Social Identity
Acquiring social identity includes learning about gender, ethnicity, and ability issues. Experts on multicultural and antibias education advise teachers to focus on values, interaction patterns, and equitable teaching practices, rather than curriculum activities that highlight superficial features like flags or potentially stereotypical images of different cultures, such as a sombrero or feathered headdress (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010; Hendrick & Weissman, 2007). In other words, children are taught to respond to each other courteously as individuals. This helps to create a classroom culture that values respect, caring, and the matter-of-fact recognition of similarities and differences. It also provides the grounding children need as concrete learners to understand their places in the context of others.