2026-05-06
Pat Dickinson, Monica Bennett
There is a realistic reluctance among early childhood professionals about how to provide effective sexuality education. This article provides an overview of the Our Whole Lives curriculum cocreated by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. It explores gender and sexual diversity while addressing stereotypes regarding children’s development and interests and includes advice on how to encourage parental partnership. It is intended for professionals interested in exploring a curriculum and engaging in a pilot project. It could be used as a basis for examining this topic in college or university early childhood education programs. Suggestions for its effective use are based on the authors’ knowledge about and practical experience in implementing the curriculum. Bennett has been a certified trainer of facilitators of all seven Our Whole Lives curricula for 25 years. Dickinson volunteered for several decades with children and families in the congregation where this curriculum was implemented.
2026-05-06
Shaunasea Brown, Mila Mendez, Juanita Stephen
The Big Kids Book Club brings together our perspectives and experiences as Black women and gender nonconforming people engaged in youth work, advocacy, and research; Black feminist cultural production; and Black queer parenting. In this article we center Black queer (and) feminist approaches with interest in how Black queer children’s narratives take us beyond representation and into realms of resignifying and worldmaking. Our roundtable discussions explore what it means to encounter children’s books written with Black queer life in mind and demonstrate a relational reading practice that reads and gathers in Black queer spaces while expanding possibilities for Black life.
2026-05-06
Julia Srouji, Sandra Chang-Kredl
This paper engages with the question of what childhood studies cares about, and how, in the context of children’s experiences with social media. Social media usage is on the rise among children, with 32% of children aged 7–9 using these apps. The study used a reparative versus affirmative framework based in queer theory to analyze 26 TikTok videos addressing transgender issues, with emphasis placed on analyzing the seven videos involving transgender or gender-exploring children. Emerging themes on the transgender experience, teachable moments, providing perspectives on gender, and perpetuating transphobic discourses are discussed with the aim of improving the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse children.
2026-05-06
Cayley Burton
At a time when 2SLGBTQI+ identities are targeted with increasing hostility, criminalization, and attempted erasure by government officials, binary gender norms saturate the field of early childhood education (ECE). While there has been a surge in the publication of gender-diverse children’s literature in recent years, many of these books are now banned in the United States, which impacts their reception in Canada, including BC, Alberta, and New Brunswick. This study elicits children’s responses toward picture books about gender nonconformity, demonstrating how circle time can be queerly reimagined and practiced in ECE. Grounded in queer theory and trans studies, queer circle time is presented as an urgently needed and replicable pedagogical practice for ECE.
2026-05-06
Jessica Prioletta, Lindsay Herriot, Adam Davies, Pam Malins
In this paper, the authors draw on a reconceptualist framework to explore if and how sexual health content is addressed in provincial/territorial/Indigenous early years frameworks across Canada. Specifically applying a postdevelopment lens, this study examines how principles of the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education are present, absent, or alluded to in the early years frameworks in Canada. Findings show that explicit references to sexuality were largely absent across the frameworks, with a few notable exceptions. However, the authors illustrate openings in the current frameworks for integrating sexual health content in early years settings. The article concludes with a discussion on the opportunities for change and the theoretical shifts required in Canadian early years frameworks in efforts to ensure children’s access to comprehensive sexuality education.
2026-05-06
Harny Carlos Chan Lim
This study explores the experiences of eight LGBTQ+ early childhood educators (ECEs) in Ontario, Canada to understand the current challenges in navigating the heteronormative spaces within early childhood education settings. Through a queer theoretical framework, with intersectionality in mind, the stories shared remind us that early childhood education operates within the dominant discourses of heteronormativity. The LGBTQ+ ECEs in this study challenge us to uphold our commitment to inclusive and decolonial practices and to acknowledge children as social actors in their learning, which includes grasping the complexities of gender and sexuality.
2026-05-06
Lisa Farley, RM Kennedy
This paper examines arguments that defend anti-transgender policies and legislation aiming to censor discussions about gender identity and restrict access to affirming interventions in three Canadian provinces. Building on psychoanalysis and queer theory, we suggest that such policies and legislation are symptomatic of an increasingly precarious and volatile social and political world in which transgender existence is a target of projected anxiety and aggression. We further demonstrate how anti-trans legislation fuels and feeds on moral panics that erect binaries and foreclose the conditions needed to bring complex emotions into language, where conflicts of gender and childhood can be used to inform thought and reflection. Inconvenience is offered as a surprising resource to rethink cross-generational bonds that can welcome and work through dynamics of anxiety and aggression that emerge from not already knowing the meaning or future of gender and childhood.
