Through the voices of male teachers in South Korea: The journey to becoming an early childhood teacher

Through the voices of male teachers in South Korea: The journey to becoming an early childhood teacher

This study examined male teachers’ identities and experiences as early childhood teachers in South Korea. Three South Korean participants, Donghun, Gijun, and Minsu (pseudonyms) were purposefully selected and engaged in individual semi- structured interviews lasting about an hour and a half. Findings in this study indicated that entering into the female-dominated profession of early childhood education is an uneasily constrained and cultural process for them. They were estranged from the people around them, including family, as soon as they committed to becoming early childhood teachers. They also faced challenges in their new profession in developing relationships with adults such as peer teachers and parents, as well as with their students. Frequently, they experienced the social expectation of early childhood education as “women’s work.” This study showed that the self-making of male early childhood teachers in South Korea is both internalized and externalized as a dialectic identity in a cultural context.