VDM Verlag Male Primary Teachers: The Experience of Crossing-over into Pink-collar Work

This book explores the experience and identity of Australian male primary (elementary) school teachers and the way that society perceives, treats and positions them. It documents their experience of crossing-over into a career commonly regarded as ‘women’s work’, and charts the advantages and disadvantages they face as a result of their maleness. The book concludes that their experience is likely to be complex, contradictory and problematic, and that their choice to cross-over into women’s work such as primary teaching often yields a unique and complex mixture of experiences that are poorly understood by both themselves and others. This book articulates the issues at stake for male primary teachers and provides a language and framework that enables the relevant issues to be addressed within education policy, teaching practice and teacher education. It also calls for new and more sophisticated societal debates and discourses about male primary teachers that will adequately accommodate the complexity, joys and sometimes precarious nature of their experience. About the Author Dr Janet Smith is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra, Australia. Janet teaches in Teacher Education and Educational Leadership. Her research focuses on the formation, identity, attrition, engagement and renewal of teachers. Prior to working in Higher Education, Janet was a high school teacher.