woodrow, 2007). Other solutions – such as the provision of public funding to services for their provision of a public good (Halfon and Langford, 2015) – come to be obscured by the regimes of truth elicited by dominant neo-liberal discourses.

In the early childhood sector, the dominance of neo-liberal discursive regimes can focus attention on the two main protagonists in the market-driven model: the service providers and the consumers of these services. In this market binary, educators are invisible actors – implied in the service offering, yet, despite actually being ‘the providers’ of the service to families and children, not accruing the benefits that the sale of their services generates. As well as being an invisible part of this ‘market’, research shows that educators’ willingness to undertake their important and complex work often comes at a personal cost. Educators’ pay is frequently incommensurate with their effort, skills and experience; their health can suffer from the physical and emotional demands of their work; and their status as professionals is not well recognised by society in general (Cumming and Wong, 2019; Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014). Educators can therefore be disadvantaged by choosing work that supports others to thrive.

Challenging dividing practices

In the previous sections, we have outlined the discursive landscape within which ECEC is constructed, which renders educators’ well-being invisible as a collective issue. Within this landscape, binaries have become the established way to understand the purposes, structures and priorities of early childhood education. Educators and their interests have become positioned in ways that divide them from each other, as well as from families, from society and within themselves. It has become very difficult to take action on educators’ well-being, as this issue is essentially cast on the ‘wrong’ side of binaries concerning accepted ways of doing, being and thinking in early childhood education.

How might the dominance of these discursive regimes be challenged? One option could be – to paraphrase Mac Naughton (2005) – to ‘do Foucault’. This option could involve recognising how binaries such as those outlined above limit possibilities and divide and distract from the visibility of educators’ well-being as a collective issue. Pre-service education and ongoing professional learning curricula could, for example, include an appreciation of systemic issues and how educators can advocate for change at this level (as proposed by Macdonald et al., 2015). An example of this possibility is provided by Woodrow and Busch (2008), who outline ways of challenging dominant discourses such as the managerial professional with that of the ‘activist professional’ during pre-service education. In addition, practices such as those described by Cumming et al. (2014) and Fenech et al. (2008) provide examples of ways that educators can work collectively to reconstitute the effects of dominant discourses in their practice.

To these examples we would add that educators’ advocacy needs to include a focus on their own well-being, as well as that of children and families. While calls for public recognition of the value of educators’ practice are routinely made, there has been less attention to the need for educators to value their own practice and well-being. Valuing educators’ well-being would require a reimagining of educators (by themselves, as well as others) into a ‘socially purposeful “we”, a group of people joined together in common cause and supported by a culture and sometimes by a place’ (Bullough and Hall-Kenyon, 2017: 144). In addition, ECEC peak organisations, and other leaders in the sector, need to champion issues on behalf of educators who may not have the contacts, confidence or time to do so individually (Macdonald et al., 2015). This, in turn, would require leadership of the type described by Lim and Lloyd (2019): a ‘moral and value-laden dimension of the act of leading others within professional relationships’.

Similarly, Tronto (2015: 7) proposes that we consider care as the basis of becoming ‘good citizens’ by deepening our understandings of care practices that involve ‘moral and value’ commitments. In doing so, we become more attuned to certain practices that promote and support the well-being of those in our work contexts. Hence, educators who work closely with teams of other educators may become more attentive to the well-being of their colleagues (as evidenced in a study reported by Nislin et al., 2016). These practices of care are likely to result in educators being more aware of when, and if so how, responsibilities for educator well-being are either supported or overlooked. Challenging the invisibility of educators’ well-being therefore requires overcoming dividing practices in the forms of leaders’ validation of attention to this issue and educators’ acceptance of the importance of their own collective and individual well-being.

