ERIC Number: EJ1402288
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1463-9491
Sexuality Education and Early Childhood Educators in Ontario, Canada: A Foucauldian Exploration of Constraints and Possibilities
Davies, Adam W. J.; Simone-Balter, Alice; van Rhijn, Tricia
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, v24 n4 p394-410 2023
Open conversations regarding sexuality education and gender and sexual diversity with young children in early childhood education settings are still highly constrained. Educators report lacking professional training and fearing parental and community pushback when explicitly addressing these topics in their professional practices. As such, gender and sexual diversity and conversations of bodily development are left silenced and, when addressed, filtered through heteronormative and cisnormative frameworks. Through a Foucauldian post-structural lens, this article analyses data from open-ended qualitative questions in a previous research study regarding early childhood educators' perceptions on discussing the development of sexuality in early learning settings in an Ontario, Canada context. Through this Foucauldian post-structural analysis, the authors discuss forms of surveillance and regulation that early childhood educators experience in early learning settings regarding the open discussion of gender and sexuality. The authors explore how both the lack of explicit curricula addressing gender and sexuality in the early years in Ontario and taken-for-granted notions of developmentally appropriate practice, childhood innocence, and the gender binary -- employed in discourses of sexuality education in the early years -- regulate early childhood educators' professional practices. The authors provide recommendations which critique the developmentalist logics -- specifically, normative development -- that are used to silence non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities in the early years, while articulating the need for explicit curricula for educators in the early years regarding gender and sexuality in young children.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Sexuality, Sex Education, Early Childhood Teachers, Early Childhood Education, Gender Issues, Sexual Identity, Sexual Orientation, Controversial Issues (Course Content), Barriers, Social Bias
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2993
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A