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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Early childhood education Foucauldian discourse analysis gender diversity post-structuralism sexuality education

Approaches to sexuality education in Ontario, Canada are heavily contested as conversations continue regarding the place of comprehensive sexuality education within Ontario school boards and how such debates construct children and childhood (e.g. Bialystok, 2018, 2019; Bialystok et al., 2020; Davies, 2021; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Grace, 2018). Bialystok (2019: 17) defines comprehensive sexuality education as ‘an evidence-based, secular curriculum that covers sexual and physical development, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, gender and sexual diversity, sexual decision making, and healthy relationships, at a minimum’. Many different provinces in Canada have been striving to align their respective provincial sexuality education curricula in grade-school settings with liberal comprehensive values of gender and sexual diversity, bodily autonomy and consent (see Bialystok, 2019; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Davies et al., 2021; Grace, 2018).

The notion of childhood innocence is central to these debates, where childhood is considered a fixed, universal and normative developmental period (as opposed to adulthood), in which discourses about sexuality are constructed as disruptive to the ‘purity’ and ‘innocence’ of children – imagined through heteronormativity and cisnormativity (Bialystok et al., 2020; Robinson, 2013; Robinson and Davies, 2008). Developmentalism, which is key to the propagation of childhood innocence, reinforces the idea that children are cognitively too young to grasp conversations of gender and sexual diversity (Bialystok et al., 2020; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Robinson, 2013; Robinson et al., 2017). This notion of childhood innocence perpetuates heteronormative and cisnormative presumptions of childhood (Bialystok et al., 2020; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Robinson, 2013). Heteronormativity – a structure that constitutes heterosexual relationships as ideal and normative while repudiating and subjugating non-heterosexual relationships and sexualities (Warner, 1993) – is omnipresent within the early childhood education and care (ECEC) field, with heterosexuality established as the unmarked norm (Robinson, 2005a). As Robinson articulates:

despite the prevalence and dominance of the discourse that children are asexual beings, adults have, ironically, gone to great lengths to ‘control’ and police children's (and young adults’) sexual behaviours; in fact, moral panic often surrounds any perception of children being active sexual beings or being knowledgeable of sexuality issues. (Robinson, 2005b: 22)

As such, gender-normative practices become culturally intelligible by abjecting and othering that which is seen as gender-deviant (Butler, 1990). This contributes to cisnormativity, which Bauer et al. (2009: 356) define as ‘the expectation that all people are cissexual, in which those assigned male at birth always grow up to be men and those assigned female at birth always grow up to be women’ (see also Serano, 2007). In this article, we argue that the ECEC field monitors discussions of gender and sexuality – in terms of both educators’ ability to discuss gender and sexuality and the gendered subjectivities of children – as notions of childhood innocence are central within such discursive restraints. Accordingly, early childhood educators’ professional practices are regulated when addressing gender and sexual diversity, with associated risks (Robinson, 2005a) for educators openly addressing gender and sexuality. This article articulates areas of future work needed in the ECEC field and the constraints that educators encounter or fear when directly addressing gender and sexuality in their professional practices (see also Balter et al., 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021).

While some research investigates the constitution of heteronormativity and cisnormativity in early learning settings (e.g. Callahan and Nicholas, 2019; Gunn, 2011; Robinson, 2005a; Robinson and Jones Diaz, 2005), there is a need for more research regarding the ways in which early childhood educators are implicitly and explicitly regulated by other professionals, parents, and conservative discourses within the ECEC field. Surtees (2005: 19) delineates how early childhood educators’ professional practices are enacted through discourses that silence gender and sexual diversity within developmentalist discourses of stages and ages, which operate through an ‘unwritten code’. This unwritten code is reified through taken-for-granted ideas about development, sexuality, and children's innocence. As such, educators commonly have concerns with having the right responses to children's questions, with such uncertainty silencing open and explicit conversations of gender and sexual diversity (Surtees, 2005).

Theoretical framework

The French post-structural philosopher Michel Foucault (1990) described the socio-historical conditions that have constituted the heterosexuality–homosexuality binary and the psychologization and medicalization of homosexuality since the 19th century. Critical to his work are the notions of power/knowledge, discourse, and governmentality. Foucault described his theorization of discourse and discursive structures to elaborate how

all manifest discourse is secretly based on an ‘already-said’; and that this ‘already-said’ is not merely a phrase that has already been spoken, or a text that has already been written, but a ‘never-said’, an incorporeal discourse, a voice as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. (Foucault, 1972: 25)

Thus, for Foucault, knowledge is an effect of discourse – that is, discourse never exists on its own and continually holds productions and effects which are taken for granted as real and true (Mills, 2004). Mills (2004: 15) explains how ‘a discourse is something which produces something else (an utterance, a concept, an effect), rather than something which exists in and of itself and which can be analysed in isolation’. Thus, language is key in constructing and constituting what is taken as ‘reality’, with discourse limiting what is possible to be said, thought, or known (Foucault, 1972; Mills, 2004).

