The Role of Space in Preschool Children's Construction of Gender

• In Event: 79.043 - Critical Early Childhood Policy and Practice Issues

Abstract

In this ethnographic study, we investigate how children in a university preschool classroom negotiate, perform and configure their gender identities in light of the implemtation of an Antibias curriculum. Our focus here is on the role that classroom space and physical environment, (both indoor and outdoor) play in how children perform gender. Borrowing from critical geography and post structural theory, we present an analysis of how gender subjectivity, spaces, and curriculum configure across places in preschool in different time and in different spaces. Our data shows that classroom space determines how children engage with discourses and that Antibias curriculum, like many discourses of gender is one that is picked up, negotiated, and configured in various ways.

Authors

• Allison Sterling Henward, The Pennsylvania State University

• Yeojoo Yoon, Pennsylvania State University