Learning to Labour with Feeling: class, gender and emotion in childcare education and training

Colley, Helen (2006) Learning to Labour with Feeling: class, gender and emotion in childcare education and training. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 7 (1). pp. 15-29. ISSN 1463-9491

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Abstract

There is debate among early years experts about the appropriate degree of emotional engagement between nursery nurses and the children in their care. Through research into the learning cultures of further education (in the Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme), the author considers how prospective nursery nurses first learn to deploy emotion in their work. Few researchers have investigated the learning of feelings for caring occupations, and this article presents a detailed case study, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, of a group of childcare students throughout their two-year course. In analysing its official, unwritten, and hidden curricula, and the social practices of learning it entails, the author draws on feminist readings of Marx and Bourdieu to reveal how gendered and class-fractional positionings combine with vocational education and training to construct imperatives about ‘correct’ emotions in childcare. The author compares theorisations of emotional capital and emotional labour, and suggests we need social rather than individualised understandings of how feelings are put to work. The author concludes that emotional labour carries costs for the nursery nurse, not because children consume her emotional resources, but because her emotional labour power is controlled and exploited for profit by employers.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© Symposium Journals
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races L Education > L Education (General)
Schools:	School of Education and Professional Development School of Education and Professional Development > Centre of Lifelong Learning and Social Justice School of Education and Professional Development > Centre of Lifelong Learning and Social Justice > Policy Research Group School of Education and Professional Development > Centre of Lifelong Learning and Social Justice > Social Cohesion Research Group School of Education and Professional Development > Centre of Lifelong Learning and Social Justice > Early Years Childhood Youth and Community Research
Related URLs:	Author
Depositing User:	Cherry Edmunds
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2012 12:51
Last Modified:	28 Aug 2021 21:02
URI:	http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/12619

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