‘Outside the tent’
Early childhood teachers’ summoning authoritative discourses in social networks
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21728144 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fiona Westbrook (0000-0002-0744-6721, Auckland University of Technology, corresponding author), E Hunkin (0000-0001-6390-8233, La Trobe University), E Jayne White (0000-0002-1467-8125, University of Canterbury) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Policy Futures in Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1478-2103 • E-ISSN: 1478-2103 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14782103251412014 |
| OpenAlex | W7125811398 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
Early childhood education (ECE) teachers increasingly use social networks to advocate for their professional recognition through their political dialogues within these platforms. Yet, their strategies for gaining and being appreciated as legitimised professional signals a paradox. In deploying what Bakhtin terms authoritative discourse, language that demands acceptance as a dominant, hierarchical, profaned truth, teachers simultaneously constrain the dialogues of diverse professional voices. This paper employs a Bakhtinian dialogic methodology to examine ECE teachers’ social networking exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Victoria, Australia (2020), with particular attention to how temporal and spatial contexts shape language strategies. The findings indicate that while teachers summoned authoritative discourse to advocate for their professionalism, this same discourse (un)intentionally silenced divergent perspectives, excluding certain ideas, invoking organisational impunity, and creating ‘us-them’ boundaries that limited professional agency. These insights signal how authoritative discourse operates as a double-edged sword in teachers’ political advocacy, simultaneously extending recognition while atrophying diverse exchanges necessary for robust professional and political dialogues
Dialogic · Discourse analysis · Early childhood · Early childhood education · Politics · Professional development · Literacy, Media, and Education · Multilingual Education and Policy · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies
Common Places
Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education
Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics
Filter Bubble
Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods
Facebook and political engagement
Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Crisis inciting carnivalesque
Teacher agency and professional practice
The influence of policy and context on teachers’ social media use
Measuring Online Political Dialogue
Visual Global Politics
TikTok Videos, Carnivalesque Provocations for Teachers
Childcare workforce reform in England and ‘the early years professional’
Opening up and closing down teachers’ political dialogues
| Highly cited | No |
|---|