Patriarchy in the preschool classroom: Examining the effects of developmental ideologies on teachers’ perspectives and practices around play and gender

Abstract

Child development ideologies have long informed early childhood education, shaping teachers’ perceptions of children and their classroom practices through teacher education programs and education policies. Following the rise of post-developmental perspectives in the early childhood literature, the author uses a critical feminist lens to examine the gendered implications child development ideologies have had on teachers’ perspectives and practices in a Canadian metropolis. Drawing on data collected in four preschool classrooms, the author argues that the preschool teachers’ reliance on child developmental logics inadvertently perpetuated a patriarchal culture in their classrooms, as gendered power dynamics went unnoticed and unaddressed in children’s play. The author concludes by exploring the possibilities that MacNaughton’s concept of the feminist pedagogic gaze may afford early learning practices and future directions for research.

Introduction

One morning in Sara’s preschool classroom, four-year-old Adiva played by herself with the dollhouses located at the back of the room. ¹ She placed figurines and tiny furniture in both the colourful plastic dollhouse and in the brown wooden dollhouse. As she set up the dollhouses, Scott and Ethan ran to them, howling and flying around several superhero figurines and cars in their hands and, without acknowledging Adiva’s presence, they flipped over the colourful plastic house with their arms and began to fill the doorway and windows of the house with their bundles of figurines and cars. All the tiny furniture and figurines that Adiva had carefully placed fell out. Adiva frowned and seemed upset, but she did not speak to the boys. Instead, she stared at them as they undid her work in the colourful dollhouse. She then turned away and continued to play by herself with the brown wooden dollhouse. Shortly after, the boys ran back to the carpet area, leaving the plastic dollhouse turned over on its side and the tiny furniture scattered on the table and floor.

Critical feminists would argue that the male domination salient in the play episode described above is neither exclusive to it nor to a preschool classroom. Patriarchy pervades western culture, extending into the seemingly fun spaces of children’s play. Yet, when teachers have to address situations like this in their classrooms, they often turn to developmental logics, leaving unequal gendered power dynamics in children’s play unnoticed and unaddressed. Indeed, when the teacher, Sara, and I spoke about the interaction described above, Sara gathered through her developmentalist pedagogic gaze (MacNaughton, 1997, 2000) that ‘sometimes [children] will come and tell me right away or they’ll try and say “no” … but she was the one that doesn’t talk much, Adiva? She won’t say much. She’s very shy’. Sara’s focus on Adiva’s assumed lack of communication and social skills rather than on the boys’ destructive behaviour illustrated to me how the dominance of developmental logics in early childhood education shapes teachers’ pedagogic gaze in ways that fixate it on the individual child, making invisible the broader social context. According to Russell (2011), a developmental logic frames early learning as a time to support individual children’s social, emotional and cognitive growth. Consequently, as children are seen and treated as undeveloped individuals, little attention is often paid to the unequal gendered power dynamics that children reproduce in their play in preschool.

Russell (2011: 239) refers to logics as ‘not only ideas but also … sets of practices and approaches that become bundled together’. Indeed, play has been established as a developmentally appropriate pedagogy for early learning to support children’s growth across the various developmental domains and stages and expected milestones. Following this trend, in 2001, the Québec Ministry of Education, Sports and Leisure implemented a preschool reform and introduced the Québec Education Program, which mandates play to be an important part of preschool education, particularly for nurturing children’s development across the five developmental domains and for promoting growth across six competencies. However, studies show that while play may be beneficial for children’s learning and development, it is also a space where gender inequalities can be reproduced (Blaise, 2005; Martin, 2011). For instance, MacNaughton (2000) found that the boys in her study often dominated the blocks centre, making it difficult for girls to access the space and thus limiting girls’ exposure to block play, which the Québec Education Program states is an important part of play as ‘children develop their motor skills, interact with others and apply strategies to create their constructions’ (Ministry of Education, 2001: 53). Unequal gendered power dynamics may, therefore, limit children’s access to spaces and learning opportunities during play.

