14 Creating Gender Expansive Early Childhood Education Settings

The early childhood education field is situated in a state of tension: standards of education and care in early childhood settings are subjected to broad guidelines by provincial governments; however, as this field remains within the private sector, there is a lack of oversight or practical guidance as to how to reach these standards. Many early learning centres are taking strides to attempt to address issues of gender inclusivity within their programs, with some approaches being more effective than others. In this article, I highlight the tensions in the early childhood education field in British Columbia, Canada in meeting their legal duty to provide children with an environment free from discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. I explore how early childhood educators employ various practices related to gender and gender diversity in early childhood settings, and how such practices can either work to maintain or destabilize cisnormativity. While outlining common approaches used in an attempt to recognize gender diversity, I categorize the approaches as (1) “red light,” (2) “yellow light,” or (3) “green light.” These terms refer to (1) common practices that maintain cisnormativity in early childhood education, (2) common approaches that have various implications to be troubled, and (3) best practices that help destabilize cisnormativity in early childhood settings.

The Gender Affirmative Model, developed by psychologists Colt Keo-Meier and Diane Ehrensaft, “is the leading approach for working with transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) children and their families” (Keo-Meier & Ehrensaft, 2018). In the early childhood education field, the Gender Affirmative Model provides an effective framework for creating educational environments and experiences that support the gender health of all children. Gender health refers to a “child’s opportunity to live in the gender that feels most real or comfortable to that child and to express that gender with freedom from restriction, aspersion, or rejection” (Timmons & Airton, 2020, p. 5). According to gender diversity researchers, Pastel et al., this model relies on “the evidence-based idea that attempting to force someone to live as a gender with which they do not identify does that person harm” (p. 60). Pastel et al. outline the four central beliefs upon which the Gender Affirmative Model is based:

• No gender identity or gender expression is pathological (wrong, “sick”, needing to be “fixed”)
• Gender identities and gender expressions are diverse and vary across individuals and cultures. Supporting children’s gender health requires cultural sensitivity and culturally responsive practice
• Gender is a complex integration of biology, development, socialization, culture, and context
• Gender can be fluid or fixed. When gender is fluid it can change for an individual throughout their life. Additionally, these changes can take place at different times for different people. (p. 61)

Early childhood settings that adopt these guiding ideas into their daily work with children are using a gender-expansive practice.

The Canadian educational system has seen a significant shift in gender-expansive practices, which aim to reduce discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression (Travers, 2018). Driving factors in these changes is the addition of gender identity and gender expression in the Human Rights Code and numerous legal cases against educational institutions for failing to meet the needs of transgender/gender-expansive children and youth (Travers, 2018). In 2016, bill 27 was passed in British Columbia, which called for the inclusion of “gender identity or expressions” (General Attorney, 2016) among protected grounds in the Human Rights Code. This amendment to the Human Rights Code inspired the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) 1 2 3 curricula (Edwards, 2018). SOGI 1 2 3 aims to help “educators make schools inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities” (SOGI 1 2 3, n.d.) This curriculum has been in effect since 2018 in British Columbia (Edwards, 2018).

To a lesser degree, British Columbia’s early childhood educators have also been grappling with their legal duty to create a learning environment free from gender identity and gender expression discrimination since the amendment of the Human Rights Code (Timmons & Airton, 2020). This effort is particularly challenging for the field of early childhood education due to a lack of oversight and guidance in the field (Timmons & Airton, 2020). Childcare centres remain primarily a private sector and thus are not subjected to the same curriculum regulations through the provincial government as the public education system is. Numerous studies have shown that early childhood educators often do not engage in conversations about sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression with children because they are “inexperienced or misinformed (and feel unqualified to teach about the subject)” (Sullivan et al., 2019, p. 24; Chapman 2021; Meyers et al., 2016). Furthermore, many educators “may possess opinions that are heterosexist, homophobic or anti-LGBTQ” (Sullivan et al., 2019, p. 24). The critical need for training to educate early childhood educators to unlearn anti-2SLGBTQIA+ beliefs and to deliver practical guidance on creating gender-affirming learning environments is evident.

Early childhood educators in British Columbia receive general guidance on curriculum through the provincial government. The British Columbia government produces frameworks for practice in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the Ministry of Health, and the Early Learning Advisory Group (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2019). The Early Learning Framework was built to bridge into the British Columbia primary school curriculum, with the newest Early Learning Framework being published in 2019 (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2019). This framework provides broad guidance on curriculum expectations in early childhood across British Columbia. Although the provincial government recommends using the Early Learning Framework, it is not mandated, thus many early learning centres do not use it.

