Learning how to do up buttons: Professionalism, teacher identity and bureaucratic subjectivities in early years settings

Early years education in Europe and elsewhere around the world is currently in the spotlight due to political and economical changes and subsequent promises of effective investment into its provision. In this article we analyse everyday preschool practices in Slovakia in terms of tensions between policies, the teachers workforce and the concept of professionalism. Through bureaucratic scientisation, teachers become subjects with bureaucratic subjectivities, and they are expected to devote increasing amounts of time to planning, reporting and administrative tasks. Teachers are decreasingly focused on the actual work on the ground with the children, and are concerned instead with notions of accountability and reporting, which supposedly raises their professional status. Slovakia’s experience of the bureaucratic subjectivities of early years teachers has complex ramifications for European and overseas countries as it problematises and unmasks the global issues of complex tensions between the teachers and policy documents.