Pedagogical differences and similarities between male and female educators, and their impact on boys’ and girls’ behaviour in early childhood education and care institutions in Austria

Johannes Huber,Bernd Traxl

doi:10.1080/02671522.2017.1353674

Abstract

Greater public and scholarly awareness of the educational influence of males (men and fathers) on child development has generated a parallel need for empirical research into the gender-related structure and dynamics of relationships between girls/boys and female/male educators in early childhood education institutions. The Austrian W-INN pilot study, carried out between 2010 and 2012, used a cross-sectional mixed-methods design (video-based observation and questionnaires) to research possible pedagogical differences and similarities between male and female educators, and their impact on boys’ and girls’ behaviour in early childhood education institutions. Ten Austrian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) groups were recruited: 5 female-only and 5 mixed-gender teams of educators, 30 children (15 boys, 15 girls) aged 4–6. Analysis of data on educational dimensions reveal male and female educators hardly differ (the exception, men are significantly more permissive). Mixed-gender teams produce significantly greater social mobility among children than do female-only teams. Analysing children’s behaviour towards educators, clear gender specific effects can be found across various levels of inquiry: girls react less obviously to an educator’s gender; boys, especially, are drawn significantly more frequently to a man in the ECEC team. Implications for pedagogical professionalism as well as limitations of the results are discussed.

Highlights

International literature on the educational influence of males on children, and more generally on ‘gender balance’ in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce, has increased gradually over the past 15 years (Cameron, Moss, and Owen 1999; Rolfe 2005; Brownhill, Warin, and Wernersson 2015; Peeters, Rohrmann, and Emilsen 2015; Brandes et al 2016; Weegmann and Senger 2016)
Associated with this was the hope of making a kind of ‘father substitute’ accessible to children, given the apparently increasing number of families deprived of fathers. (‘Children need men!’, a slogan that has gained increasing public attention, is often heard in connection with the lack of men in childcare and educational institutions.) Whether and to what extent male educators in ECEC settings2 can fulfil these externally imposed expectations, and which supposedly ‘specific’ characteristics they should provide for this purpose, was and continues to some extent to be discussed contentiously (e.g. Cameron 2001; Brownhill 2015)
We developed a mixed-methods research design to approach this question: What is the real significance of male educators, or mixed-gender teams of educators, in ECEC settings? Alongside the fundamental difficulty of making declarations about what are, to some extent, the subtle ‘effects’ of the gender of a person or educator on children (Brandes 2012), the project’s mixed-methods approach was in itself a challenge

Summary

Introduction

International literature on the educational influence of males on children, and more generally on ‘gender balance’ in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce, has increased gradually over the past 15 years (Cameron, Moss, and Owen 1999; Rolfe 2005; Brownhill, Warin, and Wernersson 2015; Peeters, Rohrmann, and Emilsen 2015; Brandes et al 2016; Weegmann and Senger 2016). In pursuit of the dissolution of traditional role arrangements, a second central motif consisted in the recruitment of men as educators, to provide children with a more gender-balanced personnel structure, as well as, above all, diverse male ‘role models’ Associated with this was the hope of making a kind of ‘father substitute’ accessible to children, given the apparently increasing number of families deprived of fathers. Peeters 2007; Vandenbroeck and Peeters 2008; Koch and Farquhar 2015; Peeters, Rohrmann, and Emilsen 2015; Pirard, Schoenmaeckers, and Camus 2015) In this regard, studies can increasingly be found in which men are asked about the motive for their vocational choice, their general well-being, as well as their male experience of identity in a traditionally female-connotated vocational field (e.g. Sargent 2004; Aigner and Rohrmann 2012; Nentwich et al 2013; Brody 2015; Wohlgemuth 2015). Until now, the children’s perspective of male educators has received almost no attention (exceptions, e.g. Sumsion 2005; Huber and Traxl 2016)

Methods

Results

Conclusion