Teaching reflective care in Japanese early childhood settings

Doing research in Indonesia and Sweden on the ambivalence of care and masculinity in ECEC; challenging dominant norms through ethnographic methodology

“…On the other hand, Sweden has a very gender divided labour market where professional care is generally seen as work that engages primarily women. Just like in Indonesia, care is often an un-reflected practice (Hellman 2016). In the past decade, dominant neoliberal discourses about individuality and competence have taken a centre stage in pedagogy.…”

“…In response to these discourses, researchers have stressed the need to pay far more attention to practices of care and to the way the concept of care operates in early childhood settings. The narrow focus on learning and on the individual and competent child, risks making children's need of care in the preschool setting invisible (Hellman 2016). To meet this critique, care was more visible in the latest national curriculum for preschool, revised in 2019.…”

Inside the Learning Assemblage: Japanese Parents’ Views of Children’s Learning and Future Possibilities

“…Uchi serves diverse family cultures with distinct needs, while communities are situated in soto and are connected to the social culture. According to Hellman (2016Hellman ( , p.1694 while individual desires and selfishness may be acceptable in a private space, learning to 'hito ni meiwaku o kakenai' (not to cause trouble for others), it is a soto form of behaviours that functions through social practices. Burke (2008) also used the typology of uchi and soto to describe Japanese children's learning:…”

Towards a reflective care in Education The ambivalence of professional caring masculinities in a Swedish Edu-care context

“…This negotiation can be seen as needed due to gendered ideas of who is seen as suited for which kind of work, which calls for men to find strategies to negotiate masculinities, in order to keep up with a normative locally constructed view on masculinity and care as well as find ways to be an individual and professional teacher. Researchers have also problematized the way un-reflected practices of care might become gender blind at the same time as stereotype norms about gender operates in educational environments [16,4]. One example of this discussed in this paper, is how the ideal professional position as a preschool teacher is viewed as gender-neutral at the same time as practices of care becomes linked to idealized femininity, naturalized for women and hereby made ambivalent for men (and boys) to perform.…”

“…Research has problematized the way care has become blurred and marginalized in relation to learning in educational settings and policy documents. It has also been argued that we need to analyze care as a reflective practice and learn more about how theories of care could be implemented [4]. The purpose of this paper is to explore notions about care and gender in contemporary Sweden and the concept I in this paper suggest for this discussion is reflective educational care [4].…”