Additional theoretical resources could assist these processes for challenging the discursive landscape, and the ways educators’ well-being has been made invisible within it. One source for rethinking the dominance of the discursive regimes outlined above comes from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Many post-structural thinkers work with the idea that everything is in relation to and with – that is, there is no isolated self or thing. Binaries, divisions and oppositions of phenomena, individuals, ideas and matter are therefore artificial. By seeing these divisions as artificial, they can be deconstructed and reconstructed to produce something new. A discursive move is then required to think about combinations rather than discrete things – how things work in combination, and what these combinations might produce. These are some of the ideas that Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write about in describing the logic of ‘and’. This deceptively simple thinking could produce very different questions to those made possible by current discursive regimes. For example, a question implied by current binary discursive regimes might be: ‘How can we acknowledge educators’ well-being – does that not mean that we are ignoring children’s well-being and putting educators’ well-being first?’ In this question, binaries, assumptions, discourses of costs, rights and purposes are all at work to position educators and children as essentially in opposition – educators’ well-being and children’s well-being are constructed as divided. By using the logic of ‘and’, what would be produced by considering the interrelation of educators’ and children’s well-being? Andrew’s (2015) work, for example, directs attention to a similar idea – that rather than focusing on whether there is greater value in educators having formal knowledge or experience as the basis for claims of professionalism, acknowledging their combination in educators’ ‘practical wisdom’ could provide a more unifying discourse of professionalism.

Additional resources that could prove useful in reconstructing the discursive landscape in these ways come from political philosophers such as Tronto (2013, 2015, 2017). Tronto advocates shifting dominant neo-liberal discourses about care from those associated with welfare services to those that value care in policy and practice. According to Tronto (2015), care is fundamental to the human condition, reflecting the idea that all people should expect to be able to live with dignity and respect. Hence, prioritising care as foundational in ECEC policy could support the reimagining of care as a highly valued practice. Valuing care as central to educators and their pedagogical work would be based on ‘a commitment to the values of relationality, contextual sensitivity, interdependency, respect and trust’ (Langford et al., 2020: 113). In practice, this could lead to early childhood educators, parents, children and community members working together to determine what care supports are needed for all of those involved in ECEC services in local communities.

What could be changed for educators’ well-being by reimagining the discursive landscape of ECEC with Tronto’s ideas of care, along with Deleuze and Guattari’s logic of ‘and’? Examples include not only offering educators professional development in emotional coping strategies, but management demonstrating their ethic of care by attending to the reasons there are situations with which they must cope. Is there a culture of bullying? Are the ratios of educators to children appropriate to productively work with the needs of the children attending that service? Does management support educators in relation to working with families and children with complex needs? In short, seeing educators’ well-being as the focus of an ethic of care – alongside children’s well-being – means attending to systemic problems rather than only responding to the visible cases of compromised individual well-being. In combination with a logic of ‘and’, new questions become possible and, indeed, necessary. What would it look like for educators’ well-being to be acknowledged in policy? What evidence is needed to begin to effectively advocate for these changes? How are educators’ well-being and children’s well-being related? What does human dignity look like for all in ECEC?

By extension – in the case of organisations – care could be considered as a set of moral principles which guide employers to provide employees with sustainable work environments, because not doing so demonstrates disrespect for their human condition, and fails to provide the conditions for thriving (Langford et al., 2020). This ethically grounded approach supports research demonstrating the efficacy for organisational effectiveness of attending to employee well-being (such as by Grawitch et al., 2006). Accordingly, enabling conditions for thriving will ultimately increase organisational effectiveness – care and effectiveness can coexist.

Gender discourses also play a role in these logics. Tronto’s (2015) arguments favour equality through a democratic approach to care. This approach challenges unequal gendered attitudes to care which claim that women are naturally better at caring roles. Tronto’s (2015: 31) ‘caring-with alternative’ provides a revolutionary approach that requires rethinking our use of time, regardless of gender, to spend more time each day caring with, for and about others. This approach means rethinking the role that care work plays in our lives and the compensation we receive for it. Could it be that a lower value of women’s care work in society has acted as another dividing practice that has contributed to the invisibility of the well-being of the highly feminised early childhood workforce?

