Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): a cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China

Xu, Yuwei

Abstract

This paper discusses whether practitioners’ gender subjectivities influence pedagogies and practices in early years education and care (EYEC) settings and whether an increase of men’s participation can improve gender diversity in EYEC. It draws on poststructuralist theories, understanding gender as the product/outcome of the social formation of subjects and the process of subjectification. This is illustrated through accounts for how individual practitioners from Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China discursively construct their gender subjectivities, in accordance with the respective cultural discourses that shape work with young children in EYEC in the three contexts. Thirty-four practitioners from 17 EYEC settings (1 male and 1 female practitioner from each setting) in the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Tianjin were interviewed. The study finds that participant practitioners’ constructions of gender subjectivities vary within and across contexts, and gender-binary discourses are to different extents prevalent in all three contexts. This paper argues for a cross-cultural approach to gender-sensitive teacher training, to interrogate popular discourses that advocate for men to fulfil complementary roles in EYEC to women and to challenge gender binary thinking that persists in EYEC and beyond.

Citation

Xu, Y. (2020). Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): a cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. Early Years, 40(1), 109-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2019.1683816

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 20, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Oct 23, 2019
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 15, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 20, 2021
• Journal: Early Years
• Print ISSN: 0957-5146
• Electronic ISSN: 1472-4421
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 109-124
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2019.1683816
• Keywords: Gender; early years education and care; diversity; cross-cultural; gender binary
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/7019606
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09575146.2019.1683816?journalCode=ceye20
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Early Years. Yuwei Xu (2020) Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): a cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, Early Years, 40:1, 109-124, DOI: 10.1080/09575146.2019.1683816. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.