“Everything could be just as equal:” Working-Class Teachers in Privileged Nursery Schools

Abstract

This qualitative study offers an interpretation of the reported experiences of three working-class women of color who had just completed their student teaching placements in fulfillment of requirements for their Bachelor of Science degrees in Early Childhood Education. These working-class women's perspectives, traditionally underrepresented in the canon of teacher education, are examined through a feminist-pragmatist lens to uncover modes of action and reflection that support larger shared inquiry, experience, and discourse. Hopefully this work will make working-class teacher candidates' constructions of child care/education settings and practices more visible as a politics of knowledge (Lather, 1991) and will advance and focus conversations concerning self-identity and power relations in early childhood settings.