Authoring Professional Identities: Immigrant and Refugee Women's Experiences in an Early Childhood Teacher Education Program

Abstract

to follow.

Navigating Power and Subjectivity: Cultural Diversity and Transcultural Curriculum in Early Childhood Education

“…Carolyn: We can turn to scholars who have taken up these same ideas and are addressing some of the questions that we ourselves are struggling with. It is interesting that researchers in Canada today (e.g., Bjartveit & Panayotidis 2014;Massing, 2015;Prochner, Cleghorn, Kirova, & Massing, 2014) are asking similar questions to those that Annette LaGrange, Dawne Clark, and Elizabeth Munro (1994) addressed 20 years ago in their research Cultural Sensitive Child Care: The Alberta Study-a project funded by the government of Alberta and sponsored by the Alberta Association for Young Children: How can professionals shift from "tourist" representations of culture, where they focus on symbols of culture, and move toward deeper understandings of Self and Other? How do educators recognize differences and include cultures into facets of ECE programs (pre-K-postsecondary levels), environments, and curricula in meaningful and authentic ways?…”

"Not Many People Ask Me This Kind of Question": Three Contrasting Cases of Immigrant-Background Teachers

“…Research with a disciplinary focus has looked primarily at immigrant-background teachers working in English as a Second Language (ESL), Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), or world language (Amin, 2001;Wang & Du, 2016;Zhou & Li, 2015) programs. Research on immigrant-background teachers with an issue focus has tended to explore issues of belonging and identity, both self-identity and recognition by others (Arndt, 2015;Massing, 2015, Rhone, 2007. This project seeks to push the conversation around immigrant-background teachers into new areas in terms of geographic, disciplinary, and issue foci.…”

Shaping the “Habits of mind” of diverse learners in early childhood teacher education programs through powerpoint: An illustrative case

“…While previous studies have enquired into aspects of immigrant/refugee women's studies in ECTE programs (e.g. Gupta, 2013;Langford, 2007;Massing, 2015;Wilgus, 2013), little attention has been given to the modes of delivery in the program (Exposito & Bernheimer, 2012). We contend that the immigrant/refugee students in such programs are not only confronted with the dominant discourse of ECTE, but also with thoroughly established technological ways of conveying the (western/scientific) knowledge and skills they are expected to acquire.…”

“…Therefore, it is critical to recruit and retain educators who represent these groups (Souto-Manning & Dice, 2007) as they stand to possess the life experiences, cultural bridging skills, and knowledges needed for working with students, children, and families from similar backgrounds (Adair, Tobin & Arzubiaga, 2011;Bernheimer, 2003;Guyton, Saxton & Wesche, 1996;Wilgus, 2013). In the Canadian context, immigrant/refugee women do often choose child care as a point of entry into the workforce as these positions are perceived as being accessible to newcomers (Service Canada, 2011) and they can draw on their prior experiences teaching or caring for young children (Massing, 2015).…”