1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The aim of this paper is to investigate the viability of this claim for the early childhood teacher in Québec, Canada, who operates within a seemingly intractable hierarchy of occupations that devalues, in both structural and symbolic ways, the early years field.» (p. 202)

Questions/Hypothèses :
«[T]hree related research questions frame the study: How can the committed early childhood teachers’ subjective experiences of: (1) their occupational image, in terms of professional status and prestige, (2) their day-to-day work in early childhood settings, and (3) their constructions of childhood contribute to engendering change in society?» (p. 206)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«The participants in this study were 14 certified teachers working in early childhood settings (CPEs, i.e. Québec’s funded childcare, non-funded childcare settings, preschools), with a minimum of five years’ teaching experience. All participants were women living and working in the Montreal area, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-40s. [The participants were interviewed and] were invited to complete the following writing exercise individually [Memory narratives]. This was part of a larger study involving pre-service and in-service teachers that addressed teachers’ memories and identities in relation to concepts of childhood.» (p. 206)

Instruments :
- Guide d’entretien semi-directif

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

The data concerning the teachers’ experiences of their occupational image, in particular, shows that participants noted «how the work of early childhood teachers is only valued by the parents of the attending children» (p. 213) and many of them have been «told not to go into the field of early childhood education by their parents or other family members.» (p. 210) In this study, «[w]hat was found through the teachers’ perspectives of their professional image was that their work and their constructions of childhood neither supported nor dismissed [the claim that teachers’ subjective experiencees can engender societal change]; rather, it revealed a closer understanding of specific aspects in the interplay between the internal and the external, particularly in terms of childhood as a discursive concept, gender, and our understandings of individuation. It suggests that the process that needs to occur is not, as early years teachers, to convince ourselves first that our work is more valuable than what the ‘public’ has been conditioned to believe. It is that the early years teacher’s subjective experience and professional image are indeed ‘embedded in and reciprocally constitutive of the other’, such that change in the subjective and the social must occur together.» (p. 214)