Neoliberalism and lost identities in early childhood education

Abstract

This article analyzes how the professional identity of the early childhood educator is constructed, defined and resignified generationally, in dialogue with the conceptions of teaching-learning processes and childhood under the sociocultural characteristics of the Chilean context, considering the sociopolitical changes provoked by the neoliberal model. Under a qualitative approach, between March and May 2025, two in-depth interviews were conducted with three early childhood educators at different stages of their professional development as teachers. The interviews were transcribed with the support of Smart noter IA and inductively analyzed using the content analysis technique with the support of the ATLAS.ti 23 program. The results reveal a progressive subordination of pedagogical work to the achievement of learning results, which has affected the notion of childhood and teaching practices, displacing the value of play within the teaching-learning process. It is concluded that current educational policies have reconfigured the professional ethos of educators, reproducing a logic that makes invisible the diversity and complexity of childhood and tends to homogenize learning situations in a school environment.