Care and Early Childhood Education in Chile: Ambiguities of the State and Tensions in Its Recognition as a Right and a Dimension of Teaching Work

This study examined the place of care in early childhood education and the role of the state in the social organization of care in Chile. Official policy documents were reviewed, including the Early Childhood Education Curriculum Framework, Teaching Standards Framework (Marco para la Buena Enseñanza), Law 20.379, and Law 21.805. Following a thematic analysis of these documents, semistructured interviews were conducted with four early childhood teachers to triangulate the findings. The results, presented across three thematic categories, reveal an ambiguity in the state’s positioning, oscillating between its role as a guarantor of rights and a provider of targeted services. Care is also incorporated into the educational sphere in a fragmented manner—as a learning objective and a condition for achieving educational outcomes—without being fully recognized as a constitutive dimension of teaching work. This situation contributes to the invisibilization of teachers as care workers and the reproduction of gender inequalities. The study contributes to the literature by approaching care from an educational perspective, highlighting underexplored tensions and emphasizing the need to incorporate a feminist and intersectional perspective into educational policies to advance the recognition of care as a right and a central component of the teaching profession.