Spotlight on Young Children: Equity and Diversity

Cristina Gillanders, Rossella Procopio, Cristina Gillanders, Rossella Procopio

• Publisher: The National Association for the Education of Young Children
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781938113420
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Carefully curated from the pages of the award-winning journal, Young Children, these articles address one of the most important issues facing early childhood education and provide teachers with insight needed to navigate this complicated landscape.

This collection of 13 articles, provides expert guidance on how to advance equity and diversity in the classroom. Tied to the forthcoming NAEYC new position statement on equity and diversity, this book includes practical ways teachers can advance equity as they plan learning experiences.

Spotlight on Young Children: Equity and Diversity provides tools and guidance educators can use to recognize implicit bias and learn how to develop strategies that create equitable learning opportunities for all children.

This title is one of many in the Spotlight on Young Children series, which provides in-depth research on the critical topics in early childhood education.

Moving Beyond Anti-Bias Activities

Supporting the Development of Anti-Bias Practices

Lisa P. Kuh, Debbie LeeKeenan, Heidi Given, and Margaret R. Beneke

“My dad is thiiiiiis black!”

“Why does she wear that scarf on her head?”

“My mom makes me give toys I don’t like to poor kids who don’t have any.”

“Only girls can be nurses.”

These comments, while typical of young children, can stop a teacher in her tracks. How should teachers respond? Children’s comments can sometimes fluster both new and experienced teachers—even those who support equity and diversity in schools. While teaching at the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School at Tufts University, we authors explored what it means to embrace an anti-bias stance every day. We found that adopting an anti-bias perspective requires more than implementing a few well-meaning activities. Instead, doing so asks educators to think differently about their work, take personal and professional risks, and put new ideas and beliefs into practice. The teachers at Eliot-Pearson developed a framework to guide their anti-bias work and support their anti-bias planning and practice as they moved forward.

What Is Anti-Bias Education?

Anti-bias education is a way of teaching that supports children and their families as they develop a sense of identity and fairness in a highly diverse and still inequitable society. It helps children learn to be proud of themselves and their families, respect a range of human differences, recognize unfairness and bias, and speak up for the rights of others (Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2010).

Children tell us every day through their comments, play, and peer interactions that they notice social issues, are curious about differences, and want more information. So what do schools and teachers need to do? In many ways, anti-bias education may not be so different from the kind of teaching that educators already do. For example, when children notice butterflies in the garden, teachers might notice and respond to children’s curiosity as an opportunity for extending curriculum, and then provide books and other materials about life cycles. But when it comes to talking about race, class, gender, family structure, or ability, teachers might consciously, or even unconsciously, avoid elaborating on these topics.

A Closer Look at Anti-Bias Education

Early childhood educators believe in the principle that all people deserve the opportunities and resources to fulfill their complete humanity. Educators have a unique role in making this principle real by promoting all children’s chances to thrive in school, in work, and in life. Anti-bias education is a catalyst for empowerment of children, authentic engagement of families, and hope for staff that they can truly make a meaningful difference in early childhood programs.

Why Is Anti-Bias Work Important?

We live in a world that is not yet a place where all children have equal opportunities to become all they are and can be. We do anti-bias work because we see what happens when children receive messages about themselves that do not support their personal and social identities, or their intelligence and competency. We do it because we see the injury to children when adults become silent in the face of children teasing or rejecting others because of who they are. We do it because we want a world in which all children are able to blossom, and each child’s particular abilities and gifts are able to flourish. To thrive in a diverse and inequitable world, all children need

› A positive sense of self. How does the world think of me and my family? How do I think and feel about myself and my family?

› Connection to others. Who are you? How are we alike? How are we different?

› Fairness. What is fair or unfair? What hurts me? What hurts other people?

› Empowerment. How can I stand up for myself? How can I stand up for others? How can we change unfair to fair?