Foucault (1980) uses the term ‘power/knowledge’ to describe how taken-for-granted forms of knowledge are produced through regimes of power and accepted as true and given. Foucault (1980: 51) articulates how we must ‘make visible the constant articulation … of power on knowledge and of knowledge on power by understanding how the exercise of power itself creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information’. Through developmental discourses, children become objects of study, regulated under positivist regimes based in assessment and standardization (Burman, 2017; Foucault, 1980). Ultimately, these truths govern the behaviours and actions of educators and children as the state, power, and knowledge constitute and shape identities while normalizing and privileging accepted knowledges and ideas (Burman, 2017; Foucault, 1980). Under governmentality, power is normalized as tools of regulation that surveil, observe, and control educators’ and children's behaviours into ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ behaviours (Burns, 2013; Foucault, 1990; Robinson, 2013).

Foucault (1995) connects his theorization of governmentality to English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's design of the panoptic prison to explicate how societal institutions (schools, prisons, hospitals, etc.) function as structures that enforce and normalize relationships of power, which are imposed on individuals to regulate their behaviours as if they are constantly being watched. Foucault (1995: 202) notes how ‘power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up’. Thus, in thinking with Foucault, we consider how early childhood educators might operate under forms of theoretical panopticism (see Davies, 2021). We also acknowledge how this postulation is incomplete in the sense that we are theorizing the forms of regulation and surveillance that educators might feel based on their responses in our data and fears of parental and community pushback during conversations of gender and sexual diversity with children. Importantly, our theorization of panopticism also extends to how children are regulated and surveilled in their everyday interactions, particularly into gendered and sexually normative subjectivities (Burns, 2013; Davies et al., 2019; Ingrey, 2012).

Drawing on the post-structural theories of Foucault (1972, 1980, 1990, 1995), we examine how early childhood educators reported forms of regulation when discussing gender and sexual diversity in their professional practices, and the ramifications of heteronormative and cisnormative knowledges. Burns (2013: 88) notes how, while theory is 'often understood to remain in opposition to “practice”, [it] provides tools for disrupting the norms that structure everyday educational practices’. Such seemingly definitive separations between theory and practice fail to capture theory's importance in understanding and deconstructing the normative discourses and knowledges that are articulated within fields such as ECEC (Burns, 2013). We focus on how governmental surveillance and panopticism can impact the professional practices of early childhood educators in relation to sexuality education in the early years. To achieve this focus, we use Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA; Willig, 2013) to understand sexuality and sexual identities as socially contingent and constructed categories (Foucault, 1990; Jagose, 1996; Sullivan, 2003), as well as trans theories (Namaste, 2000; Serano, 2007) to understand the ways in which gender binaries and cisnormativity are enforced in early learning settings. We employ trans theories to pay specific attention to the ontology of embodiment for trans and gender non-binary individuals within what Namaste (2000: 13) calls the ‘compulsory sex/gender system’, and to counter notions that, ontologically, the body is solely a site of discursive construction (see also Serano, 2007). We articulate three themes – childhood innocence, developmentally appropriate practice (DAP), and the gender binary – and how each impacts educators’ ability to address gender and sexual diversity in the early years.

Sexuality education in ECEC

Although investigation of the benefits and possibilities of implementing sexuality education curricula within ECEC has begun (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021; Martin and Bobier, 2017; Robinson and Davies, 2017), discussions of gender diversity and sexuality in Ontario are limited and constrained by a lack of curricular guidance (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021) and predominately developmental frameworks (Balter et al., 2021; Davies, 2021; Malins, 2017). As such, children are commonly denied access to important information regarding their sexuality, impacting their ability to understand their bodies and boundaries, issues of public and private, consent and sexualized media, as well as non-heterosexual relationships and love (Balter et al., 2021; Davies, 2021; Davies et al., 2021; Robinson, 2013). Early childhood educators feel constrained, in part by parental surveillance, when wishing to discuss sexuality or gender diversity, as these topics are considered inappropriate for these settings and outside of the realm of child development (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021; Robinson and Davies, 2017).

