Imagine, therefore, how early childhood teachers might experience this state of affairs. No matter how much we give children choices or encourage their initiative, we also seek a degree of predictability and stability in our work. Classroom management can still be a serious concern, even when we succeed in putting it on a back burner for lengthy periods of time (see, among other references, Rodd, 1996; Scarlett, 1998; or Tobin, 1997). Even if I emphasize free play in my program, can "I" get control of the children whenever I need it? The sheer diversity of children, activities, and daily surprises makes "me" unsure. As an early childhood teacher, it looks as if I will have to tailor my initiatives, responses, and roles constantly. I may rightly worry about striving to be all things to all people, as they say, or at least about being many things to many children. A behavior that I enact prominently with one child may not be what I display prominently with another, even though I value consistency in teaching. Because of the inevitable diversity of children’s experiences of my class, there may easily be one student who sees (or "identifies") me as inclined to be stern, for example, another who sees me as supportive and nurturing, and still another who sees me as variable or even moody.

The diversity of others’ perceptions of a teacher can make it hard to characterize the teacher in general—the more you know her, the more complicated she seems. But the diversity of behaviors that prompt the perceptions can challenge the teacher even more, at least if he or she takes an honest look. Who am "I," I ask myself after seeing me behave so differently with different students and situations? Did "I" criticize or even punish one child’s behavior, but tolerate or even enjoy something similar in another child? How can "I" feel dissatisfied with one child’s effort, but reward a similar effort in another? At times, in other words, "I" contradict myself in class; and even when I do not, "I" may feel like an eclectic conglomeration of behaviors, as if I am guided not by a self, but by an incoherent committee that frequently disagrees.

On the surface, inconsistencies within a professional early childhood teacher can be explained easily: diversity in behavior is just an expression of the complexity of teaching, not a sign of conflicted personal identity. The personal and professional are different, we tell ourselves. Distinguishing them allows anomalous or inconsistent behaviors to reside in the "same" person, and lets me rescue the image of "my" self–including both how I look to others and (more importantly) how I feel or experience myself. Just as a soldier who shoots at an enemy need not consider himself a murderer, so a teacher who (for example) scolds a child need not think of herself as a cruel person. That, at least, is what conventional thinking tells us, and what external, third-person descriptions of professional identity(ies) tend to assume. As long as I distinguish the personal from the professional, "I" am not an uncaring person even if I reprimand a child more often than I like. Nor am I an inconsistent or conflicted person if I praise one child more than another, nor uncommitted if I give less time to one child than to another. I am simply performing my duties in all their complexity–enacting a single, complicated "professional identity."

That much seems easy to accept. The problem is that distinguishing the personal from the professional may not be appropriate in early childhood education, where being professional tends to mean "caring personally" about others (Hansen, 2001; Wink & Wink, 2004). Early childhood teaching, it seems, is heartfelt by definition: it is partly about caring for others sincerely, and not just about looking like you care. Yet heartfelt feelings, to be heartfelt, cannot be commanded into existence. They must appear of their own accord. For teachers—and especially new ones—this requirement can be especially worrisome. Whatever my outwardly visible teaching behavior may suggest, what do I actually feel about my work? And what, if anything, does my visible identity show about my felt identity—about how I actually feel and what actually motivates me? How can "I" describe myself as a teacher, not just to others, but to myself? Watching myself in action over many days and weeks, across many students and situations, I can easily fret about my identity. "Don’t just do something; stand there!", goes a witty aphorism, and privately I may sense the wisdom in it.

Sustaining an effective career with very young children means understanding and working through these questions even when they are troubling and vivid, and even though they are by nature experienced privately. In developing and nurturing commitment to early childhood education, teachers are worried about more than their outward "professional identity," about how they look to children, parents, and colleagues. They worry as well about whether they feel committed to teaching as a calling. This is not merely a practical concern about employability, such as often felt by preservice teachers during their practice teaching; it is a more intimate, lasting anxiety. In private moments it is expressed in terms of whether teachers feel "sincere" about teaching, whether they "actually like students," or whether they can "be themselves with students." In the short term, such doubts can be banished, covered and quelled by performing outward signs of professionalism: I can distract myself by saying and doing what others "identify" as good teaching. In doing so, others will "identify" me as an early childhood teacher. But in the long term, merely looking professional is not good enough. The problem is that satisfying others with good teaching performances does not, by definition, encourage mindful attention to self-identification.

