ABSTRACT

This case study of a US suburban Kindergarten illustrates the challenges and opportunities posed by the shifting context of Kindergarten toward a narrowed academic focus aligned to state goals. In this neoliberal policy context, teachers experienced difficult emotions as they supported children's and families’ cultural and linguistic talents and skills. Emotional refuges and emotives are key concepts used to theorise teachers’ experiences. The Findings of the study indicated that a subset of teachers used the available storylines to ‘compartmentalise’. In doing so, they created an emotional refuge in which they might conserve traditional aspects of Kindergarten such as developmental discourses and practices, yet also segment their own lives to cope with the stress and strain invoked by the change. A second storyline was ‘intensifying’ in which a set of teachers actively engaged with the neoliberal paradigm. Yet, the navigation of emotions was complex and created moments of collectivism as well as some tensions amongst educators based on their individual positions. In order to enhance teachers’ abilities to teach and cope with change, the possibilities of emotional navigation are discussed.

摘要

这个美国郊区幼儿园的案例研究说明了幼儿园环境向缩小的学术重点与国家目标相一致所带来的挑战和机遇。在这种新自由主义政策背景下，教师在支持儿童和家庭的文化和语言才能和技能时经历了困难的情绪。情感避难所和情绪是用来理论化教师经验的关键概念。该研究的结果表明，一部分教师使用可用的故事情节来“划分”。在这样做的过程中，他们创造了一个情感避难所，在这个避难所中，他们可以保留幼儿园的传统方面，例如发展话语和实践，但也可以分割自己的生活，以应对变化带来的压力和压力。第二个故事情节是“强化”，其中一组教师积极参与新自由主义范式。然而，情绪的导航是复杂的，并造成了集体主义的时刻以及基于个人立场的教育工作者之间的一些紧张关系。为了提高教师的教学能力和应对变化的能力，探讨了情感导航的可能性。