The undervaluing of early years educators reflects entrenched societal beliefs. We analyse representations of early years educators in 32 popular media texts through the lens of scholarship on care work and Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital, with the view that working conditions for educators and symbolic representations of educators reinforce…

Given the growing interest and representation of superheroes in comics and other media, we are interested in the ways young people read superhero texts and how those readings influence their conceptualisations of gender within and outside educational spaces. In this article we explore students' responses to (re)presentations of gender in superhero…

This paper concerns physicality and the tendency to operate within bounds of familiar repertoires of embodiment. It questions the degree to which habitual ways in which we pose, repose, and action our bodies are authentic as opposed to constructed artifacts of our enculturation. With reference to notions of 'neutrality' as raised in Lecoq training…

The concept of domesticity plays out in early childhood educational settings and has a long tradition. Domesticity in its pre-domestic, domestic and post-domestic phases is used here as a site for reconsidering the role of Maria Montessori. The ideas put forward here are intended as a provocation and methodologically the device of constructing an…

This qualitative research paper discusses how the material environment of preschool classrooms contributes to early childhood experiences of gender. It applies poststructuralist and posthumanist concepts -- primarily Barad's agential-realism -- to analyse ethnographic data extracts drawn from the author's semi-longitudinal study in a UK nursery.…

Despite explicit focus on addressing gender inequality in educational settings in Australia, without challenging gender binarism, inequality will persist. This article demonstrates the everyday and implicit means through which hierarchical gender binaries continue to be perpetuated. Observational fieldwork undertaken in three Australian early…

The focus on, and concern about, young girls and preteens or "tweens" relates to the "sexualisation" of girlhood and the notion that girls are "growing up too fast" and becoming "too sexy too soon". In both popular and academic accounts, "tween" magazines and the increasingly "sexualised"…

This article sets out to outline how prevailing gender structures can be challenged in physical education (PE) by exploring queer potentials in an event that took place during a dancing lesson in an upper secondary PE class. The event and its features were documented through video recording and post-lesson interviews with the teacher and some of…

This paper argues that in order to begin loosening the ties that bind care and gender in primary education, we need to re-examine the knowledge sought and found by educational research about teachers. The focus is primarily on how we understand men who teach. Through an examination of two scholarly texts -- Ashley, M., and J. Lee [2003.…

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century,…

Despite the political and academic debate on the demands for more male workers in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), no European country has reached the benchmark set for 2006 to have 20% male early childhood workers. This has predominantly been countered by challenging the idea that care for the youngest implies an activity "that…

This study examines change and the conditions of change in the masculinity of Olli, a working-class Finnish school boy. It explores "respect" as a status bound to masculine reputation, resources for obtaining respect in gendered identity work, and the negotiation of power in peer relations. I discuss how a "banal balancer"…

This paper explores the considerations of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the recent UK government report "Letting Children be Children". This report, the "Bailey Review", claimed to represent the views of parents. However, closer reading reveals that, while the parents who were consulted were concerned about both the…

In this paper the author explores the relationship between masculinity and violence. She begins by pointing out that although all of the recent school shootings in the US have been perpetrated by boys, very few are associating the acts with the gender of the offenders. Perhaps this connection is not made because society is so conditioned to the…

In this paper we consider the significance of cyber "LAN" cafes as sites where on and off-line practices meet in way that complicates binary notions of the gendered gamer. Existing research into computer games culture suggests a male dominated environment and points to girls' lower levels of competence and participation in games. Building on…