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Rinnakkaistallenteet Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja kauppatieteiden tiedekunta
2019
Gender and social class in Nordic early
childhood educational ethnography - a meta-analysis
Lappalainen, Sirpa
Informa UK Limited
Tieteelliset aikakauslehtiartikkelit
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2019.1683755
https://erepo.uef.fi/handle/123456789/7825
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Gender and Social Class in Nordic Early Childhood Educational Ethnography —
A meta-analysis
Sirpa Lappalainen
Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland sirpa.lappalainen@uef.fi ORCID: 0000-0002-1413-3037
Ylva Odenbring
Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg ylva.odenbring@gu.se ORCID: 0000-0002-8221-8980
Abstract
This article provides a meta-analysis of what characterises existing ethnographic research on gender and class in the context of Nordic early childhood education. The encompasses research on education and gender or social class in the Nordic countries published in Nordic and non- Nordic scientific journals as well PhD theses published in the Nordic countries. The analysis suggests that even though Nordic countries have a reputation for being ‘role model countries’
in terms of equality and social justice, gender and especially social class have rarely been explicitly the focus of ethnographic research in the context of early childhood educational research. In terms of methodology, many of these studies make use of post-qualitative approaches to research, whereas fieldwork practices have been guided by the spirit of interactionism.
Keywords: ethnography, gender, social class, Nordic countries, early childhood education, pre- primary schooling
Introduction and Aim
Ethnographic research has the advantage of providing long-term engagement with the everyday life of an educational institution and multiple methods of data generation. This provides methodological tools for understanding and exploring how inequalities are constructed and reproduced in early childhood settings and schools. Ethnographic research can also provide useful knowledge for education authorities and practitioners striving to accomplish an equal educational system for all children, regardless of, for example, gender or social background (Alm & Odenbring 2019; Jones, 2012).
Within the field of childhood ethnography, the American researcher William A. Corsaro (2003), could be considered the pioneer of ethnography within early childhood settings. In his early work he conducted fieldwork on children’s everyday lives in early childhood educational settings in the United States and in Italy. These studies primarily focused on peer relations in children’s play. Whereas, Corsaro did not theoretically explore children’s peer relations from the perspective of gender or any other aspects of social justice, the work of the Australian scholar, Bronwyn Davies, who analysed preschool children’s experiences on being gendered (Davies 1989), has been a source of theoretical inspirations for Nordic feminist researchers working in the various fields of education. Contemporary childhood ethnography conducted in early childhood settings with a particular focus on gender and/or social class has, for example, focused on the impact of gender on children’s peer relations (Yanik 2018), constructions and negotiations of femininities (Adriany 2018) and masculinities (Wohlwend 2012) in children’s play as well as gendered and classed identities among girls in the second grade of primary school (Jones 2012).
Gender equality, equity and democratic rights are strongly emphasised in the curricula of the Nordic countries. Yet, contemporary research indicates that segregation and polarisation in the educational system as well as in people’s living conditions have increased during the past few decades (Beach 2017; Karvonen & Salmi 2016). These societal changes have a strong impact on children’s everyday lives and equal educational opportunities at all educational levels (Sernhede & Tallberg Broman 2014). Looking at ethnographic educational research on gender and/or social class conducted within the Nordic context there has been a strong tradition among researchers of focusing on the lower and upper secondary school levels (see, for example, Arnesen, Mietola & Lahelma 2007; Hjelmér & Rosvall 2017). One of the main trends in this research is the exploration of gendered power relations as well as processes in the construction of gender hierarchies (Beach 2010; Paju et al., 2014).
It is against this background that this article aims to present a meta-analysis of how and to what extent ethnographic research conducted in the Nordic context (i.e. in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) has been used to analyse gender and social class in early childhood education. The meta-analysis has been guided by the following research questions:
1) How have the aims of the research been defined in educational ethnography on early childhood education?
2) How and to what extent have issues of gender and class been conceptualised in the studies?
Meta-analysis
The basis of this article is a meta-analysis of Nordic ethnographic early childhood educational research. This meta-analysis draws on review of PhD theses published in the Nordic countries, articles published in the major Nordic scientific journals as well as a number of Nordic publications in selected non-Nordic journals. PhD theses in Nordic countries go through the
external evaluation process by the scientific community and are published either in Faculty research report series or scientific publishers. Even though there has been a long tradition of writing monographs in the field of Education, it has become more common that the PhD theses include a number of the peer reviewed articles and a longer summary of the study. Moreover, in PhD theses, methodology, which is the main interest of this article in hand, is usually described in detailed manner. Therefore, together with the peer reviewed journals, they give more convincing insight to research than book chapters or books, which might be published without the plausible review process.
