MAKING VISIBLE WHAT IS INVISIBLE: GENDER STEREOTYPES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

Stereotypes and prejudices are the result of social categorization that has the aim of organizing and simplifying the knowledge of social reality. Gender categories are the basis of social organization and sexual differentiation of male and female roles and support a naturalized social schema. This schema is absorbed from early infancy so is very important to detect, as soon as possible, the existence of prejudiced beliefs based on gender in early childhood. But, how can we do it? Due to the characteristics of the developmental stage is difficult to assess this questions. This study investigates the possibility of using Visible Thinking to make visible the gender-based thinking of children. The project starts with the celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in a Spanish school, specifically in 5 years old class. During the first phase of the project, the teacher used the thinking routine called “Compare and Contrast” to detect the previous beliefs based on gender of students. After this, there were several sessions where the teacher included gender equality content through famous athletes, professions, physical appearance and clothing, story characters, etc. Thinking routines were used across the project. The results showed that thinking routines are a very simple and useful exercise to make visible what is invisible, as gender beliefs of children.