—NAEYC, Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education” (position statement)
Since the publication of Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children (Derman-Sparks & the A.B.C. Task Force 1989) and the subsequent first edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (Derman- Sparks & Edwards 2010), early childhood teachers across the United States and internationally have embraced anti-bias education (ABE) as a central part of their work. This third book about anti-bias—the second edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves—builds on the first two books. Its underlying intentions remain the same: to support children’s full development in our world of great human diversity and to give them the tools to stand up to prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and eventually to institutional isms. To achieve this for children means that as educators it is not sufficient to be nonbiased (nor is it likely), and it is not sufficient to be an observer. Rather, educators are called upon to integrate the core goals of ABE in developmentally appropriate ways throughout children’s education.
What Is in this Book
This book has two major parts. Together they provide the information and strategies needed to integrate ABE into your work.
The first five chapters provide a foundation for understanding ABE. Chapter 1 describes the social and political landscape of the United States that makes ABE essential to high-quality early childhood education and explains the four core anti-bias goals. Chapter 2 discusses how young children and adults are shaped by the social and political landscape described in Chapter 1. This developmental information informs the work educators do with children and with themselves. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 present the basic tools of an anti-bias learning environment: materials and curriculum that make visible and honor diversity; clarifying and brave conversations with children; and collaborative relationships with staff and families.
Chapters 6–12 discuss social identities that fundamentally shape young children’s development and learning—cultural identities, racialized identities, gendered identities, economic class, abilities, and family structure. Each of these chapters offers a big picture to help you understand how societal ideas, attitudes, and biases affect young children’s development and provides a discussion of children’s thinking and feelings as they try to make sense of their experiences. The four anti-bias education goals are then applied to each of the social identities, accompanied by guidelines, strategies, and specific ideas to foster children’s healthy growth in a world where bias and discrimination are all too pervasive.
Being an anti-bias educator requires long-term commitment and persistence. In the final section, we offer some key strategies for “keeping on keeping on.” We hope these strategies answer an oft-asked question, “What keeps you going?”