Gender in Early Childhood Education: Children’s Agency and Risky Teaching
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33831/qr283656Keywords:
Children’s Agency, Early Childhood Education, Feminist Poststructuralist Theory, Queer Theory, Risky TeachingAbstract
Early childhood education institutions are important social spaces in which gender norms are produced, renegotiated, and, at times, transformed. Grounded in feminist poststructuralist, poststructuralist, and queer theoretical approaches, this critical theoretical review analyzes how gender relations are constructed in early education settings through the lens of the English-language literature. The study conceptualizes children not as passive recipients of gender norms, but as subjects who actively produce and transform these norms through play, spatial practices, discourse, and peer interactions. How the female/male binary is reinforced by children is discussed through the concepts of “doing gender right,” “borderwork,” and “category maintenance”. At the same time, the article demonstrates that children can move beyond normative frameworks and develop alternative positionings. The article also critically analyzes teachers’ biologically determinist discourses and, through the concept of “risky teaching,” discusses the possibilities for questioning gendered and heteronormative norms in early childhood education settings. The study argues that gender in early childhood education is not a fixed phenomenon, but a dynamic process constructed discursively, relationally, and contextually. In this respect, the study reviews existing studies in early childhood education in Turkey that address gender from a feminist poststructuralist and queer perspective, and proposes a research agenda on how these concepts can be further developed within this context.
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