2026-05-06
Matthew Yanko
This inquiry examines how comprehensive sexuality education in kindergarten can be enriched through arts-based pedagogy and queer theory. Guided by autoethnography, it explores how music, movement, and material provocations can embrace gender diversity, support inclusion, and challenge developmentalist delays that marginalize queer identities and experiences. Analysis examines the tension between responding to teachable moments and taking a proactive, scaffolded approach that weaves inclusive values through learning. Findings highlight the arts as dynamic means for expressing identity, advancing relational belonging, and cultivating inclusive, imaginative environments that affirm the right to self-expression.
2026-05-06
Jessica Prioletta, Lindsay Herriot, Adam Davies
2026-05-06
Melissa Keehn, Casey Burkholder
How might we reimagine early childhood sexuality education so that queer joy flourishes in these spaces through play? In this work, we come together as two queer researchers and ask how we might inhabit both play and queer joy to create a space where children can engage in queerer worldmaking and disrupt adult norms about sexuality, bodies, and identities in ECE classrooms. We describe how we engaged a group of 13 ECE teachers from a rural New Brunswick community in collage, zine, and cellphilm production to explore the ways sexuality education unfolds in their teaching practice. We specifically prompted participants to design and draw play spaces where young children might queerly and joyfully inquire about ideas of gender, sexuality, and identity. Ultimately, we propose that play-based approaches to teaching sexuality education creates room for young people to dream, joy, tap into their queerness, and rearticulate their bodies in ways that help them form and contribute to knowledge about the world around them.
2026-05-06
Noah Kenneally
This article examines the responsibilities of early childhood educators to provide life- and health-affirming sexuality education in early learning contexts, framed within a relational rights-based perspective. Acknowledging that some educators may experience discomfort when engaging with this material, the article proposes two central tools of the field—reflective practice and a practice of relationships—as key instruments to transform anxieties into generative action and ethical practice.
2026-03-05
Adam Davies, Cameron Greensmith, Lauren Spring, Simon Adam, Brooke Richardson, Carla Rice, Olga Smoliak, Nidhi Menon, Alexander Purnell, John Beaton
This qualitative study investigates how sanist systems of oppression within early childhood education both reflect and reinforce dominant discourses on mental health and madness. Through a Mad studies analysis of both qualitative interview data with postsecondary early childhood education and child studies students, as well as policy and curriculum documents relevant to Ontario postsecondary early childhood education studies, we seek to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions and create space for mental difference. This study was conducted with 25 postsecondary early childhood education and child studies students, with the data analyzed using both Foucauldian and institutional ethnographic methods. Ultimately, this study illustrates how madness and Mad educators are constructed as a potential harm to the profession, reinforcing sanist forms of discrimination against educators with mental health differences.
2026-03-05
Gizem Nur Şakar, Ayşenur Mumcuoğlu, Güneş Ezgi Demirci, Feyza Tantekin Erden
This study evaluates the content of the most popular YouTube videos worldwide in terms of the presence of messages that support or hinder children’s food and nutrition literacy, using Azam Doustmohammadian and colleagues’ conceptual framework of food and nutrition literacy in children. Forty-four food-related videos were selected from the three most popular child-themed YouTube channels. The results revealed that the cognitive aspects of the framework were slightly supported in the selected videos; however, negative messages were prevalent. Although there was no positive content to support children’s food and nutrition literacy regarding interactive, emotional, and discussion skills, it was found that only contradictory messages were given in the emotional skills dimension. Another significant aspect of the findings, as discussed through the lens of childhood studies, is that certain types of eating behaviours were presented as more favourable than others, and many subtle moral messages were detected regarding normative assumptions about bodies, health, and food practices.
2026-03-05
Hayoung Lee
This book review discusses Queer Kids and Social Violence: The Limits of Bullying, edited by Elizabethe Payne and Melissa J. Smith, which unpacks the anti-bullying framework that depoliticizes and individualizes LGBTQ+ youth in schools. Thirteen chapters with different methodologies and critical perspectives on social violence against queer youth focus on better understanding the experiences of queer and trans youth and disrupt the simplistic and individualized intervention to create “safe space” in schools. The book emphasizes how bullying is a structural mechanism through which gender privilege is (re)produced in different forms, by different agents, and in different directions within schools.
2026-03-05
Oluwole Falode
Addressing the underrepresentation of male early childhood educators is crucial due to their role in fostering children’s holistic development. Male educators provide unique perspectives and serve as role models in a gender-sensitive environment. This study builds on existing research through a literature review and semistructured interviews with a global sample of ECE practitioners and students. Findings reveal that social, psychological, and economic barriers contribute to the gender imbalance. Raising awareness about men’s positive impact in ECE and creating incentives for male educators are essential. Inclusive instructional designs in ECE programs can encourage gender diversity and support balanced development for young learners.