‘Early childhood education’ refers to institutional education provided for the children before they start their primary school, which in the Nordic countries happens the year the child reaches the age of six (Norway, Iceland and Sweden) or seven (Finland and Denmark). In defining the scope of the material for this analysis, we used the following principles: First, the research examined specifically had to include references to early childhood education and to gender and/or social class in the title, abstract or keywords. We were flexible in terms of disciplinary borders, including work conducted, for example, in departments of sociology and social work.
Secondly, we did not impose our own definition of ethnography on our search. We trusted authors’ self-identifications, choosing works which were stated to draw on the ethnographic tradition. Thirdly, our search concentrated on research published from 2000 onwards. The rationale for this was that research before this period did not promote the concept of ethnography to the same extent (Beach & Lunneblad 2011).
The PhD theses were searched for using a number of national databases. When searching PhD theses, we used the keywords ethnography, early childhood education, preschool, kindergarten, preschool class, primary school, leisure time centre, gender and social class. In our searches
we used keywords in Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. We then read and analysed the titles and abstracts of the PhD theses that fit our search criteria. This was done to get a picture of the specific topic of the work and to confirm if the study fit the aim of this meta-analysis. For texts written in Icelandic we depended on the texts’ English abstracts.1 Finally, the theses that fit the aim of this study were more closely analysed.
Finnish PhD theses were searched for using a PhD database maintained by the Centre for Gender Equality Information at the National Institute for Health and Welfare. Swedish PhD theses were searched for using the national database LIBRIS (National Library of Sweden) and the national database GENA (GENUS Avhandlingar). GENA is a database of PhD theses in women’s studies, men’s studies and gender research published in Sweden from 1960 onwards.
This database is maintained by KvinnSam and the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research.
Norwegian PhD theses were searched for using the database NORA (Norwegian Open Access Archives), Danish PhD theses were searched for using REX (The Royal Library and University of Copenhagen Library’s database) and Icelandic PhD theses were searched for using the database of the National and University Library of Iceland.
[add table 1 here]
Fifteen major Nordic scientific education or gender journals were included in the meta- analysis: Barn, EduCare, Education Inquiry, Dansk pedagogisk tidskrift, Kasvatus, Nora, Nordic Studies in Education, Nordisk Barnehage forskning, Norsk pedagogisk tidskrift, Paideia, Pedagogisk tidskrift i Sverige, Sukupuolentutkimus/Genusforskning, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Tidskrift for børn og ungdomskultur and Utbildning &
Demokrati. The four (non-Nordic) international journals included in this meta-analysis were selected based on the following criteria: the journal Gender and Education was selected because it is an established journal where educational researchers interested in gender issues are expected to publish. The journal Ethnography and Education dedicated to ethnographic research in various educational contexts is considered one of the most obvious choices for educational ethnographers. To also include work with a specific focus on early childhood education (and where Nordic researchers also frequently publish their work) the scientific journals Childhood and Children and Society were selected. It was also important to expand our search to include these journals due to the quite limited number of hits during our search.
We used the same keywords in the search for articles as we did for the search for PhD theses.
For the journal articles that were only listed on the journals’ websites and not available as full texts, a manual search of those publications was necessary. In most cases abstracts were available. The titles and abstracts of the articles that fit our search criteria were then closely analysed so that we could get a picture of the studies and if they actually fit our scope. The articles that fit this study were then more closely analysed by reading and reviewing the full text of the articles.
[Add table 2 here]
Ethnographic Gaze on Nordic Early Childhood Educational Research
As a result of our meta-analysis, we present predominant characteristics of the Nordic early childhood educational ethnographic research that has a bearing on gender and social class. We have structured the research under three subheadings. First two sub sections present research, wich focus on gender and class as well as research showing sensitivity in terms of these social
categories. Third sub section introduces intersectional research, where social categories, such as gender, class, ethnicity and disability are understood as mutually shaped and focus is on power relations and oppression manifested in the intersection of those categories (Rice, Harrison and Friedman 2019).
