Following the (Gendered) Child: How Children’s Gendered Behaviors Become Enhanced, Extended, and Built in Preschool

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 07. Gender and Sexualities in Education

Abstract

In this paper, I examine one unexplored mechanism that may be contributing to early gender gaps in children’s social and behavioral skills. Specifically, how preschool classroom practices that derive from child development principles (i.e., “follow the child”) are implemented in gendered ways that further extend differences between girls and boys, including gender gaps in children’s social and behavioral skills. Drawing on data from observations in three preschools (nine classrooms total), I find that in preschool, boys perceived behavioral “needs” are accommodated, while girls receive increased disciplinary intervention for their behaviors. I argue that “following the child” results in teachers utilizing gendered practices which may differentially prepare boys and girls for kindergarten. In following the gendered child, teachers reinforce gender norms (and stereotypes) that are based in gender essentialist beliefs that view boys and girls as biologically different. Given these gender essentialist beliefs, and a desire to meet the “needs” and interests of all students, the teachers I observed implemented gendered classroom practices (most of which were institutionalized within the curricula). Most of the teachers I observed and interviewed, viewed these practices as making progress, since the practices were directed at boys’ and girls’ biological needs, and aimed to combat the risk of underserving boys’ biological needs through enforcing feminized classrooms that limited the opportunities for physical activities and engagement in physical behaviors. I find that in taking children “as they are”, preschool teachers foster a masculinized learning environment in which teachers implement gendered curricular accommodations (e.g., wrestling, gun play, and heavy work) aimed at fostering, rather than curbing, boys’ perceived unchangeable behavioral needs such as roughhousing and physical play. My findings contribute to extant research on gender, childhood, and education by identifying how children’s gendered behaviors become enhanced, extended, and built into preschool curricula in ways that (re)produce, gender inequality.

Author

• Heidi Gansen, University of Michigan