Early Childhood Educators’ Gender Restrictive and Gender Expansive Classroom Practices and Responses to Children’s Gender Prejudice and Discrimination

In an open-ended survey of teaching about gender given to 341 U.S. early childhood educators, 72.4% reported addressing gender (children’s gender stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination; children’s gender non-conformity; adults’ gender stereotyping and prejudice). Of the teaching strategies reported, 80.3% were gender expansive (e.g. no right way to be a boy or a girl, LGBTQIA+ inclusion) and 19.7% were gender stereotypical. Educators responded to a vignette about a boy excluding a girl from a fort; 69.0% reported they would say that girls can be superheroes, 58.5% would use this as a teaching moment to design a class activity addressing gender, 38.4% would say that boys and girls play together in the class, 35.6% would share that everyone is a friend and that excluding is not nice, and 14.9% wrote in other strategies. Educators also responded to a vignette about children teasing a boy with long hair and nail polish; 66.9% reported that they would tell the children that boys can have long hair and wear nail polish, 44.8% would use this as teaching moment to design a class activity addressing LGBTQIA+ issues, 28.1% would tell the children that telling people “they look funny” is not nice, and 17.0% wrote in other strategies.