Research context

This article presents a secondary analysis of the open-ended questions of a previous study examining early childhood educators’ perceptions of addressing the development of sexuality in early childhood (Balter et al., 2016, 2018). This mixed-methods study asked early childhood educators 30 questions (11 closed-ended, 10 open-ended, and 9 demographic questions), assessing their knowledge, comfort and willingness to address the development of sexuality in early childhood; they were completed by 64 early childhood educators in Ontario, Canada (for a detailed description of the methodology, see Balter et al., 2016, 2018). For the current article, we examined the responses to six open-ended questions:

To what extent do you think that early childhood educators today have the requirements to provide appropriate sex education for children?

To what extent is a preschool member of staff able to provide the right sex education through the everyday activities in preschool settings?

What characteristics should a member of preschool have to provide adequate sexuality education?

What might be the aims of sexual development and education of the child in preschool establishments?

What experience, training and/or resources do you have to address childhood sexuality?

Do you have any areas of concern with regard to sexuality education for children?

This research examined how early childhood educators are regulated through power/knowledge regimes in addressing the development of gender and sexuality in early learning settings. We analysed the qualitative data from the six open-ended questions collectively to investigate the general themes within the participants’ responses. The re-examination of the qualitative data was conducted using a constructionist epistemology, which ‘seeks to theorize the sociocultural contexts, and structural conditions, that enable the individual accounts that are provided’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 85), within a Foucauldian framework. FDA examines hegemonic discourses, ‘sets of statements that construct objects and an array of subject positions’ (Parker, 1994, cited in Willig, 2013: 380), exposing structures that ‘privilege those versions of social reality that legitimate existing power relations and social structures’ (Willig, 2013: 380). We followed Willig’s (2013) six-stage FDA process, focusing on the discursive constructions that arose contextually in the data (i.e. sexuality, educators, gender, children), the subject positions that arose (i.e. early childhood educators to children to parents), the relationship of the subjects to each other, and the regulation and surveillance of the subjects through Foucauldian concepts. Our FDA focus involved examining the relationships between the subject positions – ‘positions within networks of meaning that subjects can take up’ (Willig, 2013: 132) – of educators and children (Willig, 2013). We modelled our approach by following Lloyd and Finn (2017) through focusing on bridging FDA with Braun and Clarke’s (2006) work on thematic analysis to create thematic categories based on ‘the discursive construction of objects and subjects’ (Lloyd and Finn, 2017: 161).

Foucault (1979) discusses how subject positions create norms for inclusion and exclusion, which in FDA means that the subjective experience (i.e. thoughts, feelings, behaviours) of individuals is also regulated by their subject position (Willig, 2013). In particular, we paid close attention to how discursive constructions (i.e. objects of interest discussed in the data) such as ‘sexuality education in early childhood’ were discussed in our data in relationship with wider discourses (i.e. childhood innocence, DAP, and the gender binary), holding similarities with Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic discursive model (see Lloyd and Finn, 2017; Willig, 2013). As Willig (2013: 132) notes, possibilities for action and everyday practices are connected to discourses, which constrain and produce possibilities themselves. In analysing discursively produced subject positions, we explored how early childhood educators’ professional practices are potentially regulated if and when discussing sexuality or gender diversity with young children. Following Lloyd and Finn (2017), we bridged thematic analysis and FDA to draw connections between these approaches and see how our chosen themes, developed through a coding frame and stages of pattern-based analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Lloyd and Finn, 2017), might be connected to the discursive construction of subject positions (such as ‘early childhood educator’) and the limitations/possibilities for action (Willig, 2013), in terms of addressing gender and sexuality from these subject positions. In this sense, we present the main discursive themes that emerged within the analysis and connect these themes to how the subject position of ‘early childhood educator’ is regulated when addressing gender and sexuality in practice.

FDA: themes and discussion

We discuss the main discursive themes in the following sections, noting how these themes connected to the possibilities for action and constraints in professional practice for addressing gender and sexuality from the early childhood educator subject position. Our analysis is positioned around three main themes regarding the possibilities and constraints in early childhood educators’ professional practices when addressing gender and sexuality: childhood innocence, DAP, and the gender binary.