Analysing Early childhood Education as a Gendered Phenomenon
In Finland, research focusing on social and cultural processes related to social divisions such as gender in the pre-primary educational context has mainly been conducted by social scientists and has remained out of the mainstream of educational research. The first academic ethnographic study explicitly focusing on gender in the pre-primary educational context was Petteri Värtö’s PhD thesis entitled ‘A Man Is Responsible for his Deeds … As Is a Woman.’
The Construction of Masculinities in Day Care Centre (Värtö 2000). Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1990) conceptualisation of gender as performative, he highlights how masculinity is constructed in everyday life in the day care centre through the use of the female-male dichotomy. Värtö explains the prevailing traditional idea about gender in day care centres by utilising Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘total institution’, which he argues describes both the day care centre as an institution and its prevailing gender order. At the beginning of the millennium Värtö’s work was an exceptionally critical analysis of pre-primary education and it challenged normativities in pre-primary education as well as in academic writing.
In the second decade of millennium several Finnish school ethnographers found new material feminism and post humanism. Especially Karen Barad (2007) started to inspire many ethnographers, who conducted ethnography in the context of basic education (e.g. Guttorm 2014; Hohti 2016; Paakkari and Rautio 2018). However, Tuija Huuki (2016) conducted multimodal ethnography at preschool located in rural Northern Finland, analysing gendered
and sexualised power relations in children’s play. Huuki explicitly positions her study in new material feminism and posthumanism, drawing on concepts of apparatus (Barad 2007) and assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). She highlighted how children’s play is affected by places and their histories. Moreover, she showed that tiny interventions of adult might, as their best, release existing capacity of children to transform gendered power relations and make space for more equal gender relations (Huuki 2016).
In Sweden forerunners have mainly come from the field of educational sciences. Anette Hellman’s (2010) PhD thesis draws on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban preschool and was one of the first ethnographic study on gender conducted in a preschool context in Sweden. Hellman uses poststructuralist feminist theory, queer theory and critical masculinity research (Davies, 2002; Butler, 1990; Whitehead, 2002) to explore how different assumptions and values regarding different gendered bodies are constructed in the daily practice of the preschool. One of the central concepts of the study is Stephen M. Whitehead’s concept of the normalising gaze and how this normalising gaze works and how it is applied to both boy’s/men’s and girl’s/women’s bodies. According to Whitehead (2002) this authoritative gaze creates different social codes and values which leads to self-regulation of what is considered suitable behaviour for male and female bodies. Hellman concludes that, at the preschool studied, certain acts and positions were categorised as either ‘typically boyish’ or
‘typically girlish’ by the practitioners as well as by the children.
The other Swedish study based on relatively long-term ethnographic fieldwork is Odenbring’s (2010) PhD thesis. The study investigates gender constructions as they appear in the everyday practice of early childhood settings. The ethnographic part of the study was conducted in a preschool class over a time period of seven months. Raewyn Connell’s (2003) concept of
gender regime and Barrie Thorne’s (1993) concepts of border work and crossing are central to the study. Drawing on Connell’s (2003) idea on how recurrent gender patterns at an institutional level create different gender patterns at the local level, i.e., “the gender regime of an institution” (Connell 2003, 53), Odenbring uses the concept of the gender regime as an analytic tool for investigating how gender and the local gender regime is manifested in the everyday practices of the preschool class. This theoretical framework includes an understanding that gender can be expressed in multiple ways, i.e. there are multiple forms of masculinities and femininities. Thorne’s concept of border work is used as an analytic tool to explore how gender dichotomies are maintained or strengthened in daily practice whereas the concept of crossing is used to analyse situations where children tried to seek and gained access to groups of children of the other gender and their activities.
Gender crossing is the focus of Odenbring’s (2012) later work, where she conducts more micro level analysis, however, still drawing on an interactionist perspective (Thorne 1993). The study takes its point of departure from the ethnographic tradition of analysing identified critical incidents in detailed manner, i.e. the critical incidents involving situations that the researcher recognised as gender crossings. The empirical analysis is based on specific incidents and situations involving two target children, representing both genders. The study highlights how the children challenged traditional gendered expectations in the daily practice of the preschool class. Unlike previous studies on boys and masculinities the results show that the boys’ gender crossings were both encouraged and recognised by other peers as well as the practitioners (cf.
Connell, 2003). The message to the girls was, however, quite contradictory. On the one hand the practitioners encouraged the girls to be outgoing and physically active, but on the other hand they asked them to fulfil cultural expectations of femininity; to be careful, quiet and calm.