In this article, I show how relying exclusively on child development logics can work to silence such gendered power dynamics in children’s play at school. I argue that the teachers’ pedagogic gaze, which focused on the individual child, worked inadvertently to maintain a patriarchal culture in their preschool classrooms. In what follows, I take up Blaise’s (2005, 2014) post-developmental framework in my investigation of a preschool education program in a Canadian metropolis. I do this by drawing on a critical feminist theoretical lens to unpack four teachers’ perceptions and assumptions of preschool children and practices, and to show the implications that child development logics had for addressing (or not) gender power in their students’ play. I begin by outlining the critical feminist theoretical lens that informs this article. I then discuss the research context and background. Following this, I present three themes that emerged from my analysis of the data: teachers’ belief that play is important for young children, that gender differences are natural but also learned, and that preschoolers are too young to know about gender. I demonstrate how these assumptions are informed by child development ideologies and how they affected teacher practice in ways that limited their capacities to address gender inequalities in their classrooms. I conclude by drawing on MacNaughton’s (1997) feminist pedagogic gaze to explore possibilities for future practice and research.

The rise of post-developmentalism in early childhood education research

Post-developmentalism has been a growing trend in the early childhood literature. Blaise (2005: 3) describes post-developmentalism as ‘alternative theoretical frameworks that can assist us to make sense of teaching, learning, and young children in new ways. [It] is a broad term used to define alternative perspectives that question modernist assumptions of truth, universality, and certainty’. The growing emphasis on post-developmentalism in early childhood education research is fuelled by a need to reconceptualize the beliefs and practices that have been steeped in developmental ideologies and have long informed early childhood education programs. The move towards post-developmentalism can, therefore, work to promote early learning pedagogies that focus on supporting equity and social justice, rather than reaffirming the current overemphasis on the development and progress of individual children. In order to contribute to the post-development movement in early childhood education research, I use a feminist lens informed by critical theory to examine how the teachers’ perceptions of children as informed by child development ideologies affected their practice in ways that inadvertently sustained a patriarchal culture in their preschool classrooms.

Burman (1994, 2008, 2017) has long argued that developmental psychology is historically rooted in efforts to establish truth claims about human development that have been naturalized through positivist-informed research founded on patriarchal ideologies and androcentric discourses. Burman challenges the notion of the natural individual child produced by developmental psychology by highlighting that conceptions of children and childhood are socially constructed. Following Burman’s critique, I use a critical feminist lens to shift our focus away from the individual child, as constructed through developmental discourses, towards the gendered power relations that permeate and affect children’s lives. According to Wood (2008), critical theories intend to identify prevailing structures and practices that maintain inequities, and aim to uncover the ideologies that shape people’s understanding of reality. As feminist theories bring gender analysis to the forefront, critical feminism aims to deconstruct the effects of patriarchy on our social world. I want to emphasize critical because not all feminist theories may be productive for challenging developmental logics and working towards equitable educational practices in early learning. As MacNaughton (1997, 2000) has argued, liberal feminist theories, for instance, are unlikely to challenge the individualistic and naturalistic conceptions of children – two of the major facets underpinning child development logics that post-developmentalism aims to problematize. Therefore, through a critical feminist lens, I examine how the dominant cultural structures that have underpinned teacher education programs and early learning policies, and that have, thereby, informed teacher perceptions and the mundane practices of the preschool classroom, may work to uphold a patriarchal culture in preschools.

Examining early childhood education in four Montréal preschool classrooms

In 2001, Québec’s Ministry of Education, Sports and Leisure implemented a new program called the Québec Education Program, which included a reform of preschool education. The effectuated preschool program is premised on ‘Learnings Specific to Early Childhood Development’ and outlines six competencies that children are to develop during their time in preschool: affirm his/her personality; perform sensorimotor actions; complete an activity or project; construct his/her understanding of the world; communicate; and interact harmoniously with others. These competencies are to be achieved through a child-centred pedagogy that promotes ‘The child’s life experiences’ and ‘The child’s world of play’ (Ministry of Education, 2001: 53). In 2017, the ministry introduced a complementary document that outlines the program’s aim to nurture five areas of development – physical and motor, emotional, social, language, and cognitive – emphasizing the global development of the child, with play being ‘the natural way for children to explore and understand the world around them’ (Ministère de l’Éducation, 2017: 6). The ministry mandates that play be given a central place in preschool education and that teachers plan sufficient time and space for play in their classrooms. In both documents, play is described as a necessary and developmentally appropriate pedagogy for young children to develop to their full potential.

