The price of professionalization: exploring the relationship between economic, social and cultural capital in the Australian early childhood workforce

This paper presents selected findings from a study examining the economic, social and cultural capital of educators in Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, drawing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu. Like many OECD countries, Australia is currently pursuing an ambitious policy agenda aimed at _professionalization of the ECEC workforce. While the policy narrative sets out to improve educators’ cultural capital (in the form of higher qualifications) and social capital (in forging a cohesive professional identity for the ECEC workforce), it is largely silent on the consequences of _professionalization for educators’ economic capital . The implied expectation that improved qualifications and professional status will lead to improved remuneration overlooks the complex relationship that exists between social, cultural and economic capital; especially when it is overlaid with issues of gender and class that are also obscured in the ECEC policy narrative. The Australian ECEC workforce includes educators from a diverse range of social backgrounds, who might experience these issues in very different ways. This paper seeks to reveal some of this complexity, with the aim of supporting better-informed approaches to ECEC _professionalization. Using large-scale descriptive data from two major Australian national surveys—the 2011 Census of Population and Housing and 2013 National ECEC Workforce Census—the paper examines aspects of educators’ economic capital, in terms of their personal income, working hours, total household income, and attitudes towards remuneration. Data are disaggregated by the type of qualification that educators hold, and the type of ECEC service in which they work (where available), to enable consideration of how their different levels of social and cultural capital might relate to their relative levels of economic advantage. The results reveal a notable contrast between educators with the lowest levels of social and cultural capital, who paradoxically express relatively high levels of satisfaction with their remuneration; and educators with higher stores of social and cultural capital, who express greater dissatisfaction with their pay, despite being the highest-paid in the sector. The findings suggest that educators may be at different stages in their level of engagement with the _professionalization agenda, and their understandings and expectations regarding the value of their work. Attention to these differences may help to ensure that all educators can benefit from the opportunities that the ECEC professionalization agenda presents.