Understanding how experienced male early childhood teachers navigate the early childhood classroom in Singapore

For the longest time, the early childhood industry in Singapore has been struggling with hiring and retention issues. The dismal number of male early childhood teachers teaching children in preschools, which has repercussions on children’s development and beyond, compounds the issue. The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) argues that male teachers add value to the profession with their multitude of strengths and varied perspectives. Working towards gender diversity in early childhood teaching will help children rethink gender-based professions. Comparative studies found that male teachers were more effective in gaining and sustaining the attention of children during teaching activities while female teachers were found to exercise greater flexibility in choosing suitable instructional approaches. Yet, there remains a discouragingly small number of male early childhood teachers in Singapore, which may be attributed to toxic masculinities. While there have been studies understanding how the imposition of masculinity assumptions shaped male early childhood teachers’ experiences, these studies have been commonly conducted in North American and Scandinavian contexts, hence the need for a more nuanced understanding of how masculinity is perceived in the Asian context. Concurrently, studies involving male early childhood teachers have tended to document the reasons for their departure, with few investigating the experiences of those who remain in service. Thus, this study proposed an investigation into how experienced male early childhood teachers navigate the early childhood setting to continue as classroom teachers and probed into how they negotiated conceptions of masculinity. Similar studies have frequently focused on interviewing male preschool teachers as their principal data collection method. This study differentiates itself from similar studies with its use of classroom observations as the primary data collection procedure.

This qualitative study utilised a case study research design. Three male early childhood teachers with three or more years of practice were experienced teachers from three different preschools. The data sources included semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. A cross-case analysis was deployed as a data analysis method. Connell’s (2005) hegemonic masculinity framework was chosen as a lens to understand the reasons why male early childhood teachers continue to stay gainfully employed in Singapore. The revelation of intersections between ethnicity and masculinity, the soldier identity, academic merit, and gender-based pedagogical beliefs informed us that the hegemonic masculinity framework was more context-dependent than it was portrayed. Connell’s trait-based approach of dominant versus subordinate masculinities and masculine ideals and complicit masculinity thus gains culturally sensitive extensions from this study. The findings have the potential to lend perspectives to neighbouring Asian societies. In multi-ethnic Singapore, contextual nuances speak to how the theoretical framework plays out or departs from hegemonic masculinity. Most importantly, the findings reveal that male early childhood teachers adopted a 6R approach: reinventing responses, reframing mindset, rebalancing relationships, reconciling identities, remaking masculinities, and rethinking policies to stay gainfully employed despite the challenges that transpire.