The Early Learning Framework attempts to address issues of diversity and inclusion related to gender identity and gender expression. One of the “pathways” (previously referred to as “learning goals”) in the Early Learning Framework is titled “Family composition and gender orientation” (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2019 p. 72). This pathway specifically addresses gender diversity and provides critical questions for educators to reflect upon such as: “Do children have opportunities to experiment with transgressing gender stereotypes?” and “How might I pay attention to responses as children play with or transgress gender norms and share new ideas with colleagues and with children?” (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2019 p. 72). Although critical reflection is an essential practice for early learning professionals, it fails to address educators’ biases and concerns about being too “inexperienced or misinformed” (Sullivan et al., 2019, p. 24) to provide children with gender-expansive early learning experiences.

The Early Learning Framework is open to interpretation and various approaches to reaching these expectations. As such, early childhood educators can either maintain or destabilize cisnormativity in the field of early childhood education. How educators approach the guidelines and respond to the critical self-reflections is influenced by each educator’s perceptions and positionality. These perceptions and positionalities may be rooted in cisnormativity, heterosexism, and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ viewpoints. Early childhood educators should receive explicit training on inclusivity and how to provide children with gender-expansive early learning environments to destabilize cisnormativity. However, due to a variety of barriers and tensions that exist within this field, early childhood educators often lack such appropriate resources. In response to this issue, this article will outline clear examples of commonly employed practices in the early years to provide insight into ways these practices work to either maintain or destabilize cisnormativity.

Red Light!

Reframing/Redirection

Early childhood educators maintain cisnormative standards through the corrective methods of reframing and/or redirecting non-normative expressions. In the article, “Even if you say it three ways, it still doesn’t mean it’s true: The pervasiveness of heteronormativity in early childhood education,” Alexandra Gunn (2011) interviewed early childhood educators regarding their experiences with transgender and gender-expansive children. When confronted by gender creativity in the early years, educators reported using reframing methods to conceptualize the behaviour within cisnormativity. For example, when educators witnessed children who were assigned male at birth wearing dresses, they often reframed the experience to associate the behaviour with traditional masculinity in other cultures, affirming to the child that it was an acceptable behaviour because “boys and men in Scotland wear kilts” (p. 286). Often, this reframing extended into a more overt corrective method: redirection. For instance, in the same study, an early childhood educator redirected a child by suggesting he remove his dress and wear a kilt instead, in an attempt to categorize the child’s gender transgression as acceptable within cisnormativity (Gunn, 2011).

Yellow Light!

Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Developmentally appropriate practice, a psychoeducational analysis of children’s development that encourages educators to teach children concepts based on what the framework conceptualizes as “developmentally appropriate” for their age, is rooted in childhood innocence ideologies. Currently, a common belief in early childhood education is that children are “too young” or “too innocent” to talk about sexuality and gender identity and thus, such topics are conceptualized as developmentally inappropriate (Chapman, 2021; Gunn, 2011). The conceptualization of childhood innocence and the need to protect children from certain information can be traced back to the 17th century (Warin & Price, 2019). Many philosophers from the 17th century and beyond who held this belief were central to the development of developmentally appropriate practice, which has been predominant in the field of early childhood education since the 1980s and continues to be today (Elkind, 2015). Developmentally appropriate practice is problematic as it is created with the normalized child in mind and overtly excludes racialized, transgender, gay, and disabled children (Ruffolo, 2009). The normalization of particular bodies and thus the abnormalization of other bodies establishes stratification within the early childhood education field (Ruffolo, 2009).

Opponents of gender-expansive practice employ various constraining discourses, such as developmentally appropriate practice, to counter the efforts of those working towards gender-expansive practices. In these discourses, developmentally appropriate practice is used to maintain cisnormativity and to justify the exclusion of the 2SLGBTQIA+ curriculum and conversations about 2SLGBTQIA+ in the early years (Chapman, 2021). The belief that children are “too young” or “too innocent” to talk about gender and sexuality is rooted in the underlying harmful belief that diverse genders and sexualities are intrinsically more sexual and dangerous than normative genders and sexualities. The narrative of developmentally appropriate practice is also used in enabling discourses as it is employed by those who support gender-expansive practices to legitimize the appropriateness of gender-expansive practice while soothing the anxieties of those who might contest that children are “too young” to talk about diverse genders and sexualities. Regardless of how it is politically employed, developmentally appropriate practice constricts authentic gender-expansive practices as it remains saturated in the idea that diverse genders and sexualities are more sexual and dangerous than normative ones.