The Four Core Goals of Anti-Bias Education

The core goals and educational principles of anti-bias education foster all children’s abilities to thrive. All four are essential to an effective anti-bias education program.

Goal 1: Identity

Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive personal and social identities. Children’s personal identities are shaped by their multiple social group identities. Positive self-concept is foundational to children’s development in all aspects of school and life.

Guidelines for Teaching this Goal

› Make visible and support each child’s specific social identities in the classroom environment, in the curriculum, and in all social interactions.

› Nurture children’s sense of self, which is centered in the social identities of their families, by treating each family with respect and care.

Goal 2: Diversity

Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections. Understanding that we are all different and the same is central. Children learn prejudice from prejudice—not from learning about human diversity. It is how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.

Guidelines for Teaching this Goal

› Explore the ideas that we share similar attributes and needs (e.g., the need for food, shelter, and love; the commonalities of language, families, and feelings) and we live these in many different ways. Support children’s cognitive and emotional growth with rich vocabulary about human differences and sameness.

› Talk about the many kinds of diversity present among the children in the group, even when they come from similar racial, cultural, economic class, and family backgrounds.

› Acquaint children with groups of people who live and work in their neighborhood and city. Preschoolers learn best about people as individuals.

Goal 3: Justice

Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts. For children to construct a strong self-concept or develop respect for others, they also must know how to identify and resist hurtful, stereotypical, and inaccurate messages or actions directed toward them or others.

Guidelines for Teaching this Goal

› Pay attention to the stereotypes and biases in the larger world and observe children’s play behavior and comments to see where they are confused or fearful or misinformed. Engage in clarifying conversations and set limits on hurtful behaviors.

› Help children learn how to contrast inaccurate, untrue images or ideas with accurate ones.

› Help children expand their understanding of how people are hurt by stereotyping and unfair treatment.

Goal 4. Empowerment

Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions. If a child or a child’s peer is not treated fairly, no child can feel safe. Even very young children can learn and practice ways to act when others are behaving in a biased manner or an unfair situation arises.

Guidelines for Teaching this Goal

› Engage children in dialogue about their feelings and ideas regarding unfair situations. Provide accurate information about the situation.

› With the children, plan and carry out actions to change unfair to fair.

Stop and Think: Imagine

Because of societal inequities, too many children still do not have access to the basic human rights due to them. Imagine a world of justice and equal opportunity for all.

› How would the world look different for each of the children you work with?

› How would the world look different for the program you work in?

(Adapted from Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2010, forthcoming)

Anti-bias curriculum topics often come from the children, families, and teachers, as well as from historical or current events. Anti-bias education happens in both planned curriculum and natural teachable moments based on children’s conversations and play. Teachers have to balance planned anti-bias teaching experiences, such as exploring the way girls and boys can be both physically strong and kind, with seizing emergent opportunities to engage children by responding to their questions and observations. Anti-bias education calls on teachers to examine their own experiences, beliefs, and assumptions in order to push past the misinformation and biases that keep us from noticing how an early childhood program may be undermining some children’s identities and reinforcing hurtful stereotypes. As stated in NAEYC’s Code of Ethics, accreditation materials, and position statements, supporting children’s family identities and sense of safety and belonging is fundamental in our work.

Creating a Framework for Anti-Bias Teaching

The Eliot-Pearson Children’s School’s long-standing commitment to anti-bias education is part of its core values and mission. However, being intentional about anti-bias education across classrooms wasn’t always easy. One year, as a curriculum strategy, each classroom focused on a particular issue related to its group of children. The teachers shared documentation and questions about this focus at monthly professional development meetings, receiving and giving feedback on curriculum and teaching practices. Topics included same-sex parents, skin color and racial identity, class and power, abilities and challenges, and cultural backgrounds.

To hold themselves accountable for anti-bias work, the program’s teachers developed a tool for keeping anti-bias issues alive in the curriculum (see “Framework for Anti-Bias Teaching”). The work of three of this article’s coauthors...