Thus, gender crossing was less rewarding for the girls.
Klara Dolk’s PhD thesis (2013) entitled Unruly Children: Power, Norms and Participation in Preschool investigates the tensions and conflicts that occur in the power relations between children and adults in preschool work with so-called fundamental values education in Sweden.
The intention of fundamental values education is to increase gender equality, social equity and participation in the preschool environment. Dolk conducted her fieldwork in a preschool for a period of one year and refers to her work as an ethnographic study with an action research component. The study draws on Butler’s and Foucault’s work (Dolk, 2013). Foucault’s (2000) understanding of how power is connected to norms and normalisation is one of the main theoretical starting points of the study. In order to understand the dynamics of norms and participation, Dolk uses Judith Butler’s (1990) ideas on how practices corresponding with existing norms in the society are understood as natural, whereas people who challenge existing norms are seen as strange and sometimes even weird by their surroundings. Thus getting accepted for your gender actually requires a lot of work even in a pre-primary educational context, Dolk argues.
Sara Frödén’s (2018) study focuses on the exploration of children’s gendered interactions in play. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in one Waldorf preschool. The study draws on Judith Butler’s understanding of performativity and (un)doing of gender (Butler, 2004), but also on the concept of situated decoding of gender defined by the researcher.
The latter concept derives from what Frödén defines as “unexpected findings in a long-term ethnography” (2018, 2). According to her, this concept offers a new theoretical tool to rethink gender equality work in early childhood education.
One feature of Nordic educational ethnography is an interest in cross-cultural approaches, where analogous incidents are sought from the ethnographic data sets generated either in different educational institutions in the same national contexts or in similar institutions in two or more national contexts (Lahelma, Lappalainen, Mietola and Palmu 2014). The article entitled ‘In the Educational Twilight Zone: Gendered Pedagogy and Constructions of the Ideal Pupil in the Transition from Pre-Primary Education to Compulsory Schooling in Finland and Sweden’ is the sole study based on data generated in two Nordic countries (Odenbring and Lappalainen, 2013). Drawing on a meta-ethnographic and cross-cultural analysis of data generated from their respective PhD studies, Ylva Odenbring and Sirpa Lappalainen investigate the educational transition from preschool to primary school in Finland and Sweden.
The focus of this study is the exploration of recurrent gendered patterns in daily pedagogical practices. Raewyn Connell’s (2003) theoretisation of gender regimes, Valerie Walkerdine’s (1998) analysis of gendered expectations and Barrie Thorne’s (1993) argument on their influence on children’s understanding of gender comprises the theoretical framework of the study.
One of the few Norwegian studies with an explicit focus on gender is Stian Overå’s (2013) PhD thesis entitled Kjønn – Barndom – Skoleliv: Faglige og sosiale inkluderings- og ekskluderingsprosesser i barneskolen (Gender – Childhood – School Life: Professional and Social Inclusive and Exclusive Processes in Primary School [our translation]) (see also Overå, 2014). The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the primary school context. However, these particular schools provide pre-primary education for six-year-old children. Overå conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork over the course of one school year. Overå (2013) defines his study as childhood ethnography where the intention is to investigate children and their gendered worlds. The theoretical inspiration for the study is a combination of an
anthropological and psychological understanding of gender using Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen’s work on gendered identities and gendered subjectivity as a point of departure (Bjerrum Nielsen, 1994) and Stephen Frosh’s, Ann Phoenix’s and Rob Pattman’s (2002) work on boys and masculinities. Overå concludes that boys’ everyday lives are surrounded by both stable gender norms as well as changing gendered practices and experiences that boys have to relate to. One of the main findings is related in debate on ’new masculinities’, arguing that care and intimacy play a significant role in boys’ peer cultures (Overå 2013, 2014).
A challenge in this meta-analysis is that the topic of interest (gender) might be touched upon in works which have not been positioned in the field of gender studies, or which do not have gender as their main focus. An example of this is the ethnography entitled ‘Children, Bodiliness and the Day Care Order. A Study on the Production of Embodiment, and Its Significance to Children in the Context of a Day-Care Centre’, which Anu Kuukka (2015) conducted in a Finnish early childhood educational setting. The aim of the study is to conceptualise embodied aspects of children’s everyday life in early childhood educational contexts. The scope of the study is broad, encompassing control of children’s embodiment, embodied resources and children’s own meaning-making. Gender is touched on in the chapter on embodied resources.
