The professional identity construction of early childhood educators has been identified
as a ‘site of struggle’. Extant research investigates this struggle through analyses of
structural and agentic discourses. This thesis explores the landscape in between these
discourses and seeks to better understand and conceptualise the agency and activism
of educators in this third space of negotiation and contestation.
Combining critical, third space (Bhabha) and border (Anzaldua) theories, this
interpretive study is a critical policy analysis and narrative inquiry in the context of early
childhood education in England. Critical Discourse Analysis of workforce policy (2006-
17) is followed by empirical data analysis from 16 early educators’ professional life
story interviews and an online focus group of 14 early educators. Novel
conceptualisation and analysis of borderland narratives illustrate how early educator
agency and activism are enacted in interstitial spaces.
Findings show that educators are discursively positioned through workforce policy in
multiple, competing and shifting ways. Institutionally shaped ‘ideal’ professional
subjectivities are bordered by qualifications criteria, occupational standards and by
intersections with broader policy reforms. Empirical data reveal educator agency
manifests in numerous forms, including individual and collective activism. Whilst this
activism appears constrained by policy demands it is also enabled by an educator’s
critical awareness, professional confidence, and self-efficacy. Different forms of
activism and resistance emerged from the study. Such resistance is not always largescale,
collective or mobilised but is expressed in atomised contexts through a dispersed
network of actors. Individual responses include ‘micro resistances’ which are often local,
quiet and invisible but multiple.
Privileging participants’ stories, the study offers insights into c/overt resistances
revealing educators’ critical agency and their complex, nuanced and subversive
responses to discursive policy manoeuvres. The research contributes to an
understanding of identity construction of early educators and highlights the merits of
broader, deeper engagement of educators in workforce reform.
