Applying Labels to Children

As you begin your teaching journey, it will be important for you to approach the curriculum you use with respect to all the children you will teach. You will want to try to view the qualities and experiences they bring to the classroom or child care setting as strengths and opportunities. The curriculum is your starting placea means to advance their strengths rather than focusing on their shortcomings.

Gender Roles

A third important socially constructed concept is our image of gender roles (Kohlberg, 1966) and the ways boys and girls are represented in media, curricula, and instructional materials. This is important because gender identification and roles are acquired during the early childhood years.

The fact that each child is unique and complex should not blind us to the fact that gender is one of the two great organizing principles in child developmentthe other being age. Trying to understand a child without understanding the role of gender in child development is like trying to understand a child’s behavior without knowing the child’s age. (Sax, 2005, p. 95)

Teachers and child care providers have a great deal of influence on how this process occurs (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002), especially in terms of expectations associated with femininity and masculinity (Gropper & Froschl, 2000).

Children’s construction of gender identity is closely associated with prevailing stereotypes and power dynamics and the extent to which those are accepted or challenged by adults (Blaise & Taylor, 2012). Generally accepted notions of what boys and girls are like and who takes a dominant or submissive role in play can be dictated by assumptions children make that may or may not be true. For example, if some children are planning for a pretend hiking trip to the mountains, one child might state that only the boys can drive the car, or that the girls must be in charge of making lunches and packing food for the trip. If no one questions these statements, stereotypes are implicitly reinforced. But play can provide opportunities for the construction of alternate “definitions” of what boys and girls can do if and when adults (1) challenge stereotypes and serve as models in talking about gender roles and (2) prohibit the marginalization of any child based on gender role identification (Blaise & Taylor, 2012; Katch & Katch, 2007).

Typically between the ages of 3 and 5, children associate with a gender identity as “boy” or “girl” and the concept that boys are supposed to do “boy things,” and girls are supposed to do “girl things,” but they may not necessarily know that gender is also constant and not subject to change. Therefore it isn’t unusual for preschool children to appear excessively rigid in their expression of roles that boys and girls may play (Katch & Katch, 2010; Ruble, Taylor, Cyphers, Greulich, Lurye, & Shrout, 2007). Once they also understand that wearing pink shiny slippers will not cause a boy to turn into a girl, they become more open to discussion and the assumption of gender roles that may contradict a stereotype.

Teachers and caregivers can take a number of steps to help children develop healthy concepts of gender; these measures will also help to combat stereotypes that can be damaging to a child’s self-esteem or lead to bullying behaviors (Blaise & Taylor, 2012; Chick, Heilman-Houser & Hunter, 2002; Gropper & Froschl, 2000; Moss, 2007).

These steps include:

• Talking directly with children about stereotypes
• Looking for and eliminating gender bias in classroom materials
• Using gender-neutral language
• Emphasizing fairness in discussing gender roles and stereotypes
• Acknowledging and dealing with bullying behavior associated with gender stereotypes

Science

Today, science is producing a continually expanding body of knowledgefrom biological, psychological, and sociological perspectivesabout who children are. This knowledge is helpful to teachers in many ways. Research on the interplay of biology (nature) and environment (nurture) and how children develop and establish identity helps teachers (1) approach their teaching from an unbiased perspective and (2) support the development of a healthy self-image among their children.

The consensus is that neither nature nor nurture is solely responsible for a child’s development but that both are significant and interrelated in complex ways (Cherry, 2018; Maynard & Nigel, 2004; Schiller, 2001; Silcock, 2008). Bronfenbrenner (2004) concluded, after decades of work on his theoretical model of interactive ecological systems. that developmental processes are profoundly affected by events and conditions in the larger environment.

What teachers need to know is that the environments they create and the curricula they implement will affect children in ways that may not be obvious but are important both for the way we see children and the ways they perceive themselves. Furthermore, while earlier images of children were romanticized and generalized to an idealized version of the child, an ecological perspective seeks to acknowledge the “real” child (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2005).

Our image of the American child today is kaleidoscopica wonderful montage of shapes, colors, personalities, interests, and abilities. In the next section, we will examine our image of today’s child and, in particular, the important role teachers play in choosing and adapting curricula that support positive and authentic images of children.
Applying Labels to Children

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