Paper Topic:

Early Childhood

Task 1

Researcher Research year Area of diversity Children 's age Reference

Test 2006 Infants learn how to identify members of their culture through social interactions 9 months Test , J .E . 2006 'Infant and toddler teachers as transmitters of culture , International Journal of Early Childhood

vol . 38 , no . 1 , pp . 47 - 63

Perry , Dockett Howard 2000 Young children noticed skin and hair colour , eyecolour and hair texture 2-3 years old Cited in Glover , A 1995 'Children and Bias , in The Anti-bias Approach in Early Childhood eds . B . Creaser E . Dau

, Harper Educational , Pymble , NSW

Aboud 1988 At this age children have already developed gender bias race bias , bias against disability , cultural and lifestyle bias and socioeconomic or class bias 7 - 8 years old Cited in Glover , A 1995 'Children and Bias , in The Anti-bias Approach in Early Childhood , eds B . Creaser E . Dau , Harper Educational , Pymble , NSW

Palmer 1986 Young children made racial evaluations about racial differences and similarities as bad or good 4 years old Cited in Glover , A 1995 'Children and Bias , in The Anti-bias Approach in Early Childhood , eds . B . Creaser E . Dau , Harper Educational , Pymble , NSW

Harper Bonanno 1993 Children made racial and gender comparisons often perceiving it negatively 5 - 6 years old Cited in Glover , A 1995 'Children and Bias , in The Anti-bias Approach in Early Childhood , eds B . Creaser E . Dau , Harper Educational , Pymble , NSW Young children were presumed to come to school with a clean slate , that is , they have not had any training or instruction and that the teacher could very well teach everything and the child would learn it . The child 's mind is resilient , it is in its formative stage and it can learn huge amount of information on a daily basis , but as the table shows children are not tabula rasa . Children typically attend early education programs between 4-5 years old , which means that they already had around four years of informal instruction in their homes . This informal instruction is called socialization , in which the traditions , norms culture , religion and way of life is handed to the child through interpersonal interactions . For example , children at 4 years old already know how to express their perceptions and views about children with a different race as their own (Palmer , 1986 , and often times they perceived it negatively . Children may say hurtful things to other children and this has been accepted as a limitation to the cognitive understanding of the child of what is right and wrong . However , saying negative things based on one 's feeling of superiority or ethnocentrism is never a good things and the teacher has to be alert when this happens . Bias in any form should never be encouraged and reinforced . The teacher must be able to skillfully explain to the child what cultural diversity is and how hurtful it is to say mean things to other people At the same time , the teacher also has to be able to free herself of her own personal biases and...

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