Given the gender inequalities prevalent in children’s play (Blaise, 2005; MacNaughton, 2000; Martin, 2011; Thorne, 1993), I sought to explore teachers’ perceptions of the gendered implications of implementing play in their classrooms. Using a qualitative research design, I spent three days in four preschool classrooms located in four English elementary schools in Montréal. During my visits, I carried out participant observation during the children’s play periods and three semi-structured interviews with each teacher. Member checking was also carried out during the third visit, where the teachers and I discussed the preliminary themes that emerged from my first two visits. Data analysis consisted of a thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2009) of the interview transcripts and my field notes. Three themes emerged from the data: the belief that play is important for young children, that gender differences are natural but also learned, and that preschoolers are too young to know about gender. In the following sections, I unpack these themes to show how the teachers’ reliance on child developmental logics in their implementation of play and understandings of children’s interactions during play silenced the gender dynamics prevalent in the children’s play and thereby maintained a patriarchal culture in the classroom. The selected quotes are representative of the themes that emerged in the analysis, and the selected play examples reflect the reoccurring instances of male domination that unfolded in these classrooms.

Preschool teachers’ perceptions and classroom practices around play and gender

‘Especially at this level, play is important’ (Sara)

The discussions I had with the teachers and my classroom observations during play revealed that play was seen as an important pedagogy for children’s growth across the developmental domains and, as mandated by the Québec Education Program, was implemented in the classrooms on a daily basis. Megan explained that: ‘Play is very important in preschool. That’s how they learn, through play. I do a lot of my observations at that time on how they interact socially with each other’. Similarly, Sara stated that: ‘Play needs to be part of children’s school day because they are learning how to be social; it builds social skills. And I find that through play they learn to share and take turns. That’s very important’. The teachers in this study emphasized the importance of play for nurturing children’s social development, particularly around sharing and turn-taking. Promoting children’s social development in preschool education is a cornerstone of child development logics and has become one of the core values of implementing a play-based pedagogy in early learning settings. However, the exclusive reliance on nurturing children’s individual progress in their social development, or among any of the other developmental domains, worked to silence the gendered power imbalances that permeated the children’s interactions during play.

In the play episode outlined at the start, for instance, Adiva was seen by her teacher as still working on those social milestones in play – that is, by the age of four, children should be playing with others and negotiating play spaces and materials. By relying on such child development theories, Sara’s observation and understanding of the play episode focused on the belief that Adiva was not yet able to communicate effectively and participate in a developmentally appropriate way in group play situations, which inadvertently supported a victim-blaming discourse. In our conversation around this play episode, Sara did not consider that Adiva’s silence may have been due to her feeling unsafe around two dominant boys aggressively taking over the play space. Indeed, research shows that certain boys often dominate play environments, including those spaces that are typically associated with femininity and in which girls tend to play, sometimes to seek refuge from male domination in other spaces (Davies, 2003; Martin, 2011). Moreover, as Sara did not intervene in the play – a practice that developmental logics often promotes – Adiva was left alone to navigate the male domination in this play episode.

When a similar play episode arose in the other classrooms, some of the teachers took a different approach and instead intervened in the children’s play. However, by maintaining a developmental pedagogic gaze and not considering the gender power imbalances, girls still did not receive the necessary support to navigate male domination in play. For instance, one morning in Laurie’s classroom, I sat with two students, Anna and Julia, in the building centre as they built with the soft blocks. A short while into the play, another student, Marc, joined us. Marc quickly began sharing his ideas on how Anna and Julia should build their tower, but they ignored his suggestions and continued to build together. After several attempts by Marc, the girls eventually included him. However, Marc quickly took over the play by placing blocks on the tower in places not agreed upon by the group, and then knocked over the tower. Anna became upset and left the building area. Julia, also upset, wandered in and out of the area, attempting to build a new tower. Marc began to build a tower on his own and asked Julia to join him, but she told him that she wanted to build the tower her way. They began to argue. Laurie, who was nearby, intervened by asking Julia and Marc to share the blocks and practise building a tower together. Julia and Marc proceeded to build a tower together, but Marc insisted on telling Julia where to place the blocks. Julia became upset and left the building centre.