Victim Discourses

Victim discourses are employed by actors in early childhood education in both enabling and constraining discourses about gender-expansive teaching environments. When 2SLGBTQIA+ topics are included within texts and/or class discussions in educator training programs, the learning is often rooted in victim discourses (Sullivan et al., 2019). In these discourses, the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ students are often exclusively represented through victim narratives which portray queer students as “victims of bullying, depressed, and prone to self-destructive behaviors such as suicide” (Sullivan et al., 2019, p. 22). Transgender and gender-expansive people being portrayed exclusively through the use of victim discourses has many harmful implications. As author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) states, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (13:03). Through victim discourses, transgender and gender-diverse people’s experiences are reduced to a single narrative around the inevitable subjugation of gender diverse people. They fail to hold space for the multitudes of experiences in the lives of gender-diverse people, both positive and negative, fantastic and mundane.

Single-story stereotypes that are steeped in victim discourses are present in childcare centres. One of the most common areas in which this can be seen is within children’s picture books where 2SLGBTQIA+ characters are depicted through the use of victim narratives. Books that are used by early childhood educators to teach gender diversity often depict transgender and gender-expansive characters as rejected, isolated, bullied, and sad. For instance, in 10,000 Dresses (2008), the leading character, a young child named Bailey faces various levels of rejection by her family as they dismiss her assertions that she is a girl, not a boy. In the end, her brother tells her to “get out of here, before I kick you!” when she expresses her wish to wear a dress. At this point, she runs away down the street, finding solace in the company of an older child in the neighbourhood (Ewert & Ray, 2008). Rudine Sims Bishop (1990), professor and children’s book author, explores the importance of discourses in children’s books. She states that “when children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society in which they are a part” (Bishop, 1990 p. 1). Unfortunately, it is uncommon for children’s books to have depictions of positive narratives around gender diversity, such as themes centering queer joy and stories of transgender leaders.

The use of 2SLGBTQIA+ children’s books that portray children as victims reinforces the fears and worries of parents/guardians and educators. Rather than supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ children, they perpetuate victim narratives, thus furthering “single-story” misconceptions and the “othering” of particular children. Victim discourses result in “transgender children and their experiential realities [being] ignored or portrayed in an inferior light in early childhood education curricula” (Sullivan et al., 2019, p. 24). In addition, the aforementioned problematic developmentally appropriate model ties into victim discourses, with many opponents to gender-expansive practice arguing that children are “too young” to be exposed to such tragic narratives. Implementing adequate 2SLGBTQIA+ competency training in early childhood education could help counteract some of the typical yellow light practices that inadvertently prevent educators from engaging in authentic gender-expansive practices.

Green Light!

In this section, I will outline common ways that educators work towards authentic gender-expansive practices through various methodologies such as the language and conversations they have with children, modeling of behaviour, and play-based pedagogical choices. These approaches will be outlined under “Prevention Over Intervention,” “Go with the Flow,” and “Walking the Talk”. This section recognizes that “children primarily learn by doing, second by what adults model” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 126), and finally by what adults tell them. For effective gender-expansive practice, educators can combine various approaches to destabilize cisnormativity and enhance children’s understanding.

Prevention Over Intervention

Gender-expansive practice is rooted in a preventative approach that seeks to actively prevent discriminatory experiences rather than merely intervening when they occur (Timmons & Airton, 2020). This practice maintains the assumption that any child may come to later identify as transgender or gender-expansive. It further maintains that all children (transgender or cisgender; gender conforming or gender creative) benefit from gender-expansive teachings (Timmons & Airton, 2020). Actors within children’s lives, such as educators and parents/guardians, should implement gender-expansive practices early, as by ages 2-3, children are already well along in their learning of gender.

As noted in Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper’s (2008) influential book The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, by ages 2-3, children learn that adults and peers “gender” toys and clothes. They begin to look for cues of how to act based on their inner sense of gender (cisgender, transgender & gender expansive children) (Brill et al., 2008). By ages 3-4 years old, children create a gender scheme of how “boys” and “girls” should behave (Brill et al., 2008) and stereotypes begin to emerge based on what children have been exposed to. At this age, many transgender and gender-expansive children “struggle with language to express their differences” (Brill et al., 2008, p. 62). Gender-expansive practices aim to provide children with accurate information about gender, gender identity, and gender expression (Timmons & Airton, 2020). Early childhood educators can engage in gender-expansive practice by using accurate language which works to reiterate that diverse genders, gender expression and anatomies are “normal, not pathological” (Timmons & Airton, 2020, p. 11).

