Description
Book SynopsisIn 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.
Trade Review
In Between Teaching and Caring in the Preschool: Talk, Interaction, and the Preschool Teacher Identity, we are told the story of Ellis Montessori preschool’s attempts to create a gender-neutral, child-centered, environment for the young 'friends' who attend. However, as John Pruit’s 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
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: The Organization of Ellis Montessori Preschool
Chapter 2: Transforming Structural Problems into Everyday Challenges
Chapter 3: Everyday Imagination, Producing Belonging, and Producing Autonomy
Chapter 4: Classroom Management: Social Control by Another Name
Chapter 5: Empathy, Affection, and Deeper Bonds
Chapter 6: Emotion Management in the Preschool
Chapter 7: Montessori, Child-Centeredness, and Authenticity
Chapter 8: Assembling Preschool Teachers
Conclusion: Between Teaching and Caring at Ellis Montessori Preschool
References