Childhood and embodiment are recognised as entirely gendered phenomena (Kuukka, 2015, 161). Drawing on Barrie Thorne’s (1993) concept of border work Kuukka highlights how the children established but also actively worked against stereotypical gender expectations.
Moreover, she shows how some embodied features, such as body weight, were evaluated in different ways among girls and boys.
Tensions between knowledge formation in peer cultures and pedagogical intentions is the focus of Annica Löfdahl and Solveig Hägglund’s (2007) article entitled ‘Spaces for Participation in
Pre-School: Arenas for Establishing Power Orders? An Ethnography Conducted in Swedish Preschool Setting’. Drawing on William Corsaro’s (2003) concept of interpretive reproduction, which refers to how aspects of adult culture are reinterpreted and integrated within the context of children’s peer culture, Löfdahl and Hägglund highlight how social segregation based on gender and age is reproduced in peer culture, even though a teacher’s intention might be the opposite. These two studies demonstrate sensitivity towards gender, which, we argue, means a willingness to recognise the relevance of gender when the data calls for it.
Classed Childhood in Early Childhood Education Ethnography
An even greater challenge in conducting this meta-analysis was to find research addressing issues of social class or studies that touch upon this issue in early childhood education.
In Sweden A and X (2019) explore how social injustice and social class is constructed in the everyday activities of the preschool class and in the children’s interactions. The ethnographic fieldwork followed what could be categorised as a selective intermittent time mode, which provided flexibility to allow entering the research site, gaining respondents’ trust as well as the opportunity to follow up research questions and deepen the empirical analysis (cf. Jeffery &
Troman, 2004). Theoretical framing is built by combining Pierre Bourdieu’s (1998) conceptualisations of social class and of economic capital and Beverly Skeggs’s (2002; 2004) further theorisations considering formation and operation of class. One of the main findings indicates that the practitioners were quite unaware of the children’s different living conditions and how this might affect the children’s everyday life in the preschool class.
Issues of educational inequality in Swedish leisure-time centres are explored by Catarina Andishmand (2017) in her PhD study entitled Leisure-time centre or service centre? An ethnographic study of leisure time-time centres in three socioeconomically diverse areas. The
study draws on ethnographic fieldwork of three leisure-time centres in different socioeconomic areas. The study touches upon social class by discussing and exploring educational inequality using Anthony Giddens’s (1979; 1984) work as a theoretical framework. The study concludes that increased segregation in Swedish society has resulted in increased homogeneity of the students in leisure-time centres.
In Finland Mari Vuorisalo (2013) explores in her PhD study entitled Children’s Fields and Capitals. Participation and the Construction of Inequality in Preschool children’s everyday actions with special focus on participation and how it produces their positions in a preschool group. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s (e.g. Bourdieu 1986; 1984) conceptualisations of field and capital, Vuorisalo analyses field observations made over the course of one year. She identifies two fields, the field of children and adults, and the field of children, each of which requires different forms of capital. The nuanced analysis shows that there exist structures at preschool which produce distinctions and inequalities in everyday interaction, thus participation is not equal. However, in Vuorisalo’s study the term class does not refer to socioeconomic relations or to other cultural aspects of a family. Rather she uses class position to refer to children’s (un)equal positions in the preschool group, produced in everyday life in preschool.
In another Finnish study, conducted by Minna Rückenstein (2010), tensions between pedagogical ideals and children’s culture are highlighted. In the study the interactions between preschoolers and virtual pets are analysed. Rückenstein conducted her ethnography in a Finnish preschool based in a middle-class area. Even though she does not explicitly theorise childhood as a gendered or classed phenomenon, this is one of few studies where social class is recognised as significant in terms of children’s living conditions, noticing their participation in leisure time
activities which require financial resources, such as ballet, classical music or golf (Rückenstein 2010, 505). Moreover, the article illuminates how girls in particular dealt with educators’
ambivalence towards virtual toys.
