"I thought that this would be a noble act that we helped the child" - ethical tensions in early childhood education teacher's work

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Abstract

In Finland, especially in early childhood education (ECE), teachers leave the profession for reasons other than retirement or career advancement. Teachers are known to leave their positions for many reasons, with ethical challenges and ethical tensions representing one significant set of reasons. However, research on ethical tensions in the ECE context is still scarce. This study focuses on ethical tensions in Finnish ECE teacher’s work, especially the sources, nature and contexts of tensions as well as responses of teachers to those tensions. The participants are eight former ECE teachers who reflected on their paths toward the field of ECE in a Microsoft Teams online meeting. The photo-telling method was applied to enhance the participants’ understanding of their own and each other’s experiences. The thematic analysis identified ethical tensions from five participants’ stories related to the following contexts: colleagues and societal expectations, parents, structural and personal factors. The findings emphasise the entanglement of contexts and relationships in ethical tensions as well as blurred boundaries between in- and out-of-work places. ECE teacher’s relationships with parents and structural factors seemed especially vulnerable to the emergence of ethical tensions. The study concludes with suggestions for developing ECE pre- and in-service education to support teachers and strengthen the sustainability of teacher’s work and teacher education.

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Keywords

early childhood education, ethical tension, photo-telling, teacher education, teaching profession

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