Gender Expansion in Early Childhood Education

This book explores the contexts for gender identity development in early childhood education, examining how early childhood educators’ views on children’s gender identity influence their practice in Australia. This book explores the contexts for gender identity development in early childhood education, examining how early childhood educators’ views on children’s gender identity influence their practice in Australia. The author utilizes feminist post-structuralism, queer theory and performativity as theoretical approaches, and feminist post-structuralist discourse and thematic analyses. The book captures the voices of educators and developers of curriculum documents to explore how gender expansive environments can be created when such environments are socially and politically contentious. It then identifies discourses that enable and constrain the building of pro-diversity spaces and contexts in early childhood education, while considering how to disrupt normative notions of gender and promote the deployment of discursive agency. Rachel Chapman is an experienced academic in early childhood education at Melbourne Polytechnic in Melbourne, Australia. Sheearned a PhD in Education from RMIT University. Her research areas include early childhood education, gender, diversity, inclusion, policy and teacher practice, and she has extensive experience in curriculum design. She is a board member of Social Justice in Early Childhood. This book explores the contexts for gender identity development in early childhood education, examining how early childhood educators’ views on children’s gender identity influence their practice in Australia. The author utilizes feminist post-structuralism, queer theory and performativity as theoretical approaches, and feminist post-structuralist discourse and thematic analyses. The book captures the voices of educators and developers of curriculum documents to explore how gender expansive environments can be created when such environments are socially and politically contentious. It then identifies discourses that enable and constrain the building of pro-diversity spaces and contexts in early childhood education, while considering how to disrupt normative notions of gender and promote the deployment of discursive agency.