Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Jennifer Obidah in conversation with Dr. Sheron Burns, Lecturer- Early Childhood, School of Education, University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Deidre Clarendon, Division Chief, Social Sector Division at the Caribbean Development Bank and Marlene Johnson, Operations Officer Gender and Development.
Gender socialisation vital in Early Childhood Education
Sat, 10/29/2016 - 12:00am
The topic of gender socialisation in early childhood education came under the microscope this week during a training Workshop on gender sensitisation.
The “trainer of trainers” Workshop ran from October 25 to 27. It was conducted by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) in collaboration with the School of Education of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus. It is being attended by early childhood practitioners from ten countries in the Eastern Caribbean.
Speaking to The Barbados Advocate at Coconut Court Hotel, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Jennifer Obidah explained that the “Workshop represents a push in early childhood education, specifically gender socialisation.”
“We see many different results, academic and otherwise, of boys and girls at school but there is not a great understanding of why these things come to be. I think that this is the start of training our educators to be aware of gender differences and some of the differences that we actually impose on males and females, and how that might impact education later on. So this Workshop is a larger collaboration; we are working with CDB on this but it is also part of the early childhood education push we are making on Campus culminating with the opening of an Early Childhood Day Care and Training Centre on campus in the near future.”
Dr. Obidah added that one of the areas to be covered during the session will be how to create gender neutral classrooms.
“We are training them to reconceptualise gender and gender inequality in classrooms where we are going to teach them how to create gender neutral classrooms. We are also going to explore them not limiting the potential of boys and girls in different areas because of the colloquial views of what girls can do and what boys can do. So we are really teaching educators to think about how they were raised and how that might impact or affect how they teach the future generation.”
She stated that following the three-day session, participants will be visited and observed in their respective countries to see how they passed on the knowledge gained.
Persons in attendance at the Workshop were from Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, Montserrat, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Turks & Caicos Islands. (MG)