Abstract

This article explains how Chilean early childhood teachers' discourses on participation in professional associations (ECEPAs) constitute a central feature in building the professionalism of the field. The methodology followed a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach and a holistic abductive case study with all 18 Chilean national ECEPAs and 81 early childhood education teachers from all over the country and diverse educational contexts. Data production relied on 26 individual in-depth interviews and 11 nine focus groups, which were analyzed qualitatively through a Constant Comparison Method coding process in four recursive stages. The results show that early childhood teachers relate participation in ECEPAs to building professionalism around four entangled discourses: 1) Doing transformative politics, 2) supporting pedagogical empowerment, 3) Fighting for decent working conditions, and 4) Advocating for historical and renewed struggles. We discuss how these discourses shape an emerging ecosystem of ECEPAs that build new forms of professionalism that contest the technical professionalism built amid the neoliberal educational context. The importance of this theorization lies in making visible how the multifaceted participation of early childhood teachers in ECEPAs reorganizes and builds new forms of democratic, grassroots, and postmodern professionalism despite the neoliberal context. The conclusions deconstruct neoliberal technical professionalism and its victimized and de-professionalized early childhood teachers, opening possibilities of contestation and professional empowerment drawing on the participation in ECEPAs.