This volume examines gendered and heteronormative norms embedded within early childhood education (ECE) in the Global South, including Brazil, China, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam. In this book, the contributors explore how gender, culture, religion, masculinity, sport, and conservative politics intersect to perpetuate and resist gendered and sexual norms. The book presents a range of possibilities for disrupting and challenging these norms within early childhood educational contexts. Grounded in colonial and postcolonial discourses, the book emphasises the entanglement of gender and sexuality in ECE with legacies of colonisation and surrounding social and cultural dynamics, highlighting our responsibility to address gender inequalities and injustices. The book will appeal to researchers, faculty, and teacher educators with interests in gender and sexuality in education, international and comparative education, and early childhood education.

Adriany explores gender discourses in early childhood education in Indonesia, as well as how teachers and children are engaged in the process of constructing, negotiating, and resisting dominant gender discourses in kindergartens. Using an ethnographic approach, Adriany explores how both the teachers and children are doing and undoing their gender. She adopts feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial theories through her research and, in that context, views gender as something fluid and unfixed. The book also investigates the methodological aspect where the authors have both an inside and outside perspective. Each chapter aims to present and complicate the taken-for-granted practices in kindergartens that relate to how gender and power are constructed. The findings of this book show the extent to which early childhood education becomes a space for the teachers and children to construct, negotiate, as well as resist dominant gender discourses in kindergartens. Offering insights into local and global contexts that shape gender values in early years, this book will be a valuable reference for researchers, scholars, and students in early childhood education, gender studies, and comparative education.

This book is an ethnography of teachers and children in grades 1 and 2, and presents arguments about why we should take gender and childhood sexuality seriously in the early years of South African primary schooling. Taking issue with dominant discourses which assumes children’s lack of agency, the book questions the epistemological foundations of childhood discourses that produce innocence. It examines the paradox between teachers’ dominant narratives of childhood innocence and children’s own conceptualisation of gender and sexuality inside the classroom, with peers, in heterosexual games, in the playground and through boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. It examines the nuances and finely situated experiences which draw attention to hegemonic masculinity and femininity where boys and girls challenge and contest relations of power. The book focuses on the early makings of gender and sexual harassment and shows how violent gender relations are manifest even amongst very young boys and girls. Attention is given to the interconnections with race, class, structural inequalities, as well as the actions of boys and girls as navigate gender and sexuality at school. The book argues that the early years of primary schooling are a key site for the production and reproduction of gender and sexuality. Gender reform strategies are vital in this sector of schooling.

The Routledge Companion to Girls’ Studies is the definitive guide to the international, interdisciplinary, and intersectional field of Girls’ Studies, bringing together leading and emerging scholars across a range of academic disciplines to address timely topics on global girls and girlhoods. Spread across four thematic sections, the essays in this collection offer a glimpse into the evolution of the field, directly challenge and move beyond the field’s early shortcomings, provide compelling examples of current research, and suggest new directions for future Girls’ Studies scholars. Chapters explore the connections between girlhoods and such topics as sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, education, activism, social-class, ability, gender identity, media representation, and more. The Routledge Companion to Girls’ Studies is of value to scholars and students of gender studies, media studies, sociology, education, health, literature, sexuality studies, communication, child and youth studies, and more.

Synthesizing conversations from across gender and sexuality education, race and settler-colonialism studies, and care work literature, Towards a Queer and Trans Ethic of Care in Education explores how queer and trans teachers of colour understand and practice care. Woven between narratives and scholarly literature, Owis theorizes a unique and radical new way of conceptualizing and practicing care in K-12 educational settings, proposing a "queer and trans ethic of care." This new ethic of care is argued for as both a theory and practice. It aims to challenge the embeddedness of white supremacy and settler-colonialism in K-12 classrooms, while offering a framework that can be applied in personal relationships, teaching and research in communities and higher education. Drawing on a study of participants in the Ontario educational system, Owis examines why care is critical in the community and in practice as an education. They then ask how a queer ethic of care can help us understand what it means to heal, thrive beyond survival, and provide care outside of the matrix of white supremacy and settler-colonialism. These considerations are crucially linked to critical points of intervention in academia, schooling environments and policy at the provincial, federal and global level, demonstrating the need for a radical, systemic overhaul to the way educational institutions practice and understand care. Challenging, educating and offering new ways of thinking about care for and with QTBIPOC communities, it will appeal to scholars and researchers of gender and sexuality studies, race and ethnicity in education, sociology, social work, and diversity and equity in education.

Drawing from bell hook’s 1999 book All About Love, this volume builds on theories of love as they relate to Black Girlhood in education, shedding light on educational practices rooted in love and exploring strategies for centering Black girls and love in Grades K-12. Bringing together voices of scholars, poets, and visual artists who theorize Black Girlhood, the collection pays particular attention to practices, acts, communities, and pedagogies of love. An antidote to the physical, emotional, and psychological violence to which Black girls in the United States are subjected on a daily basis at the hands of those who work in schooling environments, it shows how teachers, school leaders, community educators, and researchers might use love as a framework for changing the narrative and experiences of Black girls. Crucially, though, in conversation with negative aspects of how Black girls experience school, it argues for a shift in perspective that highlights the myriad of ways Black girls do and can receive love within schooling spaces. Read through one of the most influential Black feminist scholars of all time, it presents a novel alternative to the dearth of research that focuses on the violence, neglect, and exclusion Black girls experience in schools, expands the scholarship on Black girls, (re)centers love in the work that educators do, and connects theoretical orientations that characterize Black girl love to practice both in and outside of classrooms. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and educators working in the fields on urban education, race and ethnicity in education, gender studies, literacy, multicultural education, and diversity and equity in education.

The book provides a comprehensive theoretical exploration of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools drawing on critical insights from across the disciplines of sociology, psychology, history, and queer theory to present a robust theoretical foundation for school-wide approaches to LGBTQ+ inclusion. Examining key concepts such as minority stress and ‘post-gay’ identities, it offers a nuanced understanding of the historical attitudes and systemic oppression faced by the LGBTQ+ community. The chapters construct an ecological framework that highlights the unique challenges encountered by LGBTQ+ students and teachers in educational settings. This framework serves as the basis for a model that advocates for proactive measures in fostering an inclusive environment in schools. This includes the development of inclusive policies, practices, culture, and curricula. The book concludes by contemplating the potential applications of this model in Higher Education, extending its relevance beyond K-12 schools to also include universities and colleges. This volume will be valuable resource for researchers, scholars, educators, and policymakers interested in promoting LGBTQ+ inclusion in educational institutions, and with interests in gender and education, whole-school approaches, LGBTQ+, and diversity and inclusion more broadly.