It is here that we, as professional early childhood educators, can contribute to each other’s development, if we can just be sensitive to the complexity of our lives and situations, and to our own limits in being helpful. The challenge is not to give advice, nor to coach each other to perform particular acts of teaching; like artists in other fields, most of us pick up the specific skills we need somewhere along the line. The true challenge is to help each another to feel genuine about teaching and to love as many moments of teaching as possible.

Giving this sort of help calls for an approach that looks less like a technical expert than like a counselor: we must invite mutual reflection on how we feel about ourselves as teachers, while at the same time offering stable and safe support for doing so. As in any successful counseling experience, the "client" (a colleague) does much of the real work of discovering his or her true passions (usually teaching, though not always). The "therapist" (you, but sometimes me) primarily provides mindful attention–meaning that we focus, reflect back and interpret the client-colleague’s efforts. At its best, this approach yields deep satisfaction and value for both parties: your colleague feels cared for, and you feel valued for caring (Noddings, 2003).

Learning Each Other’s Discourses

But as with other counseling-like relationships, there are limits to what mutual support can accomplish. The limits come from the sheer diversity of our histories as teachers and as individuals. It is useful to think of our diversity as a variety of discourses relevant to our work, to children’s learning, and to our personal lives. In this context, a discourse is not a lecture or monologue. It is a pattern of thinking and speaking that is constructed and sustained over time by a particular community or group of people, such as a family, an occupation (like early childhood teachers), an ethnic group, or even a national society (Bakhtin, 1986, 1993). Discourses contain and express beliefs, values and perspectives, and they are used by individuals to communicate with each other. To participate in a particular group, a person needs to adopt the discourses used by that group. Using the local discourse(s) means talking and thinking like the "locals," and makes mutual understanding possible. But it does more: it allows an individual not only to be identified as a genuine member of the community, but also to feel like a member. If I talk and think like an early childhood teacher, then not only do I look like an early childhood teacher to others, but I am likely to feel like one as well.

Unfortunately problems can sometimes develop between the prominent discourse of early childhood education and the others that we experience and use from elsewhere in our lives or that we carry from our personal pasts. When relationships between the professional and personal discourses are supportive or at least compatible, we find it easier both to look and to feel like a "genuine" early childhood teacher. In that case, too, we can engage more easily in the mutually supportive talking and listening recommended at the end of the previous section. When the relationships between and among our discourses are inconsistent, however, things get harder.

Let me explain with a few examples. In early childhood education, a prominent discourse is the language of developmentally appropriate practice (or DAP, for short). These are beliefs about good teaching, expressed in many different ways and based on assumptions about what normal, desirable children’s development looks like. The discourse includes beliefs about the importance of basing learning and teaching on real or lived experiences (for examples of this sort of discourse, see Egan, 2001, or Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). The discourse of DAP serves as a kind of "language" among early childhood teachers, beginning in preservice training programs and continuing in professional publications, workshops, and other professional development experiences throughout teachers’ career. Other educational languages do compete with DAP-talk (e.g. the language of accountability and objectives-based learning), especially in programs based in schools. But the discourse of DAP dominates communication among teachers and caregivers of the very young. To be part of this community of teachers and caregivers, therefore, an individual must learn to "speak developmentally appropriate practice," as it were. When and if DAP-talk is mastered fluently, it becomes second nature, and a teacher or caregiver may scarcely notice how much he or she relies on it to communicate about children, programs, or learning. In fact the existence of DAP-talk may only be noticed when and if a teacher steps out of early childhood teaching. In shifting to teaching secondary school, for example, a teacher may discover—and need to learn—a more curriculum-based discourse–one that highlights "knowing the subject matter" and "accountability for learning," and that has a smaller vocabulary for talking about the needs of individuals, students’ diversity, or long-term human development.

