Overview

This book draws on feminist theorisations and more-than-human approaches to re-imagine gender in the early childhood workforce. Sid Mohandas presents new research carried out in a Montessori nursery in the UK looking the workforce’s interactions with everyday “objects” in the nursery such as tea, cameras and snot. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s situated feminist practice Mohandas reveals the many gendered and more-than-gendered forces, including those of race, caste and class at play in the relations, stories and worlds within the nursery setting. Debates, policies and practices around gender in the early childhood workforce have predominantly focused on the under-representation of men and the recuperative outcomes promised through the inclusion of men. This book is concerned with the ways a gendered workforce can be re-imagined when the boundaries of research are stretched beyond mere human inclusion and attention is paid to ordinary and unassuming relationships that encompass everyday experiences in the nursery. By employing feminist theorisations that foreground materiality, affect, discourse, place and temporalities, the book demonstrates ways in which gender can be understood differently in the early childhood workforce.

Full Product Details

9781350534582

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is a vital contribution to reconceptualizations of gender in early childhood education and research. The book brings forward much-needed possibilities for more-than-human feminist orientations to enact anti-colonial and justice-oriented approaches. Importantly the book also brings embodied and affective attunements to the everyday places and spaces of early childhood education as sites for enacting transformative gendered and more-than-gendered relations. * Dr. Fikile Nxumalo, Associate Professor, OISE, University of Toronto. Canada * Rooted in original, empirical research, Mohandas traces the gendered legacies that shape early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the UK and disrupts the prevailing discourses in male recruitment drives that position men as bringing recuperative qualities to the sector. Drawing on a more-than-human framework to investigate the materialisation of a gendered workforce in Montessori classrooms, this text offers generative, compelling insights and a novel and hopeful contribution to the field. It is a deeply thought-provoking book. * Nathan Archer, Associate Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK *

This is a vital contribution to reconceptualizations of gender in early childhood education and research. The book brings forward much-needed possibilities for more-than-human feminist orientations to enact anti-colonial and justice-oriented approaches. Importantly the book also brings embodied and affective attunements to the everyday places and spaces of early childhood education as sites for enacting transformative gendered and more-than-gendered relations. * Dr. Fikile Nxumalo, Associate Professor, OISE, University of Toronto. Canada * Rooted in original, empirical research, Mohandas traces the gendered legacies that shape early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the UK and disrupts the prevailing discourses in male recruitment drives that position men as bringing recuperative qualities to the sector. Drawing on a more-than-human framework to investigate the materialisation of a gendered workforce in Montessori classrooms, this text offers generative, compelling insights and a novel and hopeful contribution to the field. It is a deeply thought-provoking book. * Nathan Archer, Associate Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK * Thinking with post-humanist and post-structuralist perspectives, this meticulously researched book provokes readers to re-engage with our understanding of gender in EC education. Inviting re-consideration of relationships and reflection on our interconnectedness in unexpected ways, the author pinpoints opportunities for the Montessori community to re-imagine gender and its gendered workforce. * Barbara Isaacs *

Author Information

Sid Mohandas is Guest Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at Leeds Beckett University, UK and University of Cardiff, UK.

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