Playing together and sharing materials with others are indeed important social skills to learn in preschool. However, since not all children can access classroom play spaces and material resources equally, encouraging children to share may not always reflect equitable practice. Indeed, studies have found that girls have limited access to block play (Blaise, 2005; MacNaughton, 2000; Thorne, 1993). Martin (2011) shows that as block play is typically associated with masculinity, certain boys tend to have greater access to the space and a greater sense of entitlement when playing in the space. When girls do access the building centre, what they can do at this centre can be limited, as seen in this play episode. Therefore, by focusing on individual children’s social development without considering the broader social context, encouraging Marc and Julia to play together and share at the building centre worked to maintain Marc’s domination in this space, and the unequal power imbalance between Marc and Julia remained intact. Both Julia and Anna were unable to use the centre to its full potential, limiting their learning opportunities at the building centre.

Following the expectations outlined by Québec’s Ministry of Education, the teachers in this study implemented play and adopted a developmentalist pedagogic gaze in their observations and explanations of children and children’s play. Blaise (2005: 2) explains that teachers may rely on developmental logics because they feel a responsibility ‘to know where each child in their care is at developmentally and then construct a developmentally appropriate curriculum based on these observations’. Teachers are often limited to this approach to teaching as policy mandates and early learning programs require it. For instance, one of the teachers in this study, Megan, stated:

I look at the QEP [Québec Education Program] to figure out what to put in the centres because there are some things that are specific for the competencies and under each competency you’ll see the observations that we’re supposed to be evaluating for each child.

Dominant discourses around perceptions of good teaching in early childhood education may, in some instances, position teachers as powerful; in other instances, teachers may be constrained by these discourses. As Blaise (2005) explains, following child development rhetoric allows teachers to feel confident in their practice as they believe they are following the right way to teach young children. However, teachers may also feel limited in their practice as they mirror policy rhetoric for fear of professional repercussions and backlash from superiors, parents and colleagues. As Grieshaber and McArdle (2010) highlight, play is not only a vehicle for ensuring children’s proper development and learning, but also a space where power relations transpire. Consequently, as teachers strive to adhere to child development logics, attending to the larger social context and its social justice issues is often left at the periphery, and power relations are silenced in children’s play at school.

‘The environment definitely plays a role, but it could be innate too … It’s definitely within them, but it’s also the space’ (Hannah)

Leaving gender at the periphery in early learning teaching discourses can limit teachers’ perceptions of gender and childhood and the potential for equitable practice in the classroom. When speaking with the teachers in this study about the effects of gender in children’s play, they expressed uncertainty in knowing about the role of gender in children’s play. For instance, when Laurie and I discussed why the girls in her classroom are less likely to play in the building centre, she responded: ‘They do enjoy it, but I think that the girls, hmmm, seriously, that’s a really tough question’. Similarly, when Hannah and I discussed the role of gender when setting up play centres, she expressed: ‘I mean, all centres are pretty open to boys and girls, so, I mean, I’m not necessarily – I don’t know if I keep gender roles in mind. I don’t know that I do that. That’s a good question’. Having little to draw on to understand the role of gender in children’s play, the teachers in this study struggled to make sense of the gender issues that we observed in their classrooms.

