Between Teaching and Caring in the Preschool: Talk, Interaction, and the Preschool Teacher Identity

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In Between Teaching and Caring in the Preschool, John C. Pruit argues that preschool teaching is more than a set of roles and duties tied to institutional expectations. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, twenty-three interviews and countless conversations with preschool teachers, and analysis of preschool documents, Pruit opens the black box of the preschool to show the complexity of the preschool teacher identity as it unfolds in everyday practices of teaching and caring. His analysis of preschool teachers talk and interaction addresses pertinent sociological and early childhood education themes, including classroom management, social control, emotions, and identity construction. He demonstrates there is more going on in the preschool than teaching young children and caring for them. Through practices of classroom management and teaching language, preschool teachers socialize children into education contexts and exert social control in and through teaching practices. By managing emotions, preschool teachers also manage impressions of themselves and the preschool. He also shows how preschool teachers use resources like Montessori pedagogy and their lived experience to construct authenticity. Pruit concludes that institutions, such as ECE, shape identities within and away from the institution.

Reviews

In Between Teaching and Caring in the Preschool: Talk, Interaction, and the Preschool Teacher Identity, we are told the story of Ellis Montessori preschools attempts to create a gender-neutral, child-centered, environment for the young 'friends' who attend. However, as John Pruits novel participant observation study demonstrates, there are many ironic tensions at work in the setting. The gendered, institutional discourses of teaching and caring serve as narrative resources that administrators, teachers, and staff draw from to perform meaningful identities in occupations that are underfunded and devalued by society at large. The almost sinister language of 'choice' and feeling rules make Ellis a highly gendered, institution-centered, environment like any other. These data are terrific. This book is relevant to anyone interested gender, education, work and occupations, organizations, institutions, identity, emotions, and more.

-- Carol Rambo, University of Memphis
A fascinating account of the social situation and identity of the preschool teacher. More than teachers at other levels of education, the preschool teacher is located at the comparatively intense social control, nurturant, and emotion-laden crossroads of schooling. Between Teaching and Caring in the Preschool is an informative must-read for students, scholars, practitioners, and parents. -- Jaber Gubrium, University of Missouri

Author Bio

John C. Pruit is assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Anthropology, Geography, and Sociology at Stephen F. Austin State University.