“Enjoy the playing!?” De-professionalization and its related challenges amongst kindergarten teachers in Hungary

We invite you to the Research Seminar of the Sociology Department for a presentation by Réka Geambașu on the transformation of parenting norms, childcare and the profession of kindergarten teachers. After the presentation, Borbála Kovács (FSPAC) will offer brief comments, and the following discussion will be moderated by Cristina Raț (FSAS).

Thursday, 31^st October, 18:00, room 405 (FSAS Mărăști).

“Enjoy the playing!?” De-professionalization and its related challenges amongst kindergarten teachers in Hungary

Teachers’ profession has met numerous challenges and been undergoing substantial changes in the past decades. Teachers in many European contexts have experienced loss of prestige, low salary, growing external control and decreasing professional autonomy. In Hungary this has led to an educational crisis, as schools are suffering from an extreme lack of teachers. This is also true for kindergartens, which have been in the meanwhile accorded with an ever more important role in the “production of school-ready children”. Based on qualitative empirical research, we present those transformations that have significantly affected this profession during the past decade in Hungary. In addition to regulatory-institutional changes we show that broader socio-cultural processes such as the transformation of parenting norms also pose new challenges. We argue that these broader transformations have resulted in the amplification of external pressures from two sides: from the state through increasing control and requirements as kindergartens are undergoing “schoolification” and standardization, as well as from stronger parental requirements as intensive parenting norms are reconfiguring the relations between parents and professionals. These have led to the de-professionalization of kindergarten teachers: a decrease in their autonomy and social prestige. These processes, furthermore, often collide with the main values that teachers accord to their profession, whilst they are often not provided with the resources for satisfying these new requirements. This is causing unresolvable tensions for the teachers, which further aggravates the situation of this profession, making it more difficult to find solutions for the growing lack of professionals.

Authors: Réka Geambasu (Babeș-Bolyai University and HUN-REN CERS), Alexandra Szőke (HUN-REN CERS)

Réka Geambașu is a sociologist and lecturer at Babeș-Bolyai University, as well as a research fellow at HUN-REN CERS. For decades, her work has focused on gender and labor, with a strong emphasis on women’s roles in the workforce. Her PhD research, co-funded by the ERSTE Foundation, combined comparative statistical analysis with multi-sited ethnography in Hungary and Romania to explore the meanings and consequences of female part-time employment. Recently, her research has expanded to include topics such as female entrepreneurship, the social construction of motherhood and intensive parenting, the care crisis, and the changing landscape of care institutions. Currently, she is engaged in a 3-year project funded by the “Bolyai” Scholarship Scheme. This research examines female-dominated multi-level marketing networks and their influence on the entrepreneurial aspirations and motherhood practices of low-educated women in the context of marketization and the pursuit of self-management and personal development.

Her work has been published in Gender, Work & Organization, Journal of Family Studies, Journal of Research in Higher Education, East European Politics and Societies, and Szociológiai Szemle. In 2024, her book titled Women in the Stalled Revolution: Theories, Concepts, and Case Studies from Transylvania on Women’s Paid and Unpaid Labor (Nők a megrekedt forradalomban. Elméletek, fogalmak és erdélyi esettanulmányok a nők fizetett és fizetetlen munkájáról) was published by Babeș-Bolyai University Press.