Anti-Bias Curriculum      

As the world around us becomes more diverse, so do the children that we work with each and every day. Based on this, “Do you ever wonder whether perhaps you are unconsciously behaving in a prejudiced way by paying more attention to children from certain ethnic groups and less to members of other groups or favoring girls more than boys or vice versa?” (Weissman & Hendrick, 2014, p. 118). In 2010, Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards wrote the book Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) to help educators understand the importance of anti-bias education. In the first chapter of the book, What is Anti-Bias Education, Derman-Sparks and Olsen Edwards (2010) introduce the four main goals of anti-bias education:

Anti-Bias Goal 1

Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

Anti-Bias Goal 2

Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections

Anti-Bias Goal 3

Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.

Anti-Bias Goal 4

Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discrimination.

Initial Post: As leaders in the field of early childhood education, it is our responsibility to make sure that we are not only teaching our students about the diverse world in which we live, but also promoting social justice through implementing an anti-bias curriculum. For this discussion, you will need to choose one of the four main goals of anti-bias education listed in the chart above and address the points below as they relate to your chosen goal. Please make sure to support your initial reply with references to the text and at least one additional scholary source.

• Explain in your own words what this goal means to you and how it connects to social justice.
• Discuss how you would foster an understanding of your goal within your education setting.
• Analyze at least two challenges you perceive in achieving this goal.
• Provide at least one ethical solution to each of the challenges you shared.
• Share two developmentally appropriate methods that you will use in your work with children to foster development of this goal.