Becoming, Being and Unbecoming an Educator in Early Childhood Education

Published In

Go Where You Belong: Male Teachers as Cultural Workers in the Lives of Children, Families, and Communities

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

4-2011

Subjects

Early childhood education -- Social aspects, Early childhood educators -- Training of, Male teachers

Abstract

As one of the many early childhood professionals in my area of the world, I look back and think about the unusual way I came into and stayed in this field. I see my early growth and formation in early education as my becoming educator period. During this time, I was restless, unsettled and easily influenced about arranging my classroom and career decisions.

Now, I am a professor in early childhood education at Portland State University. I also work in the full-day laboratory school for young children as the pedagogical liaison to a constructivist master’s degree program, which teaches through the lab school. There, we conduct many phenomenological (Van Manen, 1990) and action research projects with children, teachers and parents of the school. People working at our school and degree program are very interested in the cross-cultural and multipleworld perspectives of early education, especially as it relates to the inspired principles and practices of Reggio Emilia, Italy (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998), antibias education (Derman-Sparks & the A.B.C. Task Force, 1989) and Resources for Infant Educarers (see RIE.org). Our work emerges through dialogue, collaboration, documentation and community reflection practices (Parnell, 2005). And, this work feels challenging and good most of the time!

Rights

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Sense Publishers

DOI

10.1007/978-94-6091-406-5_1

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/27939

Link to Book

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