Ethnographic study reveals moral distress among early childhood pedagogues, highlighting how competing policy mandates and care ideals create professional strain.
Key Points
To examine how moral distress develops among early childhood education and care staff navigating congested institutional, political, and commercial expectations.
Conducted ethnographic fieldwork examining daily pedagogical environments in Denmark.
Utilized concepts from the sociology of emotions to analyze how staff interact with screening tools, curriculum mandates, and expert training frameworks.
Demonstrated that contemporary pedagogical environments materialize conflicting moral imperatives originating from historical practices, political reforms, and commercial ventures.
Showed that moral distress develops as educators internalize, enact, and struggle to reconcile contradictory ideals regarding care, structured learning, and professional responsibility.