Childhood innocence

Childhood innocence is commonly deployed to control sexuality education in the early years by ensuring that adults’ beliefs determine what is appropriate for children and youth – that is, parents’ belief systems impact what is deemed ‘appropriate’ knowledge for children through the guise of ‘protection’ (Bhana, 2007; Bialystok, 2019). Much of the disciplining of children through discourses of childhood innocence takes place by parents holding authority over preserving the ‘innocence’ of children (Bialystok et al., 2020). This entails parents having the final say in regard to their child's exposure to new information from educators regarding gender and sexual diversity (Bialystok, 2018; Bialystok et al., 2020), and developmental ideas of ages and stages that deem children ‘not ready’ to learn about gender and sexual diversity (Surtees, 2005). Fears of parental pushback due to disrupting heteronormative and cisnormative beliefs and values can leave educators experiencing heightened surveillance, regulation, and concern regarding their everyday practices with children (Davies, 2021). As one participant articulated:

I am concerned, however, about being respectful of the culture, beliefs and values of our parent population. If curriculum were to change, there would need to be discussions from all key stakeholders and evidence to support the inclusion of SE [sexuality education] in the curriculum.

Another participant stated:

I think at the preschool stage, being aware of children's developmental stages regarding their own sexuality and remaining open to questions are a big factor in providing sexuality education. There is [a] difference between providing facts and imposing belie[f]s, and we walk a fine line between an honest answer to a question and undermining a family's belief system.

The tensions within educators’ awareness about family belief systems may regulate whether and how they address sexuality and gender through the guise of ‘respecting different beliefs’, whereby homophobic and transphobic beliefs are considered merely a philosophical or value difference. Foucault (1979: 172) expresses how regulatory regimes are articulated through an architecture that ‘provide[s] a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them’.

Through the regulatory regime of discourses of childhood innocence, children are kept outside the bounds of knowledge of gender and sexuality. The maintenance of childhood innocence was expressed by some of the participants, including one educator who said: ‘let them be children when they are children and worry about this other important (but not yet) stuff later on!!!’. Another commented: ‘I do not believe that all areas should be taught at the preschool level, specifically where babies come from and pleasure’. A third participant stated:

Children are asked to grow up way too quickly. We need to be aware of what we are teaching our children. Health class is a good time to bring up these topics but also, we need not give them every detail. It is important to keep our young as innocent as long as we can.

The goal of protecting innocence is inclusive of restricting information about sexuality and gender diversity (Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018; Robinson, 2013). Attempting to maintain innocence by omitting knowledge does not increase protection but makes young children more vulnerable to harm from adults and peers by not having open conversations about gender and sexuality (Balter et al., 2021; Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018; Robinson, 2013). We believe that this construct of childhood innocence becomes internalized by educators as something that regulates and silences open conversations about gender and sexuality in early learning settings (Robinson, 2005a, 2013). Stemming from 18th- and 19th-century western religious and romanticist writings (Robinson, 2013), childhood innocence discourses operated ideologically through notions of children being untainted by society (Bühler-Niederberger, 2015), while 19th-century psychiatry specifically sought the control and regulation of the development of children's sexuality (Foucault, 1990). Robinson and Davies (2008) note how discourses of childhood innocence are manufactured to reify binaries between adults and children, reinforcing the propagation of moral panics and the fear of disrupting the silencing of children's developing gender and sexuality.

DAP

The participants commonly described ideas of development and DAP throughout our data. We observed an unclear understanding of DAP related to regulating sexuality education through notions of ‘appropriateness’ and bodily development. Foucault articulates how, when analysing a discourse, it is important to trace

the decisions and regulations which are among its constitutive elements, its means of functioning, along with its strategies, its covert discourses and ruses, ruses which are not ultimately played by any particular person, but which are none the less lived, and assure the permanence and functioning of the institution. (Foucault, 1980: 38)

Therefore, DAP connects to the regulation and functioning of ECEC, with heterosexuality remaining the dominant unmarked norm in young children's everyday lives and practices in early learning settings. Moreover, within developmental discourses, heterosexuality is imagined as the ideal ‘outcome’ for children's development, with developmental and psychosocial understandings of childhood sexuality drawing predominately from Freud, who pathologized non-heterosexuality in childhood (Gunn, 2011). Consequently, DAP silences the development of an intentional curriculum, leaving educators without a clear understanding of how to discuss gender and sexuality. DAP is implicitly deployed in early childhood educators’ feelings of regulation and surveillance, which is critical to conceptualizing the participants’ data. While the developmental psychology literature and research addresses heteronormative and cisnormative ideas of ‘typical’ development, DAP, as a governing framework, has yet to incorporate ideas of gender and sexual development, and often reinforces the silencing of diverse genders and sexualities in the early years (Malins, 2017).