Conclusion

In this article, we have argued that a range of dominant discourses have created a landscape within which the well-being of early childhood educators is invisible. Moreover, we have proposed that these discourses have acted as ‘dividing practices’ (Foucault, 1982), which reinforce dominant discourses and binaries that make the pursuit of educators’ well-being seem essentially ‘wrong’. The regimes of truth generated through these dominant discourses can force educators to perceive that they must choose from an either/or binary, even when they are themselves disadvantaged by making the ‘right’ choice. In this way, educators are apparently bound by the discursive dominance of the binary form itself, as well as by the limited choices it offers.

Imagining differently – beyond the discursive landscape of binaries and dividing practices – requires not only courage, but the resources and conditions in which courage and agency can find ground. Acknowledging the importance of educators’ well-being, then, requires a shift – towards seeing the value and ethics of attention and openness to learning how the needs and rights of educators in relation to well-being can be met alongside those of children. These moves require engagement with systemic problems, as well as with the historical biases and assumptions shaping the early childhood education field and the invisibility of educators’ well-being in this landscape. In societies where neo-liberal sociopolitical forces shape the apparent possibilities for rethinking the discursive landscape, the inevitable question of ‘Who pays?’ needs not to continue to be divested onto ‘the market’, service providers and families to solve. A different ethic – of care for educators’ well-being along with that for children’s well-being – is required. Other alliances and new questions and approaches need to be mobilised, beginning with making visible the importance of educators’ well-being in the landscape of ECEC.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tamara Cumming

Notes

Author biographies

Tamara Cumming is a senior lecturer at Charles Sturt University, and a Charles Sturt Research Fellow. Together with Sandie Wong, she co-leads the Early Childhood Educators’ Well-being Project, which investigates educators’ well-being holistically. Tamara’s other research investigates the complexity and politics of early childhood practice, and sustainability of the early childhood workforce.

Helen Logan is a Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University and Chair of the School of Teacher Education Research Committee. Before joining the university Helen worked as an early childhood teacher/director within a range of early childhood services, tertiary education settings and schools for over 25 years. Helen is committed to working collaboratively with academics, policy makers, early childhood practitioners and organisations to support high-quality practice in the early childhood education sector. Her research investigates educator work-related well-being, quality in early childhood education and care policy and service provision, and the history of early childhood education and care.

Sandie Wong is an associate professor at Macquarie University. Sandie is committed to working in collaborative, strengths-based ways, with academics from a range of disciplines, early childhood organisations and practitioners, and governments, to lead and support high quality research, evaluation and practitioner enquiry, that contributes to best practice in early childhood. Her current work investigates: early childhood practices; workforce issues; educator well-being; and the history of early childhood internationally.

References

Ailwood

(2008) Mothers, teachers, maternalism and early childhood education and care: Some historical connections. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 8(2): 157–165.

Andrew

(2015) What we feel and what we do: Emotional capital in early childhood work. Early Years 35(4): 351–365.

Aslanian

(2015) Getting behind discourses of love, care and maternalism in early childhood education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 16(2): 153–165.

Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (2018) National Quality Standard. Available at: https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/national-quality-standard

Bown

Sumsion

(2007) Voices from the other side of the fence: Early childhood teachers’ experiences with mandatory regulatory requirements. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 8(1): 30–49.

Bown

Sumsion

Press

(2011) Dark matter: The ‘gravitational pull’ of maternalist discourses on politicians’ decision making for early childhood policy in Australia. Gender and Education 23(3): 263–280.

Bullough

Hall-Kenyon

(2017) Preschool Teachers’ Lives and Work: Stories and Studies from the Field. New York: Routledge.

Cassidy

King

Wang

, et al. (2016) Teacher work environments are toddler learning environments: Teacher professional well-being, classroom emotional support, and toddlers’ emotional expressions and behaviours. Early Child Development and Care 187(11): 1666–1678.

Corr

Cook

LaMontagne

, et al. (2015) Associations between Australian early childhood educators’ mental health and working conditions. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood 40(3): 69–78.

10.

