Gender and Power in Early Childhood Education in Indonesia

Adriany explores gender discourses in early childhood education in Indonesia, as well as how teachers and children are engaged in the process of constructing, negotiating, and resisting dominant gender discourses in kindergartens. Using an ethnographic approach, Adriany explores how both the teachers and children are doing and undoing their gender. She adopts feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial theories through her research and, in that context, views gender as something fluid and unfixed. The book also investigates the methodological aspect where the authors have both an inside and outside perspective. Each chapter aims to present and complicate the taken-for-granted practices in kindergartens that relate to how gender and power are constructed. The findings of this book show the extent to which early childhood education becomes a space for the teachers and children to construct, negotiate, as well as resist dominant gender discourses in kindergartens. Offering insights into local and global contexts that shape gender values in early years, this book will be a valuable reference for researchers, scholars, and students in early childhood education, gender studies, and comparative education.

Vina Adriany is Professor at the Department of Early Childhood Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. Her research focuses on the issues of gender and social justice in early childhood education (ECE) as well as the impact of neoliberalism in ECE. She has also been invited as Visiting Lecturer in Sutan Qaboos University, Oman; Gothenburg University, Sweden; University West, Sweden; and University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was a guest editor for Policy Future in Education (PFIE) Special Edition on Neoliberalism and Practices of ECE in Asia and Indonesian Perspectives on ECE. She is an editorial board member in several journals such as Policy Futures in Education, Children & Society, and International Journal of Early Years Education. Currently, she serves as Co-editor for Pedagogy, Culture & Society.

1. Introduction 2. Doing Research on Gender in the Early Years' Settings 3. Gender Discourses in Indonesia 4. Teachers' Understanding of Gender 5. Young Children's Negotiation of Femininities 6. Young Children's Negotiation of Masculinities 7. Developing Gender-Flexible Pedagogy Through Feminist Participatory Action Research 8. Conclusion and Implications