Anatomy is a common conversation topic in the early years, as much of the early learning revolves around bodily functions and caring for our bodies. When discussing anatomy, gender-expansive educators might say “Many boys have penises, but some boys have vulvas and vaginas. Many girls have vulvas and vaginas, but some girls have penises” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 35). They may extend this to include “People of all genders have different types of genitals” and “each person’s genitals look a little different from everyone else’s. Vulvas, penises, and scrotums come in different sizes and shapes” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 35). The use of gender-expansive language when discussing anatomy highlights the diverse bodies that exist while working against the simplistic idea that genitals dictate one’s gender.

Children are engaged in ongoing discovery about the embodied experience of living within a gendered society. Educators can work to resist the imposition of restrictive colonial understanding of gender expression and gender identity through language they use with children. Educators might state that “there is no one way for girls or boys or people of any gender to act or look” (Welcoming Schools, n.d.). While discussing gender identity, educators can define key terms such as “cisgender” and “transgender”. For instance, educators might say “cisgender is a name for people whose grown-ups (like doctors and parents) guessed their gender right. The grown-ups might have guessed they were a girl, and when they got older, they said, “Yup, they are right! I am a girl!” and “transgender is a name for people whose grown-ups (like doctors and parents) guessed their gender wrong. Grown-ups might have guessed they were a boy, but when they got older, they said, “No, actually, I am a girl!” (Pastel et al., 2019) Through this approach of using accurate information when discussing anatomy, gender expression, and gender identity, educators can work to prevent children from developing cisnormative assumptions about gender and harmful gender constructs.

Although the use of language is important in gender-expansive practice, for gender-expansive practice to be effective, it is insufficient to exclusively provide verbal information to children. By ages 4-6, children tend to “associate gender with specific behaviours” (Brill et al., 2008, p. 63). At this time, children develop gender scripts that conflate behaviours with gender, such as “girls wear makeup, so that means anyone wearing makeup is a girl” (Brill et al., 2008 p. 63). However, repeated exposure to books, stories, and people who defy these norms will help children adapt to their gender constructs (Brill et al., 2008). Early childhood educators can make pedagogical choices within their early learning classrooms to expose children to people, representations, and experiences, which work together to create a gender-expansive classroom culture (Pastel et al., 2019; Timmons & Airton, 2020).

Numerous studies have demonstrated that a lack of personal connection to diverse communities contributes to oppressive and discriminatory viewpoints (Cakal et al., 2011; Groyecka et al., 2019; Pettigrew et al., 2013). As such, it is beneficial for children to build connections with diverse community members before these viewpoints are formed or to challenge already formed viewpoints. Children who may come to know themselves later as transgender are also at risk for developing these oppressive viewpoints, which may contribute to struggling with internalized transphobia. Many early childhood educators welcome guests into their centres to support children’s connection with people of all genders, including transgender and gender-expansive community members. For instance, early childhood educators might invite “a firefighter into the classroom who happens to be a trans woman” (Pastel et al., 2019, p.136). By not making the guest’s gender the “primary reason they are being invited into the classroom” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 136), early childhood educators avoid “othering” transgender people while providing children with positive representations of diverse genders.

In gender-expansive classrooms, gender diversity is represented through conscious and intentional choices of pedagogical materials. Books about gender diversity, including those that focus on joy, not only adversity, are included in the classroom. Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) discusses the importance of diverse literature in her article “Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors”. Bishop (1990) argues that books can be windows “offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange”; sliding glass doors, where “readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated” or mirrors, where “literature transforms human experience and reflects it to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience” (p.1). She contends that in this way, reading can become “a means of self-affirmation” (Bishop, 1990, p.1). However, marginalized communities, including the transgender and gender expansive community, are often unable to find their “mirrors” within children’s literature (Bishop, 1990).

By including positive books featuring transgender and gender-expansive characters, we enable these children to find their mirrors. As argued by Bishop, books on marginalized communities are also beneficial for children within dominant social groups, as they offer a “window” experience into the real world of diverse communities. Gender is inextricably interconnected to other “social identities, statuses, and cultural/historical contexts” (Pastel et al., 2019, p.170). A true gender-expansive practice actively works against all oppressions and avoids the perpetuation of ableism, racism, eurocentrism, classism, sexism, etc. in gender work (Pastel et al., 2019). Gender-expansive educators work to ensure that diverse literature is present in their classrooms, such as stories of Black, Indigenous, people of colour, disabled, non-Western, and lower-class transgender and gender-expansive people.

