Classroom Observation Paper

Methods
Participants
Twenty-four children were observed for this study. Half of the children were male and the other half were female, all aged between three and four years old, and enrolled in a private southern California preschool that is located on a private college campus. They were all part of a racially diverse classroom, which I drew from in a manner that allowed for a representative sample to be derived.
Measures
Gendered play was be analyzed using a tally event chart with categories derived from a similar study done by Goble et al. (2012), where they determined the rate at which each gender participated in a given activity. A behavior was be categorized as either feminine, masculine, or gender neutral. For purposes of categorization these three terms worked across both genders as far as the activities that each one maintains is concerned. For example, a feminine activity for a boy is the same as a feminine activity for a girl. These terms, however, ceased to be as effective in synthesizing data to view the group activity as a whole. Due to this behaviors were described using the terms gender-typical, gender-neutral, and gender-counter-typical, when referring to multiple participants. This allowed for feminine and masculine activities to fall into the gender-typical and

Neutral play is all of the activities that do not fit into the above categories, and are considered to not hold any gender specificity. These activities could easily change if the child choose to incorporate an aspect of masculine or feminine play into the activity. The activities that were classified as gender neutral included playing with clay, playing a board game, digging, large motor activities like running and climbing, math or science related activities, pretend play neutral (pretending to be an animal), any type of sensory exploration, snack time, and any other activity that cannot be classified in one of the above categories (Goble et al.,