We also found one Norwegian PhD study that touches on social class, but does not have social class as the main focus or as part of the theoretical framework. This study is by Ann Christine E. Nilsen (2017), entitled Bekymringsbarn blir til. En institusjonell etnografi av tidlig innsats som styringsrasjonal i barnehagen [The Construction of the Child in Need. An Institutional Ethnography of Early Support as a Professional Tool in Preschool] (our translation). Nilsen’s study includes institutional ethnography conducted in three preschools and is framed by Ian Hacking’s (1999) theory of classification. This study investigates professionals’ views in situations in which they identified and expressed their concerns about certain preschool children’s situations. The professionals’ narratives were described along two dimensions of concern, these being concerns about the child’s development, and concerns about proper child care in the child’s home environment. Nilsen argues and concludes that ideals about the middle- class family mostly determined the professionals’ views about what is or is not considered a good childhood.
Intersections of Social categories in Early childhood Education ethnography
In the late 1990s and early 2000s feminist educational ethnographers in the Nordic countries began to focus on intersections of multiple differences. Even though the concept of intersectionality (e.g. Brah & Phoenix, 2004) was not widely used, analyses where the aim was to map the complexity of inclusion and exclusion started to emerge.
In her article-based PhD Sirpa Lappalainen (2006) follows the tradition of feminist ethnography (Skeggs, 2001) to focus on constructions of nationality, ethnicity and gender in a preschool context. She draws on poststructuralist feminist thinking (e.g. Davies 1989; 2004;
St. Pierre 2000) and postcolonial theorisations (e.g. Hage 2000; McClintock 1995) to show that nationality was a central framework in the process of the preschool children’s subject formation. Moreover, nationality as an exclusive concept had special relevance for the boys.
The boys, who were positioned within the hegemonic community, had a tendency to build nationality- and ethnicity-based barriers in peer relations. The boys from ethnic minority backgrounds continuously had to deal with this territorial masculinity; however, they actively sought ways to be included.
In her theoretically ambitious PhD thesis Children’s Everyday Matters, Elina Paju (2013) investigates the concept of agency, asking ‘What happens to the concept of agency if the materiality of the world and the embodied nature of the human being are taken seriously?’
(Paju, 2013, p. 9). She conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a day care centre among children aged between three and seven years. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory the work is methodologically positioned within new materialism, which in recent years has gained a footing in Nordic childhood research (e.g. Hohti, 2016; Rückenstein, 2010). Paju highlights how children’s agency is shaped by the material environment. In terms of gender equality one of her key findings is that the material environment, organised by adults, has a strong influence on the extent to which children’s play is gender differentiated (Paju, 2013, pp. 92-94).
An example of intersectional analysis is found in Anna-Maija Niemi’s (2008) small-scale ethnographic study, published in the Finnish-language journal Kasvatus, on processes of inclusion and exclusion in children’s peer relations. She conducted her ethnography in a
classroom in which pre-primary school children and first graders were taught together. In addition, the class in Niemi’s research was composed of children with and without special educational needs. Niemi argues that being ordinary was the most desirable social position in the children’s peer group. Drawing on Judith Butler’s idea on performativity (2006, 1990/1999) she suggests that in order to promote inclusive classroom culture, being ordinary could be conceptualised as a performative process which occurs situationally. Niemi highlights how the intersection of the dichotomies of boy/girl, white/non-white and ability/disability ‘played together’ in peer culture, especially intensifying the othering of girls (Niemi, 2008, p. 350).
When focusing on relationship between social categories instead of a single category of gender or class, the concept of intersectionality has provided researchers with a multi-dimensional approach to analysing processes of inclusion and exclusion. The other side of the coin is that defining the focus of the research has turned out to be a more complex question as well.
Therefore, scholars, who examine gender or social class trough ‘intersectional lenses’, do not necessarily identify themselves as gender or class researchers and these concepts do not necessarily determine their choices concerning publication forums and research networks. As a result, there is a risk of invisibility of gender or class research.
Methodological Trends
When exploring special features of Nordic educational ethnography, Dennis Beach (2010, pp.
53-54) argues that the way theory is explicitly put to work in order to make sense of the ‘texture of everyday life’ as well as analyses of how education operates within contemporary society are common features of Nordic educational ethnography. Methodologically most of the Nordic ethnographies on gender in early childhood education draw on conceptualisations that are
‘imported goods’, mostly from the anglophone world, not unlike most other research on early
childhood education and care. One noticeable feature in early childhood educational ethnographies is that many of the researchers have distanced themselves from methodological purism and often rely on more than one paradigm. In most cases, more than one theory is put to work. For example, combining the interactionist paradigm with a reproduction framework (e.g. Odenbring 2010) helped to link participants’ interpretations to the wider social contexts.
