Abstract:

The lack of diversity in professions that have been dominated by one social group has created a crisis that calls for partnerships between government and civil society actors to create innovative models of workforce development and timely policy decisions to dismantle long-standing barriers of exclusion and income gaps based on race, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, and other constructs. The field of early childhood education (ECE) has been impacted by long-run social problems such as gender-imbalance (Skelton, 2011; Rohrmann, 2012; Mottint, 2013), cultural barriers (Pruit, 2015; Drudy, 2008), stereotypes about male teachers’ nurturing abilities (Sargent, 2004; Johnson et al., 2010), homophobic reactions (Pruit, 2015; King, 1998) and low-paying jobs (Whitebook et al., 2016; Cooney & Bittner, 2001), which have collectively deterred men from working with young children. Empirical research can provide much-needed data to help practitioners and policymakers make sentient decisions to take on these social challenges. This paper shares findings from a place-based study that uses mixed methods (e.g., surveys, interviews, and on-site observations) to examine strategic efforts toward increasing men’s engagement in the ECE workforce. One of the study’s key research question is: How can empirical data inform governmental agencies and civil society to garner more supports for augmenting male participation in the ECE field? Over a twelve-month period, the study has gleaned and analyzed empirical data from more than 60 culturally and linguistically diverse male educators and program administrators (both male and female) who work in a variety of early education and care programs operating in low, moderate, and high-resource neighborhoods throughout New York City. The research uses SPSS, NVivo and SurveyMonkey in its analysis to triangulate demographic information and employment-related themes that emerge from the data. This methodology has helped to uncover recurrent patterns in the analysis of factors that influence men’s engagement the ECE field. The paper concludes that gender-flexible policy and equitable salary will reinforce institutional efforts that aim to enhance men’s involvement in the early childhood education workforce.

Keywords:

Men, early childhood education, recruitment, gender, policy, diversity.