Evaluation Of A Preschool Classroom During Play Time

Gender coding is not a natural or biological characteristic. People are born with different physical and biological characteristics, but make sense of their gender roles through cultural influences. “Stereotypes are amazingly powerful, and we may not realize the degree to which our thoughts, beliefs, and actions are shaped by them” (Silverman, Rader, 2010). Boys and girls are labeled as masculine or feminine, which is considered the “norm” for society. Children are not born masculine or feminine, they learn these roles from parents, peers, media, and even religion. Concepts of gender identity are sometimes placed on children even before their birth, such as with the selection of paint colors for the nursery.” Children begin to form concepts of gender beginning around the age of 2, and most children know if they are a boy or girl by age of 3” (Martin & Ruble, 2004). From an early age, children are encouraged to identify with gender coding. Gender is formed at birth, but self-identification as being male or female is imbedded into their minds by parents and society. A child learns to understand their gender role and their identity by what is taught and expressed to them by others. Yet as a child grows, gender coding can cause cultural confusion, and insecurity issues throughout the course of their life.

For my journal article critique I chose Development Approaches to Teaching: Three Preschool Programs. By Amy Sussna Klein from Earlychildhood News

Parents of these children are not supporting their decisions of who they desire to be, leaning towards the sex of being more feminine (regarding female) or masculine (regarding male). As young as pre-school, children begin to show their common interests such as; playing with dolls, trucks, dressing up as princesses, building sky scrapers, playing with action figures, etc. This article mentions, depending on what they child plays with or how the child acts shows the risk of gender assessment. For example, this article is trying to say that if a young boy plays with a doll or dresses like a princess he

Children learn to process information in terms of an evolving gender schema. According to (Hetherington & Parke, 2016, Chapter 15) “Gender schema theory suggests that children develop naive mental schemas that help them organize their experiences in such a way that they will know what to attend to and how to interpret new information. According to this theory, we should expect individual differences in how gender-schematic children will be”. This gender-based schematic processing is at the heart of the present account of sex

According to our textbook Student teaching, “A quality program is one that exceeds rather than meets minimum standards for licensure.” To help us determine if a preschool classroom/program provides quality and to help us understand what quality means we were asked to evaluate and compare two preschool classrooms using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. The classrooms I chose to evaluate and compare using the ECERS evaluation tool were the 4year old classroom at Naples Christian Academy and the 4 year old classroom at The Learning Center. Below is my comparison of both classrooms using the ECERS evaluation tool.

Craig’s worries about his son’s actions being more feminine as a result of playing with feminine toys is not uncommon. Many parents may become worried if they start seeing their child being more interested in playing with toys designed for the opposite gender. A hypothesis can be drawn up by stating that if boys with typically female toys, then there would be an increase of femininity traits of passiveness.

Children learn as early as age two what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl” (Aina & Cameron). This is described as gender identity, a person’s sense of self as male or female. Gender stereotyping emerges hand in hand with the development of gender identity in Early Childhood (Halim). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes and activities of males and females. When babies are born they are either put in pink or blue, as they grow up they still maintain the same “gender” colors. As young children start to socialize, they are playing with either “girl” toys or “boy” toys. When they get older they

Gender role expectations are inescapable in our society as we naturally tend to sort humans into categories, the easiest one being gender. Upon first meeting a person, most people automatically classify the other’s gender. With this classification come the inevitable gender role expectations. Even for those who consciously try their hardest not to cloud their perceptions of others based on “traditional” gender role expectations, it is almost impossible not to subconsciously succumb to these expectations that are ingrained in our minds virtually since the day we are born. These expectations often influence how one interacts with another. This is especially important when taking into consideration the effects that gender socialization of children through gendered toys, media, and parental affects child development.

This is called gender socialization, which exaggerates sexual differences physically, experimentally, academically, and psychologically. Most parents are unaware that they play such a large role in creating a male or female child. But they are the first and one of the largest influences on their child. When parents have a female child she is viewed as sweet and gentle. The parents will even hold their daughter closer than they would a son. As they grow older boys are encouraged to explore while girls are kept closer to their parents. They are taught different approaches to many different problems in life. They may not realize it but through their interactions with their children they are encouraging their children to grow into a certain type of person based on their gender. The toys they are introduced to are even gender-based. Toys for males encourage them to develop such abilities of spatial perception, creativity, competition, aggression, and constructiveness. Toys for girls encouraged creativity, nurturance, and attractiveness. Children’s rooms and clothing are specific color: girls are pink and boys are blue. Girls often wear dresses and skirts that limit their physical activity. These types of influences at such an early age lay a foundation for the child’s personality. By the time they reach school age they already have a sense of being male or female. In school peers and teachers enforce these differences even further. (Lips, 1979,

Gender identity is defined as the identification of a human being as being male or female. The knowledge that we have about gender acquisition is still not as accurate as we would like. Biological and environmental factors are at play and not one or the other seems to be completely wrong. Biological views relating to gender identity are supported by chromosomal and hormonal based differences. Environmental perspectives emphasize on modeling and experience (individual and cultural) affecting gender acquisition. However, the only unbiased way to assess gender identity is by taking into account both biological and environmental factors (McCabe, 2007). This paper focuses on gender identity in early childhood development.

In our society, there are norms of what is considered to be feminine and what is to be considered masculine, but how are these norms constructed? Through the use of toys, books, and clothing, children are socialized into their “appropriate” gender. These objects provide influence over behavior and appearance, showing boys and girls what is appropriate for each gender. After some investigation it was found that the toys, books, and clothing that children use not only foster the norms of gender behavior and appearance, but also construct gender roles in their young minds.

Gender should not be intertwined with the term sex, which refers to the physical differences in individuals. Instead, gender is the idea of being male or female, and it is well understood by the time children reach the preschool years. Differences in gender become more pronounced as children age, and societal expectations are reinforced by parents and peers. Behavioral differences may be evident since parents may treat their child differently according to gender. A big example of this is how parents may react to a child’s first

The traits perceived to be possessed by certain gender identities are instilled to the children while they are growing as the society have strong influence over the preferences and the behaviors of the young ones in that by influencing the interest of children they bring them up in a manner that the children start stereotyping before even they know what the stereotypes actually are since they have been brought up in an environment that they have known that certain traits or activities are appropriate or inappropriate for them. They then tend to internalize and that becomes the way to go or do things in their whole life.

Gender role is defined as the socially constructed and culturally specific behavior and appearance expectations imposed on women (femininity) and men (masculinity). Many girls are subjected to gender role stereotyping and different treatment Through socialization, individuals learn to behave in accordance with the expectations of others in the social order (Hult, 83.). Gender ideology is involved when one attaches a color such as pink and blue to sex and when one designates types of toys as male, female or neutral. Most play behavior is an outcome of gender role stereotyping that stems from cultural ideology. Early research provides that by first grade, boys recognize sports, whereas girls recognize grades

and the activities they encourage. In one study parents were asked to sort toys into masculine,