The Challenge of Competing Discourses

It is tempting to regard the above description simply as one way, among many, of describing how early childhood teachers might learn to commit themselves to a professional identity in early childhood education. Maybe speaking DAP is a big part of starting to feel like an early childhood teacher. As we learn to "talk like a teacher" or "talk like a caregiver" of the young, we also (hopefully) learn to think like one, and (even more hopefully) steadily begin to believe, deep in our heart, that we are one. Unfortunately this view of identity development overlooks a multiplicity of additional discourses that most of us already use in our lives, and that have already created parts of our individuality. When the competing discourses are consistent with the sentiments contained in the relatively official discourse of DAP and early childhood education, then we face a relatively easy transition to feeling like an early childhood teacher—an easy transition toward sincerity about our work. But when our prior discourses are not consistent with the privileged, official discourse, we face bigger challenges. In that case identifying with early childhood teaching will take more mental and emotional work—though perhaps identification will also be more instructive if and when the transition occurs.

Our prior, competing discourses are largely beyond our control in the sense that they predate our becoming early childhood teachers. They simply exist as who we already are, and as a result they and their effects may not always be noticed. There are many examples of personal discourses that compete with DAP, but let me begin with a relatively challenging one in order to make the point clearly. I will call it the public heterosexuality discourse. This discourse circulates widely in society as a whole, and tends to assume that a relationship between two adults that is intimate, long lasting and mutually supportive is either non-sexual or heterosexual. As long as this assumption is true, the relationship is an appropriate topic for conversation; it can be discussed openly, including in a staff room with colleagues or—in its non-sexual aspects—in the classroom with children. Homosexual relationships that are intimate, long-lasting and mutually supportive, however, are a different story: the public heterosexuality discourse either assumes these do not exist or excludes them from public conversation by dismissing them as inappropriate, or worse.

Unfortunately, the assumptions of the public heterosexuality discourse can clash with elements of the discourse of DAP. Conflict can happen without the awareness of the teachers involved, and even when sexuality might appear to irrelevant to the DAP discourse. The conflict centers on whether teachers should be "authentic" with students, and should therefore share with them their personalities and personal lives. If I am an early childhood teacher trying to be authentic with my children, the issue I face is this: how much of "me"—including my personal relationships—should I tell them about? If I am in a relatively happy and permanent partnership with someone of the opposite sex (what many of us might call a "lasting marriage"), then I may feel few problems about sharing this part of me with my children. To the extent that I depart from this situation, however, I will experience increasing hesitation. Should I tell four-year-olds if my marriage did not last? Do I want to talk about my family if someone in it is chronically ill, or if my marriage is currently stressful? And even more importantly: what should I say if my life partner happens to be of the same sex as myself? Am I being "inauthentic" if I hide a lasting lesbian or gay partnership from my children?

The contradictions in these situations between DAP and the public heterosexuality discourse—most especially if my life partnership is homosexual—can create serious, chronic challenges for teachers that begin during preservice training and continue for years into a teaching career (Evans, 2002). They are a problem on two ways, one shared by all of society and the other unique to early childhood education. As is true elsewhere in society, assumptions about heterosexual orientation create social prejudices that render departures from this orientation obscure, unacknowledged, or even feared. But unlike in some other quarters, the DAP discourse of early childhood teaching makes personal silence especially problematic. Because early childhood teachers expect each other to be truly or "authentically" present to children and even to each other, an attitude simply of "don’t ask, don’t tell" about personal relationships may create problems of its own.

Discourses about sexuality may be especially marked in impact, but conflicts among discourses can occur even about topics or issues that are discussed more openly or less personally. One of these, for example, is multicultural education. Although the term is grammatically singular, it covers several competing and partially contradictory ways of talking—competing discourses—about the nature of race, ethnicity, and language (Marsh, 2003). In one discourse reminiscent of anthropology, for example, multicultural education refers to a relatively innocent celebration of selected differences among peoples–comparisons of holidays, clothing, living arrangements, and the like (Britzman, 1991). In a discourse more reminiscent of politics and social criticism, however, multicultural education calls attention to fundamental injustices committed and institutionalized by one people against another. In that context the term then refers to the privileging of one race over another, including the existence of real or de facto slavery, or of the necessity of poverty for certain groups so that other groups may be well off (Grieshaber, 2001). In a third discourse of multicultural education, the term avoids the anger implicit in the social injustice discourse by emphasizing the importance of positive individual relationships across ethnic or racial boundaries. This version diverts attention away from the possibility of institutionalized prejudice, and calls for contacts between individuals of differing cultural backgrounds. Society-wide prejudice, in this view, is merely the accumulation of quite a few individual prejudices (Levine-Rasky, 2002).