Cumming

(2017) Early childhood educators’ well-being: An updated review of the literature. Early Childhood Education Journal 45: 583–593.

11.

Cumming

Sumsion

Wong

(2014) Early childhood practice and refrains of complexity. Early Years 35(1): 80–95.

12.

Cumming

Wong

(2019) Towards a holistic conceptualisation of early childhood educators’ well-being. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 20(3): 265–281.

13.

Cunningham

Sinclair

Schulte

(2014) Better understanding the small business construct to advance research on delivering workplace health and safety. Small Enterprise Research 21(2): 148–160.

14.

Deleuze

Guattari

(1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Massumi B. London: Continuum.

15.

Department for Education (2017) Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage: Setting the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five. Available at: https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2017/03/EYFS_STATUTORY_FRAMEWORK_2017.pdf

16.

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (2009) Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia.

17.

Dreyfus

Rabinow

(1983) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

18.

Edwards

Gillies

Horsley

(2015) Brain science and early years policy: Hopeful ethos or ‘cruel optimism’? Critical Social Policy 35(2): 167–187.

19.

Emmett

(2013) Toward a pedagogy of well-being for early childhood pre-service educators. In: Brandenburg

Wilson

(eds) Pedagogies for the Future: Leading Quality Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. London: Sense, pp. 27

–

38.

20.

Fenech

Sumsion

Goodfellow

(2008) Regulation and risk: Early childhood education and care services as sites where the ‘laugh of Foucault’ resounds. Journal of Education Policy 23(1): 35–48.

21.

Foucault

(1982) The subject and power. In: Dreyfus

Rabinow

, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 208–226.

22.

Gibson

(2013) ‘I want to educate school-age children’: Producing early childhood teacher professional identities. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 14(2): 127–137.

23.

Grawitch

Gottschalk

Munz

(2006) The path to a healthy workplace: A critical review linking healthy workplace practices, employee well-being and organizational improvements. Consulting Psychology Journal 58(3): 129–147.

24.

Grieshaber

Graham

(2017) Equity and educators enacting The Australian Early Years Learning Framework. Critical Studies in Education 58(1): 89–103.

25.

Halfon

Langford

(2015) Developing and supporting a high quality child care workforce in Canada: What are the barriers to change? Available at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2015/09/OS120_Summer2015_Workforce.pdf

26.

Hall-Kenyon

Bullough

MacKay

, et al. (2014) Preschool teacher well-being: A review of the literature. Early Childhood Education Journal 42(3): 153–162.

27.

International Labour Organization (2014) ILO policy guidelines on the promotion of decent work for early childhood education personnel. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/sector/Resources/codes-of-practice-and-guidelines/WCMS_236528/lang--en/index.htm

28.

Jørgensen

Phillips

(2002) Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: SAGE.

29.

Kagan

(ed.) (2018) The Early Advantage: Early Childhood Systems That Lead by Example. New York: Teachers College Press.

30.

Kusma

Groneberg

Nienhaus

, et al. (2012) Determinants of day care teachers’ job satisfaction. Central European Journal of Public Health 20(3): 191–198.

31.

Langford

Powell

Bezanson

(2020) Imagining a caring early childhood education and care system in Canada: A thought experiment. International Journal of Care and Caring 4(1): 109–115.

32.

Lim

Lloyd

(2019) Editorial. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 20(1): 3–6.

33.

Logan

Cumming

Wong

(2020) Sustaining the work-related wellbeing of early childhood educators: Perspectives from key stakeholders in early childhood organisations. International Journal of Early Childhood 52: 95–113.

34.

Logan

Sumsion

Press

(2014) Uncovering hidden dimensions of Australian early childhood policy history: Insights from interviews with policy ‘elites’. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 22(5): 711–722.

35.

Løvgren

(2016) Emotional exhaustion in day-care workers. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 24(1): 157–167.

36.

Lundkvist

Nyby

Autto

, et al. (2017) From universalism to selectivity? The background, discourses and ideas of recent early childhood education and care reforms in Finland. Early Child Development and Care 187(10): 1543–1556.

