Gendered Spaces: Anti-Bias Work in the Australian Early Childhood Classroom

• In Event: Anti-Bias and Inclusive Early Education Policy, Practice, and Perspectives in Cross-National Contexts

Abstract

Over 30 years of research shows that children as young as three years of age are able to use skills to identify and categorize similarity and difference in relation to gender, race, and cultural diversity (Lane, 2008; MacNaughton, 2000). Early childhood feminist researchers argue that as children learn about gender they learn sexist values, beliefs, attitudes, and relationships (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 2003; MacNaughton, 2000, 2005; Robinson & Jones Diaz, 2006). MacNaughton (2000), reporting on Australian research, suggests that many children by the age of four have sexist understandings of what it means to be male and female. Despite this discussion of gender identity development for children, gender is all but invisible in Australian early childhood policy documents, frameworks, and professional development training and literature. This paper seeks to explore how early childhood teachers still undertake gender identity work with children in the classroom, and the development of their own professional identities through the engagement of anti-bias and critical feminist pedagogies.

Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1993) concept of performativity and Giroux’s (1995) border pedagogies, this paper will explore how early childhood teachers encourage and enact space for debate and dialogue within their classrooms about identities, power, ethics, openness and tolerance. These concepts support further exploration of how we might consider anti-bias work as embodied pedagogical practices operating at the site of the teacher. This presentation will draw on findings from an Australian research project exploring early childhood educators’ experiences of, access to, and working with gender and feminism. The project investigates three key questions: a) How might histories help us gain insight into current early childhood gender identity work and future possibilities?; b) How do educators currently support the development of children’s gendered identities, and what and who influences this work?; and, c) What are the intersections of educators’ histories and pedagogy?

The project examines how these experiences have influenced educators’ understandings of gender and the effect of this on how they develop and enact early childhood pedagogy. The early childhood classroom is an important space that can help (re)shape gender identity formation and support young children to challenge hyper-feminized girlhoods and hegemonic masculine boyhoods. In this neoliberal world, where access to quality education is understood to neutralize inequity and the effects of gender, culture, ‘race’, class, and religion on outcomes for children, gender and social justices still matter.

Author

• Kylie Smith, University of Melbourne