Citation

Blaise M. Early Child Res. Q. 2005; 20(1): 85-108.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ecresq.2005.01.002

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This is a summary of a qualitative study of how gender was created and sustained in an urban kindergarten classroom. By investigating the phenomenon of compulsory heterosexuality and analyzing gender from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, this study explored how young children take an active part "doing" gender by socially constructing meanings about femininities and masculinities from the gender discourses available to them in their everyday worlds. In addition, it looks at how they used their understandings of heterosexuality to regulate the gendered social order of the classroom.

Qualitative procedures of taking field notes, audiotaping and videotaping children's talk and actions in the classroom, and collecting of student artifacts were used over a 6-month period to gain in-depth descriptive information about how children socially constructed themselves as gendered beings through the heterosexual matrix.

Critical discourse analysis found five gender discourses located in the classroom, including wearing femininity, body movements, make-up, beauty, and fashion talk. From this analysis, it was possible to uncover the heterosexual matrix within the kindergarten classroom and construct three case studies. Case studies show how two girls and one boy used their understandings of heterosexuality to "do" gender as they actively maintained and resisted gender norms and ideals.