Educators use toys and play-based pedagogical materials to explore gender diversity through play. One example of a play-based pedagogical material often utilized by educators in gender-expansive classroom environments is persona dolls and/or puppets (Pastel et al., 2019). These pedagogical tools, introduced by and exclusively manipulated by educators, are used for various educational pursuits, including “generating communication, supporting a positive classroom climate, enhancing creativity, fostering cooperation and integration into the group and changing attitudes” (Kröger & Nupponen, 2019, p. 1). Persona dolls and/or puppets are life-like and are “made and dressed as real people with a real-life history. Each one has [their own] name, gender, race, and personality” (Pierce & Johnson, 2010, p.106). Children are inclined to interact with these pedagogical tools and “quickly begin to empathize with the dolls, who become like members of the classroom” (Pastel et al., 140 p. 140). Through the introduction of transgender and gender-expansive persona dolls and/or puppets into the classrooms, early childhood educators assist children in developing “language to think about issues [of identity, diversity, discriminatory teasing and exclusion] in a climate of safety” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 140). Through play, children develop the skills to apply anti-oppressive “ideas to their own lives and the life of the classroom” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 140). As previously noted, children learn best through “doing”, as such, playful interactions with persona dolls and puppets offer an effective method for gender-expansive teachings by providing a pathway for children to engage in critical thinking about gender.

Going with the Flow

Gender-expansive practice avoids any urge to decide or figure out if someone is gender-expansive, transgender, or cisgender (Pastel et al., 2019; Timmons & Airton, 2020). By following the child’s lead or “going with the flow,” so to speak, educators recognize that gender identity and expression can be fluid and constantly changing. In gender-expansive practice, educators recognize children’s gender agency, which refers to a child’s “right […] to tell us, the adults (parents, teachers, and others), what they understand their gender identities to be” (Pastel et al., 2019, p. 13). Early childhood educators can follow the children’s lead, responding to gender conformity and gender creativity with the same welcoming yet neutral responses (Pastel et al., 2019; Timmons & Airton, 2020). For instance, when children select clothing to wear in dramatic play, educators respond to all choices of expression in the same way, reiterating that all children can decide to dress however makes them happy. Furthermore, when a child expresses a desire to be called by a different name or pronoun, even in imaginative play, educators using gender-expansive practice respect this expression of gender agency and call them by their desired name or pronoun. In these daily interactions, educators show children that children’s gender agency is respected.

Walking the Talk

Early childhood educators must model recognition and acceptance of gender diversity through their behaviours and interactions in their day-to-day practices – I refer to this as “walking the talk”. Modeling can be employed in numerous ways to encourage gender inclusivity in children, families, and community members. Educators model introducing their pronouns to children, families, and co-workers. For instance, they might say to a new student “My name is Sally, and I like to be called he or she.” Educators actively work to destabilize cisnormativity and gender assumptions by introducing pronouns, reinforcing the understanding that gender presentation does not equate to gender identity and/or pronouns. Educators also incorporate pronouns in daily traditions, such as songs and storytelling.

Educators can model noticing and pointing out when they make assumptions about another person’s gender and/or when they put gender stereotypes on someone. For instance, educators might state in front of their students, “Johnny’s dancing was so beautiful, but I called it cool. I should remember that people of all genders should hear all different types of compliments.” This practice is vital as educators often unintentionally reinforce gender stereotypes through daily interactions, such as in affirmations used in the example above. When educators own their mistakes, they model to children how to recognize and accept mistakes and repair any harm.

Conclusion

In British Columbia, there has been an increased focus on mainstream media and educational policies and curricula on creating inclusive educational experiences that support diverse gender identities and gender expressions. However, the field of early childhood education has received very minimal practical guidance on gender-expansive practice and creating gender-expansive classroom cultures. Many early childhood educators and childcare centres have begun to implement approaches that can work to maintain or destabilize cisnormativity. In this article, I outlined these various approaches and classified them under the categories “red light”, “yellow light”, and “green light”. Red light practices, such as reframing and redirecting, work to maintain cisnormativity and thus, should be avoided. Yellow light practices, including developmentally appropriate practice and victim discourses, should be approached with caution as they have implications that may unintentionally work against gender-expansive practice. Green light practices are effective in creating gender-expansive early childhood experiences that destabilize cisnormativity and create affirming environments for all children. When green light practices, such as “Prevention Over Intervention” “Going with the Flow,” and “Walking the Talk”, are employed in educators’ language, pedagogical choices, and interactions with others, educators create expansive learning environments where all children can see their unique selves reflected.

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