Overall, interactionism strongly guided Nordic educational ethnography in the 1990s when ethnography started to gain a footing in educational research (Beach, 2010). After 2000 it lost dominance; nevertheless, in the field of childhood studies there exist some ‘classics’ like Barrie Thorne’s (1993) Gender Play and William Corsaro’s (2003) interpretive reproduction approach which still help ethnographers to make sense of their data.
Early in the 2000s Tuula Gordon, Janet Holland and Elina Lahelma (2001) argued that the impact of postmodern and poststructuralist paradigms influenced by the textual turn (Clifford
& Marcus, 1986) has not been that strong in educational research. They suggested further that a critical stance towards humanism and an acceptance of the fluidity of poststructuralism might be shaky ground when arguing for a shift towards more equal education (Gordon et al, 2001).
Since then the situation has changed, so that especially poststructuralist feminism has gained influence in Nordic educational ethnography. In the context of early childhood education and care, poststructuralist feminist theories, highlighting the formation of knowledge, truth, and subjects in language and cultural practices (St. Pierre, 2000), have been used in order to conceptualise gender (e.g. Värtö, 2000) and to problematise social and cultural categories (Niemi, 2008). Poststructuralism has first of all offered an epistemological stance for framing researchers’ understanding of how data are considered, not a means of revealing hidden truths but of revealing ‘the ways how sense is being made’ (Davies, 2004, p. 4). Poststructuralism has also been criticised for (over)emphasising language and discourse at the expense of the
material (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 3). Indeed, many feminist scholars in the field of early childhood education and care have turned towards new materialism (e.g. Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Otterstad, 2014). In ethnographic studies inspired by new materialism the focus has been on how materials shape children’s social relations (Paju, 2013); how children relate to particular material objects (Rückenstein, 2010) and how gendered power relations are manifested in children’s play (Huuki 2016). However, in the field of early childhood education, it seems to be that so far various post- qualitative approaches have had much less influence on how data generation has been carried out. In most cases data have been generated in a ‘spirit of interactionism’, as a result of relatively long and intensive fieldwork aimed at creating the most detailed, comprehensive and rigorous description possible (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995, p. 64).
Concluding Remarks
Nordic educational ethnographers have traditionally been enthusiastic to examine how school cultures, despite good intentions, reproduce social, cultural and economic divisions (Vaahtera, Niemi, Lappalainen & Beach 2017). This enthusiasm did not at large extent spread to the field of early childhood education until recently and can be found mainly in Sweden. One reason for that might be that Nordic school ethnography has some of its roots in English ‘new sociology of education’ of the 1970s, where the focus was on how schools reproduce inequality (Gordon, Holland & Lahelma 2001). In the field of early childhood educational ethnography inspiration has been predominantly drawn from symbolic interactionism without the ‘twist’ to see educational institutions as sites of class struggle and children as classed subjects. When, examining ethnographies focusing on gender, we can see the dominance of poststructuralist theorisations. Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performative has to a great extent inspired scholars in Nordic countries. However, there is an evidence of move towards new material
feminism and post humanism especially among Finnish ethnographers focusing on gender in the field of early childhood education. On the other hand, especially in Sweden, a perspective which emphasises the historical formation of gender (Connell, 2003) has been and still is influential.
There were a number of challenges in undertaking this kind of meta-analyses. We had to rely on how the researchers framed their studies in terms of educational ethnography. In the most concrete form, for example, how they chose their key words and title, how they summarised their work in the abstract and where they decided to publish. The main finding of this meta- analysis is that an ethnographic approach to gender in early childhood educational research is quite uncommon. The existing research indicates that gender inequalities and gender stereotypes quite often are reproduced in the everyday practices of early childhood education, yet there are also research indicating that gender norms are challenged. For instance, the results from the investigated studies indicate how boys construct ‘new masculinities’ in terms of expressing care and intimacy in the everyday pedagogical practice. Boys’ border crossings are also more often encouraged by the practitioners compared to the girls. Several of the investigated studies also indicates how girls are expected to perform ‘good girl femininity’, i.e.
being quiet and calm, something that also is rewarded.