The participants acknowledged the importance of delivering DAP in addressing sexuality; however, they did not offer definitions. For example, one participant shared that ‘an ECE [early childhood educator] should be equipped to discuss age-appropriate sexual education of children’. Cognitive development was the most discussed DAP approach in addressing sexuality, as illustrated by the following comments:

I also have a very strong philosophy about being honest with children, by using language they can understand to discuss situations that they are experiencing.

I feel they are too young at preschool age to understand.

We have always used correct terms for body parts, respect for one's body and those of others. In play situations, if a child asks about body parts, differences in boys/girls, a dialogue is initiated that is appropriate to their understanding.

In this sense, DAP becomes a ‘learned discourse’ (Foucault, 1980: 47), replicating a binarization between ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ content (Timmons, 2019). The participants deployed ideas of ‘age appropriateness’ and developmental ideas of readiness to justify their approach to discussing sexuality education and gender diversity. Yet none of the participants noted having a governing document or framework to consult for explicit information on how to address gender and sexuality in the early years in their professional practice. Pacini-Ketchabaw and Pence trace the origins of the practices of DAP to 18th-century modernity, which intended

to develop an objective science and universal morality that would foster human emancipation and improve the human condition. Modernity was concerned with classification and description … [and] also provided the basis for structuralism, which was primarily concerned with discovering the rules, principles and laws that guide, form and shape people's actions … Many of the inequities and social injustices that prevail today are rooted in the modernist worldview. (Pacini-Ketchabaw and Pence, 2005: 6–7)

Despite this, DAP is the dominant framework that guides ECEC practice in Canada and the USA (Pacini-Ketchabaw and Pence, 2005).

Robinson (2013: 67) states how ‘teachers … often want to be reassured that their practices are developmentally appropriate’; however, a lack of information and guidance in sexuality education for young children (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021) suggests that gender and sexuality education in early childhood is ‘irrelevant and developmentally inappropriate’ (Robinson, 2013: 68). Early childhood educators who choose to address gender and sexuality with young children put themselves in a position of risk, which Robinson (2005a: 179 ) defines within the context of social justice education ‘as a thoughtful process, framed within individual agency and communal responsibilities for actively pursuing a different, but positive future’. Staying within the confines of childhood innocence and DAP maintains these ‘learned discourses’ (Foucault, 1980: 47), which enact heteronormativity and cisnormativity.

The gender binary

Early childhood educators who provided examples of addressing sexuality education in their professional practice still often relied on gender-binarized and cisnormative notions of children's bodily development, particularly in situations such as washroom usage. Many of the participants drew from developmentalist notions of children, articulating that sexuality education was for young children to ‘gain an understanding of the development of their body in relation to their peers’ and to ‘understand their bodily development functions and how it may vary between the genders’. These notions percolated throughout the responses as the participants drew from gender-essentialist, binarized, and cisnormative notions of children's development to advocate for the importance of sexuality education. One participant illustrated a conflation of sexuality, sex, and gender, stating that sexuality education in ECEC was important for children in ‘identifying their sexual being. For example: Girl or boy; Being able to identify differences; knowing the correct names (which should begin at home)’. These developmental knowledges about the developing bodies of children reproduce the taken-for-granted belief in the gender binary and cisnormative frameworks. Foucault (1980: 52) describes this interplay in how ‘the exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power’.

The aforementioned participant's conflation of sex, gender, and sexuality also holds harmful ramifications for young feminine boys, in particular. Young feminine boys experience forms of oppression that trans scholar Julia Serano (2007: 129) calls ‘effemimania’, or the societal debasement of femininity in boys and men. This connects to wider societal femmephobia (Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin, 2020) – the societal regulation, devaluation and subjugation of femininity (Hoskin, 2020). Importantly, Serano (2007) critiques such a conflation (e.g. the participant's statement ‘identifying their sexual being. For example: Girl or boy’) and how this equation of normative maleness with heterosexuality reinforces the gender policing of young boys. This echoes Hoskin’s (2020) description of how men who perform femininity are considered to be ‘stepping down’ within gendered hierarchies by performing femininity openly (see also Davies, 2020).

The participants also drew from notions of biologically essentialist and binarized discourses, noting that implementing sexuality education programmes in the early years can assist with understanding those 'differences'. One participant commented: ‘This is my body and that boys and girls are different and no one can touch my body, explain that there are boundaries’. Notably, the participants often identified the washroom as a space where children learn about genital differences and developmental norms, again relying on binarized and gender-essentialist understandings of bodily development. Therefore, the spatiality of the washroom becomes disciplinary in early learning settings and is employed in what Millei and Cliff (2014: 245) describe, drawing from Elias (1978), as ‘a “civilising space” where children are “taught” to shape their conduct to fit the norms’. The participants noted the specific importance of children gaining knowledge of sexuality so that they could ‘understand’ their developing bodies in the context of the washroom:

In the washroom, labelling body parts and different body parts or noticing different body parts – when children talk about their families – ‘he's a boy and she's a girl’ are phrases that are common, and children at an early age learn to label, but probably don't really understand why they have labelled it that way – same goes for ‘boy toys versus girl toys’.