Unlike the public heterosexuality discourse, the discourses of multicultural education all have education-related places and situations where they are freely expressed, or even expected. In the everyday life of many early childhood classrooms, for example, the third (human relationships) version of multicultural education can be used to minimize or prevent interpersonal conflict. The first, "celebration-of-selected-differences" discourse, on the other hand, might turn up more frequently in written curriculum documents or in oral discussions of curriculum, since it suggests a rationale for numerous classroom activities related somehow to "culture." The second, social-injustice discourse might seem more problematic, but actually finds a place wherever early childhood teachers or other educators advocate for the reform of the field of early childhood education or for the redistribution of early childhood services to poorly served groups. Sometimes it even serves as a negative backdrop when any of us argue for the benefits of private nurseries or private funding for the nurseries. In that case we would have to argue that system-wide discrimination against certain cultural groups is less of a problem than offering choices to individual middle-income families through private funding, and that allowing private choice of nurseries does not perpetuate current social inequalities indirectly (Kincheloe, 1999).

But in spite of having their places in early childhood education, the discourses of multicultural education create contradictions for early childhood teachers. Conflicts are inevitable because the dominant discourse of DAP relies heavily on the idea of developmental normalization, the notion of a series of desirable, predictable steps through which children pass on their way to desirable, predictable outcomes in maturity. A widely known example of developmental normalization is the thinking of Jean Piaget, but there are numerous others as well (Seifert, 2001). Early childhood educators (and DAP) have inherited a belief in normalization from psychology, which played a major role in our early history as a profession and field of study. Talking about normalization may seem innocent enough on the surface (even "normal"!), but when taken seriously it lead us to beliefs that some of us do not really support. Among other effects, for example, it can exaggerate the oppressiveness of heterosexuality discourse discussed earlier, by implying that relationships and sexuality have predictable outcomes. It can also be inconsistent with the discourse of multicultural education, particularly when combined with the experience and beliefs of some teachers and parents. How might this happen? For one thing, normalization suggests disrespect for cultural differences by implying that cultural differences are psychologically unimportant—mere window-dressing for a more fundamental uniformity among individuals. Second, it tends to imply that when differences among children are important, they do not represent diversity, but deficits or "lack of progress" of some sort—less adequate versions of being human. In Piaget’s theory, for example, there is no doubt about which cognitive stages are "higher," more mature, and therefore more desirable; it is better to be able to conserve the quantity of water when it changes shape, than not to be able to conserve it. The inevitability implied by this viewpoint contradicts key ideas in most versions of the multicultural discourse, which suggest instead that differences among children reflect diversity of social opportunity or the effects of social oppression, not diversity of individual maturity. More generally, the problem implied by the idea of normalization is this: it diminishes and dismisses the experience of teachers and parents whenever they feel convinced that a child has special educational or personal needs that will eventually lead to legitimate, but unconventional outcomes.

Crosscurrents and conflicts among discourses are inevitable given the richness and diversity of our individual histories, circumstances and goals. We each carry a unique blend of discourses, based partly on beliefs and attitudes circulating in society and partly on experiences brought forward from our pasts. Some of our discourses may fit comfortably with the ones promoted publicly within early childhood education circles. But others may not. As a profession, our awareness of non-standard or unofficial discourses may be correspondingly obscured, muted, or transformed. Just as importantly, though, our collective ignorance and/or partial dismissal of discourse conflicts can lower individual teachers’ self-esteem and obscure or mute an individual’s sense of authenticity as an early childhood teacher. The problem is not limited to any set of individuals or portion of the profession, nor limited to selected discourses, topics or issues. In addition to discourses just discussed—about developmentally appropriate practice, queerness, and multiculturalism—early childhood teachers experience discourses about gender roles, family rights and responsibilities, the causes and effects of economic disparities, the nature of religion, the meaning of death, and much else that is central the human condition. Discourses about all of these topics are acquired by—and frequently held close to the heart of—every teacher. While the acquisition contributes to what we ordinarily call maturity or adult wisdom, it can also be a mixed blessing for some individuals, or even a burden. For some teachers, acquired personal life wisdom will support professional beliefs or assumptions; other times, it will contradict or undermine them. When the latter happens, the public or "official" discourses risk forcing certain personal experiences, beliefs, and feelings to remain hidden or disguised, no matter how important they may be to the individual.