As for ethnographic studies focusing on children’s class position, we found these studies to be even more rare. It seems that, for some reason, the issue of social class has been avoided or maybe even ignored by ethnographers interested in early childhood education. The few existing studies on social class indicates that social injustice covers the everyday life in early childhood settings as well as the possibility for the children to participate on equal terms. For instance, research demonstrates how social class is more or less a ‘blind spot’ among practitioners. This
vulnerable children’s already existing stigmatised position. Researchers, especially in Sweden, also critically discuss the increased segregation in the society, and how this affect children’s right to equal education. Another interesting finding is that the few existing studies use a variety of theoretical frameworks and concepts. However, especially in Finland a move towards new materialism and post humanism can be recognised.
We also found that there is huge variation between the Nordic countries in terms of publications and studies, Finland and Sweden appearing to predominate. This might be partly because school ethnography, focusing on reproduction of educational inequality has maybe been more influential in Finland and Sweden than in other Nordic Countries. Moreover, although all Nordic Countries score internationally well in terms of formal equality of opportunity, particular inequlities related to gender and class question their position as ‘role model countries’ in terms of equality and social justice. Finnish labourmarkets are internationally one of the most gender segregated in the world, having several occupational fields, where the share of either men or women is over 90 % (National Institute for Health and Welfare 2018). In Sweden, the move towards the one of the most marketized education system in the world has embrittled its reputation as a ‘model country’ of social justice and made the relevance of the class analysis more visible (Dovemark et al. 2018). These international ‘top positions’ maybe have shaped research interests more in Finland and Sweden than in other Nordic Countries.
Still, our analysis suggests that research taking a focus on formation and reproduction of gender and class is still far from mainstream in Nordic early childhood educational ethnography.
The absence of ethnographic research on gendered and classed practices in early childhood raises several issues. Providing early childhood education for all children has been and still is an important part of how equal rights and educational policies are framed in the Nordic
countries. Secondly, an equal educational system plays an important role in compensating for unequal childhoods and educational inequalities (Hjalmarsson & Odenbring, 2019; Sernhede
& Tallberg Broman, 2014). Ignoring issues of social justice as they apply to gender and social class in ethnographic research is therefore problematic. Ethnographic research has the advantage of being able to highlight and pinpoint how intersections of gender and social class form part of children’s identity work as well as their understanding of themselves as learners.
It also has the advantage of being able to explore and critically discuss practisioners’ gendered and classed expectations of children’s abilities and future prospects. If educational ethnographers continue to avoid research focused on processes, in which gendered and classed inequalities are reproduced in everyday life of early childhood educational institutions, important issues regarding social justice will also remain unexplored.
Declaration of Interest Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Table 1: Overview of search results for PhD theses
Country Database Author & year Focus (translated)
Denmark REX (The Royal Library
and University of Copenhagen Library’s database)
No studies found
Finland Dissertation database of Centre of Gender Equality Information
Kuukka (2015) Paju (2013) Vuorisalo (2013) Lappalainen (2006) Värtö (2000)
Embodiment Materiality Participation and inequality Peer relations and preschool practices Masculinity Iceland Database of the National
and University Library of Iceland
No studies found
Norway NORA (Norwegian
Open Access Archives) Nilsen (2017) Overå (2013)
Professionals’ views on vulnerable students Gendered identities and gendered subjectivity
Sweden LIBRIS (National
Library of Sweden) and GENA (GENUS Avhandlingar)
Andishmand (2017) Dolk (2013) Hellman (2010) Odenbring (2010)
Inequality and segregation
Norms, normalisation and participation Constructions of gender and embodiment Gender crossings and border work
Table 2: Overview of search results for scientific journals
Country Journal Author & year Focus
Denmark - - -
Finland Sukupuolentutkimus Nordic Studies in Education
Childhood Kasvatus Kasvatus
Huuki (2016)
Odenbring & Lappalainen (2013)
Rückenstein (2010) Niemi (2008) Lappalainen (2004)
Power
Gendered pedagogy and constructions of ideal pupils
Virtual toys
Inclusion and exclusion in peer relations
Masculinity
Iceland - - -
Norway Barn Overå (2014) Gendered identities and gendered
subjectivity Sweden Barn
Ethnography & Education Paideia
Nordic Studies in Education
Childhood & Society
Alm & Odenbring (2019) Frödén (2018)
Odenbring (2012)
Odenbring & Lappalainen (2013) Löfdahl & Hägglund (2007)
Social class and social injustice Gender equality work
Gender crossings
Gendered pedagogy and constructions of ideal pupils
Gendered segregation