The gender binary becomes reinscribed in washrooms, with children expected to employ what Foucault (1979: 37) terms a ‘mode of regulation’, whereby subjects learn to govern themselves and constitute their own subjectivities under disciplinary norms. Illustrating this kind of self-regulation and discipline under the notion of urinating (Davies et al., 2019; Ingrey, 2012), a participant noted how girls sit down while peeing and boys stand: ‘Boys and girls have different bodies (that's why, at our school, the girls use the potties and the boys can use the urinals)’. Here again, children are expected to come to understand themselves as biologically different through the disciplinary space of the washroom and how washrooms operate as ‘mechanisms for the regulation of phenomena of population’ (Foucault, 1980: 159). Such notions of biological differences or different bodies have been critiqued by trans scholars, who note the medicalization and disciplining of trans bodies through psychiatric and psychological medical knowledge (Bettcher, 2007; Namaste, 2000; Vipond, 2015). Early childhood educators’ common reliance on this notion of biological differences between boys’ and girls’ bodily development can reinforce transphobic violence, as noted by Bettcher (2007), through the idea that one's outer gender presentation is associated with an inner truth in terms of assigned sex at birth. The participants’ descriptions of different bodies and genitalia within the washroom space (associating boys standing at urinals and girls sitting on toilets to pee) can function to discipline young children's understandings of their gender identity by equating their sense of inner gender identity with specific body parts and binarized notions of bodily development (e.g. see Davies et al., 2019).

Davies et al. (2019) articulate how the gender binary is produced as a presumed truth in educational settings through power/knowledge dynamics that naturalize gender binaries, creating the socially accepted categories that continue to disenfranchise transgender and gender-non-binary children’s and students’ understandings of themselves (see also Ingrey, 2012). The disciplinary spatiality of binary washrooms in educational institutions, for example, operates to govern and regulate children's bodies and constitute their sense of self (Ingrey, 2012). Cisnormative beliefs and gender binaries also percolate within Ontario’s ECEC pedagogical documentation, including How does learning happen? (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014) and ‘Early learning for every child today’ (Best Start Expert Panel on Early Learning, 2007). One example of such a criterion for normative social development in ‘Early learning for every child today’ states that a child should be ‘often playing with children of the same sex with gender-specific toys’ (Best Start Expert Panel on Early Learning, 2007: 55; see also Balter et al., 2021).

The gender binary is pedagogically enshrined through early childhood educators’ approaches to teaching, what is discussed openly with children and families, and what is not discussed, or the hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968) of ECEC (see also Balter et al., 2018; Davies, 2021; Martin and Bobier, 2017). The lack of open conversations around gender diversity and an explicit curriculum regarding gender and sexual diversity can lead early childhood educators to unknowingly reinforce the gender binary, cisnormative beliefs, and presumptions regarding children's development and interests (Balter et al., 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021; Robinson and Davies, 2017), as seen in the participants’ referencing of the gender binary and cissexist ideas of anatomy (cited and described in Balter et al., 2018). Malins (2017) connects notions of DAP with the gender binary in her critical discourse analysis of Ontario’s ECEC curricula. Malins (2017) articulates how the centralization of the gender binary reinforces cisnormativity and the exclusion of transgender children in Ontario ECEC curricula by reifying notions that children's biological sex will inherently align with their respective gender identity and providing nocurricular space to interrupt gender-essentialist and stereotypical ideologies. Such notions pathologize gender diversity in childhood, 'Other' transgender and gender-non-conforming children, and also reinforce ideas of childhood innocence that position gender normativity as ideal (Malins, 2017). Governing frameworks and guidelines assisting educators with using gender-inclusive language through explicit guidelines and expectations for incorporating gender and sexuality into early years pedagogies can assist educators in deconstructing how their own biases might emerge when trying to discuss bodily development with young children (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021).

