‘Who Are You Going To Be In Our Game?’: Understanding How Gender Plays Out In The Early Years

This thesis explores the intersection between young children’s social play while attending an Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) setting in England and their own, individual, awareness of gender. During their attendance at English ECCE settings, children often spend the majority of their time playing (see, Development Matters (Department for Education, 2023)). It is through play that adults can gain an insight into children’s worlds, their likes and dislikes, personal tendencies, and wider attitudes. Play, as with other aspects of children’s lives, is thought to be influenced by gender (see, Prioletta, 2020). This thesis suggests that the ways in which children’s play is influenced by gender is multi-faceted. This includes; how children organise their play, the roles they adopt and assign during play, the spaces within which their play takes place, their reasoning for engaging in play episodes, and their interactions with the gendered inferences in their immediate and wider contexts. Underpinned by a unique conceptual combination of Queer Theory, perezhivanie and individual experience, and interpretivism, this thesis provides a unique lens through which to consider young children’s social play experiences. Naturalistic, play-based observations of four four-year-old children and a Nursery teacher interview were employed as the main data collection methods in this small scale, ‘snapshot’ research project. This thesis uncovered that young children combine their own personal gender-related views with those of wider influences (such as popular culture), and those of their immediate context (such as the ethos of the ECCE setting they attend) in order to navigate social, peer relations and to position themselves within their social networks. This thesis asserts that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to gender and children, and as such, ECCE practice, should be avoided, and that efforts should be made to ensure that ECCE settings and pedagogies are adaptable to the individuality of each child.