Toward inclusive understandings of marriage in an early childhood classroom: negotiating (un)readiness, community, and vulnerability through a critical reading ofKing and King

Critically Literate Citizenship: Moments and Movements in Second Grade

“…An overcrowded and scripted curricular agenda leaves little room to have the kind of in-depth conversations necessary to address the deeper legacies of racism, oppression, and silencing. In fact, many of the conversations featured here were not the result of planned lessons, but were initiated by children in play and classroom activity, occurring at different spaces and times throughout the day (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016). The political rhetoric pervading the landscape and issues of fairness and equity were part of how children understood their social world.…”

Towards creating inclusive environments for LGBTIQ-parented families in early childhood education and care settings: A review of the literature

“…Children’s firsthand accounts of LGBTIQ-parented families suggest that heterosexual-parented children have little knowledge about LGBTIQ-parented families and may experience confusion when confronted with real or depicted LGBTIQ people (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016; Kelly, 2013; Kim et al, 2017; Krikorian, 2016). However, perspectives of LGBTIQ-parented children themselves are mostly absent in the literature.…”

“…Indeed, conversations about diverse family structures contribute to the development of respect and tolerance in children (Kim et al, 2017; Schall & Kauffmann, 2003). Children recognise that being able to choose with whom a person would like to start a family is a matter of fairness (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016; Kelly-Ware, 2018), they are more open to conversation about differences in family structure than adults (Cooper, 2015), and are willing to include non-traditional families in their play (Kelly, 2013). Assumptions that adults may make about children’s discomfort in this regard appear to be unfounded (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016).…”

“…This is consistent with earlier literature (Robinson, 2002), indicating that despite societal change, little change may have occurred in ECEC practice in this regard. Increasingly, however, EC educators are proactively challenging heteronormativity (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016; Cooper, 2015; Kelly, 2013; Kim et al, 2017), taking on the ‘political work’ needed to transform ECEC classrooms (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016, p.196). This so-called political work is challenging in the absence of research-based evidence about how best to support the inclusion of LGBTIQ-parented families and their children in ECEC settings.…”

“…However, it should be acknowledged that for both heterosexual and gender non-conforming EC educators, disrupting heteronormality to create space for LGBTIQ-parented families is a risky business as the silence in ECEC settings reflects what has been a silence in the broader community-, social- and cultural space (Church et al, 2018; Farago, 2016). EC educators who did attempt to disrupt heteronormativity in the workplace reported that the value of doing this outweighed the resulting vulnerability they may experience (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2016).…”