Male Kindergarten Teachers: Making Changes in Gender and Work Education?
By Ulla Härkönen – University of Eastern Finland, Faculty Member
The studies conducted in various countries show that the traditional gender-related concepts still persist and pass on to children at an early stage of education. Small children absorb such notions in the course of work and play, for example. In Finland, beside female kindergarten teachers, there are also male teachers though they are only a few percent of all kindergarten teachers. The men that constitute a minority in a female-dominated profession are called the Only Ones. On the one hand, male teachers are expected to offer the traditional man model example, then on the other hand, show the innovative approach in bridging the traditional gender gaps and moulding new role models for children. But what are the conceptions of male kindergarten teachers about childrens work, boys and girls work, and parents´ – mothers and fathers´ – work education? Comparing these notions against the corresponding notions of female teachers it is possible to detect the probable differences in female…
January 2, 2026
Ulla Härkönen, professor emerita, in early childhood education, at the University of Eastern Finland, Finland. I have worked in practice as a teacher, at the university as a lecturer and as a professor continuing as an emerita professor. The unified over fifty years-long times have consisted of early childhood education and early pedagogy. My central research areas have focused on early pedagogues and different pedagogies, small children and work education, gender issues, meanings of various concepts of early childhood education and preschool, and systems theories, systemic thinking, and still the meanings of sustainability in education. I belonged to the UNESCO project Reorienting Teacher Education for Sustainability, and to the JTEFS/BBCC consortium where we founded yearly conferences and the Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, later also the journal of Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education. In 2012 I worked as the President and organized our conference at the University of Eastern Finland. I am an Honorary Member of Latvian Daugavpils University which has been the centre of our common project. I have been interested in a diversity of early childhood education all over the world. I have had the possibility to take part in several conferences and visit numerous and many kinds of early childhood education and care settings. What I have received to know and see, read and researched, have influenced my own theory still organising in my brains. The final wholeness will be formed on the basis of the different parts researched and experienced before. I have gotten to notice that international colleagues have referred to some of my publications. From Academia.edu, I surely continue to select the references focusing exactly on my research and topics.