Embodied professional early childhood education and care teaching practices

This chapter discusses the doctoral research process that informed our teaching and learning practices. In recent years, social research has turned its attention to ‘the body’ (Waskul and Vannini, 2016). We consider the implications of such a turn on the ways in which we (re)position ourselves as teachers by reflecting on our experiences of teaching future early years practitioners and teachers. In the first part of the chapter Eva argues that teaching requires a considerable amount of emotional labour that is embodied in her professional practice. She focuses on how her emotions became ‘embodied’ and the ways in which her professional practice/performance has been influenced by her emotions. To demonstrate her subjectification, she used her reflective diary and fieldnotes written over a period of one year which recorded her experiences as a teacher and novice researcher. In the second part of the chapter Sandra reflects on her doctoral study relating to child poverty and how Foucault has informed her ideas of embodiment in relation to her analysis of interviews with early years practitioners and her teaching of child poverty to future early years practitioners and teachers. She draws on examples from both her data analysis and reflective notes on her teaching.