Book Review: Don’t look away: Embracing anti-bias classrooms

Don't look away: Embracing anti-bias classrooms is a resource that can serve current practitioners in early childhood education (ECE) to expand on their knowledge of antibias education, anti-racism, culturally responsive teaching with tools that can enhance their practice of culturally responsive, anti-bias pedagogies.Practitioners that strive to confront their unconscious biases and seek to teach more equitably would benefit from engaging with this book either as a personal exercise or with their community of practice.The book consists of eight chapters that explore and explain the historical, societal, and cultural context that make anti-bias education a necessary part of an ECE's practice.A ninth chapter is dedicated to the references and recommended readings in which the authors discuss the seminal research they draw from.Overall, in each chapter the authors encourage the reader to confront their own beliefs regarding race, bias, and equity while recognizing the impact they have in their classrooms to mitigate the harms caused by negative biases to young children's development and learning.In their introduction, the authors primarily drawing on the history of children's education and policy in the United States to lay the foundation of work that led anti-bias education.They begin by confronting implicit bias and its significant impacts on Black children's education, e.g. the higher-than-average suspension rates of Black children when compared to their White peers.