37.

Macdonald

Richardson

Langford

(2015) ECEs as childcare advocates: Examining the scope of childcare advocacy carried out by ECEs from the perspective of childcare movement actors in Ontario and Manitoba. Canadian Children 40(1): 100–110.

38.

Mac Naughton

(2005) Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies: Applying Poststructural Ideas. London: Routledge.

39.

Ministry of Education (2017) Te Whāriki Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Available at: https://education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/ELS-Te-Whariki-Early-Childhood-Curriculum-ENG-Web.pdf

40.

Moss

(2006) Structures, understandings and discourses: Possibilities for re-envisioning the early childhood worker. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 7(1): 30–41.

41.

National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (2009) Aistear framework. Available at: https://www.ncca.ie/en/early-childhood/aistear

42.

Nislin

Sajaniemi

Sims

, et al. (2016) Pedagogical work, stress regulation and work-related well-being among early childhood professionals in integrated special day-care groups. European Journal of Special Needs Education 31(1): 27–43.

43.

Oberhuemer

(2005) Conceptualising the early childhood pedagogue: Policy approaches and issues of professionalism. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 13(1): 5–16.

44.

Olssen

Codd

O’Neill

A-M

(2004) Education Policy: Globalization, Citizenship and Democracy. London: SAGE.

45.

Ota

Baumgartner

Berghout Austin

(2013) Provider stress and children’s active engagement. Journal of Research in Childhood Education 27(1): 61–73.

46.

Penn

(2013) The business of childcare in Europe. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 22(4): 432–456.

47.

Press

Woodrow

Logan

, et al. (2018) Can we belong in a neo-liberal world? Neo-liberalism in early childhood education and care policy in Australia and New Zealand. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 19(4): 328–339.

48.

Rose

(1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

49.

Ryan

Grieshaber

(2005) Shifting from developmental to postmodern practices in early childhood teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 56(1): 34–45.

50.

Scottish Government (2014) Getting it right for every child. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/policies/girfec/

51.

Stirrup

Evans

Davies

(2017) Early years learning, play pedagogy and social class. British Journal of Sociology of Education 38(6): 872–886.

52.

Tayler

Thorpe

Nguyen

, et al. (2016) The E4Kids study: Assessing the effectiveness of Australian early childhood education and care programs. Overview of findings at 2016. Available at: https://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2475527/E4Kids-Report-3.0_WEB.pdf

53.

Tronto

(2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York: New York University Press.

54.

Tronto

(2015) Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics. London: Cornell University Press.

55.

Tronto

(2017) There is an alternative: Homines curans and the limits of neoliberalism. International Journal of Care and Caring 1(1): 27–43.

56.

Wodak

(2017) Discourses about nationalism. In: Richardson

Flowerdew

(eds) Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 403

–

420.

57.

Wong

(2007) Looking back and moving forward: Historicising the social construction of early childhood education and care as national work. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 8(2): 144–156.

58.

Wood

Hedges

(2016) Curriculum in early childhood education: Critical questions about content, coherence, and control. Curriculum Journal 27(3): 387–405.

59.

Woodrow

(2007) W(H)Ither the early childhood teacher: Tensions for early childhood professional identity between the policy landscape and the politics of teacher regulation. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 8(3): 233–243.

60.

Woodrow

Busch

(2008) Repositioning early childhood leadership as action and activism. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 16(1): 83–93.

61.

Ylitapio-Mäntylä

Uusianutti

Määttä

(2012) Critical viewpoint to early childhood education teachers’ well-being at work. International Journal of Human Sciences 9(1): 458–483.

A critique of the discursive landscape: Challenging the invisibility of early childhood educators’ well-being

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Dividing practices

Discursive regimes contributing to the invisibility of educators’ well-being

Liberal/progressive discourses

Scientific discourses

Gender, maternalist and professionalism discourses

Nationalist discourses

Neo-liberalism, economic and market discourses

Challenging dividing practices

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author biographies

References