The lack of attention given to gender issues within the dominant discourses of early childhood education may lead teachers to rely on what might be described as common-sense beliefs of gender as a biological and therefore natural phenomenon, and as passively learned through sex-role socialization. Blaise (2014: 115) explains that such an understanding of gender reflects ‘a developmental logic because it begins with the sexed child who, over time and through experiences, is socialized into and naturally becomes gendered’. The belief that gender is natural, for instance, was particularly evident in the teachers’ comments about the aggressive behaviour some of the boys exhibited during play. Hannah explained that: ‘I think [the boys] are just being themselves. I think they’re just more physical. They use actions more … Girls are a lot softer and more mild mannered and they’re not as aggressive as the boys are’. Drawing on a ‘boys will be boys’ discourse, Hannah further explained that, in the kitchen centre,

I set aside two plastic knives that you’re supposed to use for cutting when you’re eating; instead, the boys are using them as swords. I don’t know … they just want to be boys. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Sara also drew on biological discourses when discussing a picture she had taken of five boys dressed in construction outfits, as she stated: ‘I think I see more the boys doing it. It’s funny how we’re made like that’. However, in other conversations, the teachers also drew on sex-role socialization discourses to explain gender differences in children’s play. For instance, Laurie stated: ‘It’s really about what their parents show them. You know what I mean, like what they see on TV’. Similarly, Megan thought that: ‘Maybe parents are starting to say, “Oh, those are toys for boys and these are toys for girls”. Maybe it’s being accepted at home’. As Kamler (1994) shows, powerful gender discourses and practices from the home and peers enter the classroom and are often valued by children. In an effort to promote child-centredness, teachers may feel limited in their practice as they strive to include and support children’s values and interests. As Sara explained: ‘You can’t tell [the girls] “No, today you’re going to try building. You’re not going to go [in the kitchen centre]”’.

However, Blaise (2005) argues that leaving dominant gender discourses unaddressed can be problematic as they reinforce the assumption of a natural gender dichotomy and the misconception that children necessarily have and/or develop distinct interests and ways of being based on the gender binary. Consequently, as gender was understood through the western logic to be natural (biological) and passively learned based on biological traits (socialization), children’s behaviours appeared to be fixed and unchangeable, which worked to silence male domination in the children’s play. For instance, when Sara and I discussed the play episode described at the beginning of this article, Sara did not comment on Ethan’s and Scott’s behaviour at the dollhouses. The teacher’s gaze instead was exclusively on the individual child, Adiva, who was not progressing according to the expected developmental path. Since boys’ aggressive behaviour is justified through biological determinism and sex-role socialization theories, rather than perceived as an expression of male domination, the onus for playing positively together was placed exclusively on Adiva. Sara’s response to the play episode suggests that it was up to Adiva to advance in her social and communication development to be able to deal with Ethan’s and Scott’s behaviour at the dollhouses, rather than problematizing and addressing Ethan’s and Scott’s spatial domination. As Burman (2017) reminds us, the notion of the individual child is often left unquestioned in developmental discourses. As such, Burman explains that ‘developmental psychological models abstract the individual from social context, to render class, culture and gendered positions as merely supplementary attributes to, rather than as constitutive of, the developing subject’ (277). Consequently, the teachers in this study had little resources to discern and address gendered power dynamics in the children’s play, leaving male domination to appear natural and unchangeable.

‘At this age, they don’t associate pink with girl and blue with boy’ (Megan)

The dominance of developmental logics disseminated through teacher education programs and early learning policies can limit teachers’ conceptions of children as active social actors in their gender constructions and performances. As Blaise (2005: 18) posits: ‘Traditional early childhood discourses often position young children as naïve, passive, and powerless, making children’s agency difficult to recognize’. Such misrecognition manifests through child development understandings of childhood as a sequence of developmental stages, which positions children as adults in the making and thus as becoming rather than agentic beings (Bhana, 2003; Davies, 2003; Osgood, 2014; Thorne, 1993). Consequently, as Cannella (1997) has argued, children are constructed as innocent and unknowing. Moreover, the prominence of biological and sex-role socialization understandings of gender further positions children as having little agency in their gender constructions. Blaise (2005: 11) explains that, within biological understandings of gender, children are perceived to be ‘just born that way’ and, within socialization understandings of gender, children are ‘just doing what they see’. How children actively reproduce the gender social order from a young age is silenced by these dominant discourses.

