Gender Inequity Essay

As the early years are a critical time for children to develop the rudiment of gender awareness and gender identity, early childhood teachers should create a gender-fair learning environment for children and consciously counter the issues of gender inequity when they are exposed in the child care centre. This essay focuses on how gender inequity and stereotypes are generalized in the early childhood period and methods for early childhood teachers to address gender inequity in the child care centre. It will illuminate how my understanding of gender inequity and stereotypes in early childhood education has extended from a future early childhood teacher’s perspective. It also attempts to interpret how these articles discuss the relation between

The second article, Examination of early childhood practitioners’ general perception of gender differences in young children, suggests that the research indicates the stereotypical perception of children’s gender differences is existed in early childhood teacher’s verbal expression (Hyun & Tyler, 2000). The research has collected data and responses for several topics including “Frequently Mentioned Descriptive Words by Gender”, “Words by Gender that May Reflect ‘Constructive’ and Active Learner Characteristics” (Hyun & Tyler, 2000). The results of the data collection have shown that gender bias is identified in early childhood teachers’ perception and verbalisation in terms of children’s characteristics, learning styles and classroom interaction (Hyun & Tyler, 2000). For example, words used to describe boy’s group learning style including “active, builders, challenging”, whereas girls are described as “cooperative, creative, curious” (Hyun & Tyler, 2000). Although learning styles and learning abilities are largely determined by the biological sex differences, how they respond to children with different genders would influence how children perceive their gender and their postnatal development of learning. When boys are perceived to be more cable than girls, teachers are very likely to have higher exceptions on boys and design considered developmentally appropriate activities for them instead of providing them the same materials as girls’. Consequently, the existing boys’ social dominance may be further supported and girls may suffer from the unfair perception that “they are passive learners in some extent” so they are dependent and need more help from teachers (Hyun & Tyler,