Browsing by Author "Niemelä, Virve"

The latest publication of the prescool curriculum suggests that a gender sensitive way of teaching is supposed to be used at the preschool education.The educators must acknowledge their own attitudes which may not support equality. Studies have shown that kindergarten teachers have had problems to recognice thier gendered attitudes. The latest studies have also shown that the early childhood education is very significent for the children´s future succes at school and also with the progression of the social and cognitive skills. The target of my thesis was to explore gender representations in the Huiske- preschool material, both the children´s book and the guidebook directed to the teachers. My goal was to find aspects which may impeach the gender binarity. I wanted also know which ways of gender representations support the gender dichotomy and the old fashioned rolemodels which easily come along with it.The representation of gender diversity in a preschool learning material can help the kindergarten teachers to recognice their own gendered attitudes and support the gender sensitivity with their teaching methods. I studied child´s textbook with a picture reading method and the teacher´s guidebook with a content analysis. I compared both books to my theorethic contex with a gounded theory. The results of my thesis revealed that gender was both represented with diversity and with stereotypical ways. The allusions of possible gender with the imaginary animals in the books were faded out with some animals but with some animals the allusions of gender were rather clear. The acting positions of the animals were similar with the gender allusion. Some creatures were allowed to represent their gender with a way that was reforming with social and cultural ways but some creatures were not permitted to do so. It appeared also that gender was not once mentioned in the teacher´s guidebook. The focus was on the emotianal upbringing and many advices were given how to teach the children to recognice and process with different feelings but no advice were given how to teach the diversity of gender