Perceptions of children as becoming rather than agentic beings may lead to the assumption that children are too young to understand complex social issues, such as gendered power dynamics, and can be therefore seen as not implicated in the production of unequal power dynamics. Indeed, the teachers in this study suggested that preschool children are too young to know about gender – a finding that prevailed in other studies (Bhana, 2003; MacNaughton, 2000). For instance, in a discussion on differences in children’s play, Megan explained that: ‘It’s personality more than anything. I don’t think the differences in children’s play has anything to do with gender’. Similarly, Laurie stated: ‘I haven’t noticed gender [affecting their play]. They don’t really go by gender’. However, studies show that gender plays a salient role in children’s play, and many children work hard to position themselves as what is perceived to be socially acceptable within the gender binary (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 2003; Francis, 1998; MacNaughton, 2000). It may therefore be common to see girls mostly playing with kitchen sets and dolls, and boys with blocks and vehicles, for instance, as children actively position themselves in what is seen as socially appropriate behaviour for their gender. Importantly, children may also resist gender norms in their play. However, as child development discourses position preschool children as too young to be aware of gender, such instances were often treated as innocent and comical play, rather than important instances of gender-bending. For instance, Megan explained: ‘The boys would actually dress up and they would wear the heels and the crown and the little purse … it was more of a “look at me, laugh at me” kind of thing’. In such instances of gender-bending, children may then not receive the necessary support when countering dominant gender norms in their play at school.

The assumption that children are developmentally too young to know about gender can influence teacher practice in ways that may inadvertently uphold a patriarchal culture in their classroom. For instance, returning to the play episode described at the start, as Ethan’s and Scott’s behaviour at the dollhouses was seen and treated as natural and normal for boys, rather than as the boys actively performing hegemonic masculine behaviours, this suggests that Sara also perceived this behaviour as unintentional. Consequently, that the boys actively and intentionally exercised their male privilege and power to access the space in which Adiva was playing went unnoticed, and the unfairness of the interaction was not addressed. Moreover, as Sara’s gaze focused exclusively on Adiva as a child not yet able to speak up, that Adiva was aware of the male domination and the power imbalance in that particular play episode also went unnoticed. Instead, Adiva was positioned as lacking and lagging in her social development and communication skills, rather than seen as actively choosing not to speak up to avoid a risky interaction. Consequently, as the male domination went unaddressed and Adiva was seen as still working on attaining those communication and social milestones, Adiva did not receive the adequate support to navigate the patriarchal interaction that unfolded in this play episode.

Redressing gender in early childhood education programs: recommendations for practice

Given the findings outlined above, I turn to MacNaughton’s (1997) concept of the feminist pedagogic gaze to discuss how teachers could better attend to gendered power imbalances in children’s play in preschool. According to MacNaughton, a feminist reconstruction of the teacher’s pedagogic gaze is needed in order to redress the marginalization of gender issues in the preschool classroom. She shows that relying exclusively on a developmentalist pedagogic gaze can support and reproduce sexist gender relations in the classroom. Through a case study, MacNaughton found that shifting towards a feminist pedagogic gaze allowed the teacher in her study to privilege gendered power dynamics in her observations, and thus strengthened the teacher’s search for sexism in interactions between children. As MacNaughton outlines, a feminist pedagogic gaze is different from a developmentalist pedagogic gaze as it uses power as the observational criterion. Instead of looking for individual children’s developmental progress, as one would with a developmentalist pedagogic gaze, a feminist pedagogic gaze allows the teacher to trace how gendered power relations are being constructed between children. Teachers can then use these observations to build a practice that effectively addresses gendered power imbalances in children’s play at school.

