Mean Girls and Troublemaking Boys: An Examination of Gender and Power in a Preschool Classroom

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Education

Abstract

Despite the stereotype of children as innocent and powerless, children from an early age are interested in engaging with and managing power. While scholars have discussed how peer cultures and teachers’ perceptions of behavior are gendered, few researchers have examined this with young children in preschool. Through 70 hours of participant observation and four interviews in a preschool classroom, I examine how children negotiate power in gendered ways with their teachers. I find that teachers establish identities of students based on perceptions of their behavior, and use disciplinary techniques to produce boy identities of aggressive and disruptive, and girl identities of rule following and helpful. Teachers praised girls- particularly mean, bossy girls- and gave them power by teaching and encouraging them to monitor and reprimand children (primarily boys), when they were not following class rules. The boys interpretively reproduced the messages they received about their problematic, unruly behavior by creating a rebellious status system. The boys rejected the standards and comparisons of the teachers, rejected the kids they were compared to, and instead valued acting out. This data also demonstrates specific examples of how teachers turn gender difference into objective fact in ways that denigrate boys in the classroom.

Author

• Heidi Gansen, University of Michigan