This ever-present possibility suggests that early childhood teachers, in helping each other to develop professionally, have a bigger task than teaching each other only the discourses sanctioned officially by professional documents and workshops. Developing professional identity, in other words, means more than understanding developmentally appropriate practice, Piagetian stages, and other accepted (and acceptable) ideas. It also means reconciling the ideas and discourses about these ideas with private, personally held experiences and discourses. If we can recognize the need for these reconciliations, and acknowledge their extent, then we might have more success at helping each other not only to look more professional, but also to feel more truly professional—more truly "ourselves" when teaching.

The Possibilities and Limits of Being Mutually Helpful

Yet how to reconcile the professional and the personal when personal discourses may often be partially silenced, and by definition are personal and private? With tensions between public and private parts of teachers’ lives continually possible, is it reasonable for us truly to assist each other’s identity development? The answer may yes, but being truly helpful may require cultivating a particular psychological perspective that we are more used to using with children and students than with fellow teachers. In particular we must develop a taste for our diversity as teachers, just as we ordinarily expect and value diversity among our children and students. In this context, "developing a taste" means not only tolerating, but also taking an active interest in difference, and honoring the differences intelligently and appropriately. And "our diversity as teachers" refers not only to our obvious or publicly displayed differences, but also to differences in personal motives, feelings, and perspectives that remain unstated in spite of their importance to us individually. Without adding interest to tolerance, we risk drifting into mutual isolation. Without attention to motives and feelings, our relationships risk getting stuck in shallowness.

At some level this advice is easy to accept, or even obvious. But living it fully can prove challenging, even for those of us with a lot of teaching experience, those who have "seen it all." The problem is that listening actively to other teachers may not be what some of us signed up for when we entered early childhood teaching as a career. In all likelihood, we began in this field because we wanted to take responsibility for children, and not to take responsibility for other teachers. While giving priority to children was (and is) a worthy motive, it carries certain hazards that have been noted in published literature about teaching and childcare work. Too often, for example, we end up working alone (Lortie, 1975; Goldstein, 2001), with few colleagues to consult, or even none at all. While our personal motives are obviously not the only reason for professional isolation among teachers, personal motives can be a contributing cause, and can at least allow isolation to persist once it becomes established.

Too often, as well, we inadvertently drive those with important personal differences out of the profession simply by neglecting to address those differences (Silin, 1995; Kissen, 1996; Johnson, 2000). The unconscious and unintended result is a profession that expresses an uncanny uniformity of views about children—far more than do parents, university students, or other professions involved with children (Seifert, 2000). While it is tempting to believe that the uniformity is based on having found "the" truth about child development, it is just as likely to be a byproduct of lack of time or opportunity to engage actively in collegial discussion—and disagreement—about such matters. We cannot, of course, be faulted for lacking time or opportunity—as long as our lack is truly not of our own making.

Medical doctors sometimes say, "First of all, do no harm." The advice may be wise in a medical context, but unfortunately it is misleading for any profession—like early childhood education—whose main purpose goes beyond keeping out of others’ ways to include sustained, helpful intervention in the lives of others. A better maxim for early childhood educators would therefore be more proactive: something like, "First of all, take responsibility." If this revised maxim is understood properly, let us hope that it will point us toward listening and valuing diversity not only among children, but among ourselves as well. It may take effort, but the more that we can listen and value each other actively, the more we can each learn not just to look like an early childhood teacher, but to feel like one as well.

References