For instance, by taking on a feminist pedagogic gaze in her observations of children’s play, the teacher in MacNaughton’s case study noticed that implementing free play in her classroom created a context where children exhibited sexist behaviours. Her observations led her to conclude that intervening in children’s play was necessary in order to attend to and prevent sexist relations, despite the traditional notion that so-called good teaching in preschool means not intervening in children’s play. Such an observation could lead teachers to implement other forms of play in their classrooms, such as guided play, where there is greater teacher involvement in the children’s play. MacNaughton cautions, however, that unless power is at the forefront of the teacher’s feminist pedagogic gaze, intervening can run the risk of maintaining sexist gender relations, despite a teacher’s effort to prioritize gender. For instance, in noticing that girls were less likely to play in the blocks centre, Megan sometimes put toys with which girls usually played in the blocks centre to encourage girls to play there. While this led to more girls playing at the blocks centre, it still reinforced the notion of a natural gender binary and did not redress the gender power imbalance between girls and boys at the blocks centre. A feminist pedagogic gaze that brings power to the forefront shifts the teacher’s understanding of children away from the individual child to focus instead on the wider social context and the ways in which children actively construct and reproduce gendered power relations in their play interactions. Such an understanding of children and their play may then allow teachers to intervene in ways that directly address gendered power imbalances and more effectively redress gender inequalities in children’s play.

The teacher in MacNaughton’s (1997) study, for instance, intervened by stopping instances of male domination as they happened, and particularly at times when girls could witness the intervention. Such intervention communicates to all children that it is not acceptable for certain boys to take over a particular play centre, for instance. In this study, Hannah often aimed to implement timed rotations during play, when time permitted. Timed rotations could be a useful practice for attending to gendered power dynamics as they allow children to experience different play areas, and it reduces the possibility of certain children dominating certain spaces for an entire play period. Informed by their feminist pedagogic gaze, teachers can then also select the peers with whom children will rotate to the different play areas in order to mitigate power imbalances between certain children in an effort to reduce the possibility of certain children dominating others. The teacher can then rotate among the different play areas as well in order to notice and attend to issues of unfairness and support equitable play. As teachers rotate among the different play areas, they may also explicitly problematize and scrutinize narrow gender norms and expectations with children as they arise in order to create space for alternative ways of playing and being that are more inclusive. For instance, teachers can encourage children to take on roles and use materials that are perceived as not typically associated with their gender. As in the example where some boys put on heels and wore purses in Megan’s classroom, for instance, teachers can use such opportunities to question and problematize gender norms around clothing with their students. Teacher presence and intervention in children’s play is important to address gendered power imbalances and provide students with support to resist normative gender expectations and domination from peers.

While the focus of a feminist pedagogic gaze described above is on noticing gendered power dynamics in children’s play, I would highlight that using power as the observational criterion may also allow teachers to notice intersecting power dynamics, such as racist and classist relations in children’s play. As a girl of colour, Adiva faced spatial domination by two white boys, which further complexified the interaction which took place in that particular play episode. Attending to gender power only may oversimply and silence the nuances of the interactions that unfold and which children have to navigate on a daily basis in play at school. Limiting the feminist pedagogic gaze to gender power may then limit how teachers can intervene in children’s play. The increased awareness of intersectionality in understanding power imbalances in children’s play can lead to more effective actions and practices by teachers that challenge the inequalities being produced among children in the preschool classroom. As such, future steps for research involve investigating how a feminist pedagogic gaze can attend to intersecting axes of power in children’s interactions in play at school.

Conclusion

Analysis of the data collected in four preschool classrooms revealed that the teachers in this study relied on developmental logics in their classrooms and, as MacNaughton (1997) would describe it, a developmental pedagogic gaze in their play observations. Child development ideologies, however, can position children as having little agency, as unknowing, innocent and incomplete. Such perceptions of children worked to silence the gendered power dynamics present in the children’s interactions during play, as the children were perceived to be too young to know about gender. Instead, play was implemented exclusively as a pedagogy to nurture children’s growth across the various developmental domains and achieve the Québec Education Program’s six competencies. Silencing gender in young children’s lives can limit the support children may require to navigate unequal power relations in their play at school, which may not only maintain a patriarchal culture in the preschool classroom, but also adversely affect children’s learning opportunities in preschool. The need for a shift towards post-developmentalism in early childhood education is therefore an urgent one. Importantly, more research is needed to deepen our understanding and practice of the feminist pedagogic gaze in order to attend to intersecting power dynamics in children’s play. Teachers require the necessary resources and support to better address power imbalances in their classrooms and to be able to respond to children’s lived realities in more equitable ways.