Recommendations and future research

Robinson reminds us that doing social justice work is a risk, as it interrupts dominant discourses:

Social justice pedagogy is about teaching and learning that deals with challenging and disrupting discourses (or common-sense or taken-for-granted ‘truths’) that underpin the inequities experienced by ‘minority’ cultures (including gender and sexual orientation), and focusing primarily on identifying and understanding the everyday relations of power, at both the micro and macro levels in society, that constitute and maintain these inequalities. (Robinson, 2005a: 176 )

The implications of this study are considered and recommendations for practice and future research are made within the spirit of social justice work. We highlight the need to increase sexuality education training for early childhood educators, expanding content to include and challenge the concepts of childhood innocence and DAP, which maintain heteronormativity and cisnormativity (Balter et al., 2021; Malins, 2017).

The implicit dominance of childhood innocence and DAP acts to regulate whether and how early childhood educators address the development of sexuality in early learning settings. Training in sexuality education needs to deconstruct oppressive ideologies that have a structural hold and façade of protection (Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018). Unpacking the notion of childhood innocence – uncovering how and why it operates – is critical for early childhood educators’ self-understanding, with practical implications for how sexual and gender development in early childhood is addressed (Balter et al., 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021).

Jarkovská and Lamb (2018) critique the concept of innocence and propose that (1) protecting the unknowing child by keeping them without knowledge contradicts protecting children; (2) childhood innocence is used as a political agenda, creating moral panics urging the public to shelter children (e.g. Ontario's sexual health education curriculum repeals; Bialystok, 2018; Bialystok et al., 2020); and (3) ‘innocence is racialized, classed’ (Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018: 78) and sexist, with the portrayal of the white middle-class female child as the most innocent and in need of protection through romanticized constructions of white femininity, whereas males and racialized children are perceived as already knowing, corrupted and therefore less innocent. These tenets of racism, classism, and sexism create a repulsive hierarchy of who is worthy of protection. All children are vulnerable, and none are immune to the need of protection – they are younger, smaller, and have less power in parent–child and institutional relationships. Despite the insidious racist, classist and sexist underpinnings of childhood innocence, it remains a powerful force as children are often imagined through socio-historical constructions of childhood as a time of ‘purity, simplicity, sincerity, fragility, and lack of knowledge’ (Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018: 77).

Following Jarkovská and Lamb (2018), we also consider how regarding children as vulnerable instead of innocent can operate to disrupt the silencing of gender and sexuality in the early years. While we acknowledge the discursive tensions within the term ‘vulnerability’, and how the term ‘vulnerability’ has been used to pathologize subjugated populations, we also think that this term captures the inherent relational vulnerability within human existence and the acknowledgement that, due to structural inequalities, some populations (including children) are more vulnerable to harm (Butler et al., 2016). Jarkovská and Lamb (2018) advocate for the concept of ‘vulnerability’ to replace ‘innocence’, a perspective that acknowledges the minority status of children while also honouring their experiences and perspectives. They state:

To recognize children's agency and to protect them does not need to be contradictory. Protecting children does not have to position them as passive recipients, nor weak, unknowing, or even innocent. They are vulnerable to certain harms that need to be addressed. Their harms may be particular to childhood and development as there are harms particular to various groups of people of different ages, abilities, backgrounds, and ethnicities. (Jarkovská and Lamb, 2018: 86)

Moving towards conceptualizing children as vulnerable provides a relational understanding of children that challenges notions of childhood purity while also acknowledging the necessity of the protection of children by the adults in their lives.

Moreover, we recognize the oppressive limitations that normative development espouses (Burman, 2017). Our knowledge of child development is based on ‘the dominance of Western forms of knowledge’ (Janmohamed, 2010: 316), which do not highlight ‘how childhood is socially and culturally constructed’ (Janmohamed, 2010: 308). Thus, maintaining notions of DAP within sexuality education enforces western constructions of childhood, implicitly maintaining the status quo of racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism and cisnormativity (see Balter et al., 2021). Therefore, in alignment with doing social justice work (e.g. Balter et al., 2021; Robinson, 2005a), we strongly propose that early childhood educators receive comprehensive sexuality education training that includes a deconstruction of DAP. This involves an interrogation of how developmentalist norms in DAP operate to silence conversations of gender and sexual diversity, and what a developmentally appropriate approach to sexuality education in the early years might entail for practitioners (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021).

Considering the implicit ways in which heteronormativity and cisnormativity are instilled in early childhood educators’ understandings of gender and sexual development (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021; Davies, 2021), it is important that future research embrace post-structural insights inspired by Foucault's work on power to consider power relations in early childhood educators’ everyday practices and the necessity of providing education to create moments of resistance and shifts in discourse (Mac Naughton, 2005; Mills, 2004; Surtees, 2005). Following Burns (2013), we believe that resistance can be created through the understanding that providing educators, parents, and children with the tools to disrupt taken-for-granted ideas of sexuality and normative gendered ideologies can create shifts in professional practice that resist the reinforcement of the static and binary ideas of identities that exist within hierarchies (Balter et al., 2021; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Davies et al., 2021).

Burns (2013: 92) articulates a politics of resistance that ‘calls attention to the taken-for-granted truths that structure day-to-day living rather than searching endlessly for a way to overturn them’. Recent work calls attention to how educators can resist heteronormativity and cisnormativity by cultivating environments that expect gender and sexual diversity before knowing which children and families are in their care (e.g. Timmons and Airton’s (2020) examination of Ontario’s ECEC frameworks for the implicit ways in which gender-expansiveness and diversity are supported). These kinds of practices are especially useful for cultivating relationships with parents who might be hesitant to have open conversations about gender and sexuality with their children. Further research is required to problematize the simplistic divide between sexuality education and parental protectionist stances (e.g. Bialystok, 2019; Balter et al., 2021; Davies and Kenneally, 2020), especially as these presumptions often reinforce xenophobia and Islamophobia (Bialystok, 2019; Bialystok and Wright, 2019). However, our research findings call to attention the necessity of explicit forms of sexuality education curricula in the early years to assist educators in negotiating and resisting the kinds of community and parental surveillance they might experience, as well as cultivating awareness of how they may reinforce gender binaries within their attempts to provide appropriate information to children (Balter et al., 2016, 2018). Future research needs to continue to bring attention to the need to articulate an explicit gender and sexual diversity curriculum for early childhood educators to resist and disrupt heteronormative and cisnormative notions of gender and sexuality (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021).

Conclusion

This article has described the forms of regulation that take place regarding sexuality education in early years settings in Ontario, Canada, with childhood innocence, DAP, and the gender binary as important discourses in our FDA. By attending to how these discourses constrain and regulate early childhood educators’ professional practice, further work can be done to resist the predominance of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, as well as the dominant matrixes (Butler, 1990; Namaste, 2000) through which heterosexuality and cisnormativity are established as the taken-for-granted norm. While we support the implicit and child-centred ways in which gender and sexuality can be addressed in early learning settings, such as teachable moments and following children's lead during questions and conversations on gender and sexuality (e.g. Timmons and Airton, 2020), we also argue for the formulation of explicit curricula regarding gender and sexuality to guide early childhood educators’ professional practices, support concerns regarding potential parental and community pushback, and take seriously queer critiques of developmentalism in ECEC (Balter et al., 2021; Davies, 2021; Davies and Kenneally, 2020; Janmohamed, 2010). Timmons and Airton (2020) note how the underfunding of professional development for early childhood educators can inhibit their ability to increase their capacities to teach gender and sexuality. With provincial support to create a standardized curriculum on gender and sexuality for early learning settings, early childhood educators would no longer be burdened with finding optional professional training during their undersupported professional development time. In essence, this approach would necessitate conversations surrounding gender and sexual diversity in early learning settings by providing curricular support for personal learning and reference in case of backlash (Balter et al., 2016, 2018, 2021). Future work should continue to link such forms of curricula for the early years to human rights laws and equity and inclusion frameworks in early learning settings.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Guelph-Humber Research Grant Fund.

ORCID iD

Adam WJ Davies

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biographies

Dr. Adam WJ Davies (he/they) is an Assistant Professor in Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph. Adam's research involves K-12 schooling, early childhood education and care, queer theory, mad studies, and sexuality education. Adam's research has investigated the recent Ontario updates to sexuality education, the experiences of gender and sexual minority students and children, as well as issues pertaining to queer masculinities. Adam is an Ontario Certified Teacher and Registered Early Childhood Educator.

Dr. Alice Simone-Balter is a Postdoctoral Fellow working on the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System (IECSS) project in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. Alice is an interdisciplinary educator and researcher, where the common thread to her work is child and youth health and well-being. Her research interests include sexuality education in early childhood, social emotional competencies, and critical disability studies.

Dr. Tricia van Rhijn is a Registered Early Childhood Educator and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. Her research interests include early childhood education and care, family relations, work-life integration, and the experiences of non-traditional students in formal postsecondary education, in particular mature students and student parents.

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Sexuality education and early childhood educators in Ontario,Canada: A Foucauldian exploration of constraints and possibilities

Abstract

Keywords

Theoretical framework

Sexuality education in ECEC

Research context

FDA: themes and discussion

Childhood innocence

DAP

The gender binary

Recommendations and future research

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Supplemental material

Author biographies

References