Building Inclusivity

Awareness and Consciousness

Young children are not “colorblind.” Research shows that infants as young as six months can distinguish racialized differences, and by preschool, children often make judgments or express preferences based on skin tone (Katz, 2003; Winkler, 2009). Educators who assume that children are unaware of race miss critical opportunities to shape how children understand differences and fairness. To support equitable development, we must begin with self-reflection.

One widely used tool to support this reflective process is the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) and hosted by Project Implicit at Harvard University. The IAT measures the strength of automatic associations between concepts (such as race, gender, or age) and evaluations (such as good or bad). By completing the IAT, you can uncover unconscious preferences that may not align with your explicit beliefs.

You can use this awareness to become aware of your own implicit bias and to adopt strategies that mitigate this bias, such as pausing before responding to challenging behaviors, intentionally affirming children’s identities, and seeking peer collaboration to check assumptions. These tests can be found at  https://implicit.Harvard.edu.

Creating Inclusive Classroom Environments

The physical and social environment sends powerful messages about belonging and identity. Teachers can minimize systemic cultural messages by curating inclusive materials—books featuring protagonists of diverse races and family structures, art supplies in a variety of skin tones, and dramatic play props reflecting multiple cultural traditions (Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018). Beyond materials, inclusive pedagogy, the methods and strategies educators use to facilitate learning, requires affirming children’s languages and home cultures in daily routines. Representation of a child’s particular cultural heritage fosters self-esteem, while exposure to diversity helps all children learn respect and appreciation for difference (Banks, 2019).

Curriculum and Pedagogy for Equity

Anti-bias curriculum goes beyond celebrating diversity. It equips children to recognize unfairness and develop skills to act against it (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). Guidance opportunities provide the perfect vehicle for implementing this. Teachers can use real-life conflicts as opportunities for guided dialogue, helping children articulate why exclusion is unfair and encouraging empathy. Literature circles, storytelling, and art projects can also highlight narratives of resilience from historically marginalized groups, while integrating social–emotional learning across the curriculum helps children develop the language to name injustice and imagine solutions (Adair, 2014). Embedding these practices normalizes equity as part of everyday learning rather than a special topic.

Family and Community Partnerships

Families play an essential role in shaping children’s attitudes about identity and justice. Effective antibias education, therefore, depends on authentic partnerships with families and communities (NAEYC, 2020). Teachers can invite family members to share cultural practices and languages in ways that enrich the curriculum without minimizing or tokenizing them. This reciprocity not only affirms children’s identities but also challenges stereotypes by presenting diverse cultural experiences as valuable. When schools honor families as partners, children receive consistent messages that their heritage is a source of pride rather than deficit (Delpit, 2012).

Equitable Discipline and Classroom Management

Systemic racism in education is most evident in patterns of disproportionate discipline. Black preschoolers, for example, are 3.6 times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than their White peers (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Such disparities cannot be explained by behavior alone but are linked to implicit biases and differential expectations (Gilliam et al., 2016). To counteract this, early childhood educators can implement proactive strategies—teaching emotional regulation, modeling problem-solving, and reinforcing positive behavior. When misbehavior occurs, restorative practices that emphasize reflection and repair help children learn accountability without exclusion (Gregory & Fergus, 2017). These approaches reduce inequities while building inclusive, respectful communities. These are all strategies explored later in this work.

Empowering Children as Change Agents

Even at a young age, children can be guided to recognize and challenge injustice. Teachers can nurture this capacity by validating children’s observations, encouraging them to speak up against exclusion, and providing tools for collaborative problem-solving (Beneke & Cheatham, 2019). For example, when a child says, “That’s not fair,” the teacher can extend the dialogue, asking, “What can we do to make it fair?” Such practices cultivate agency, preparing children to engage in civic life with a commitment to equity. By framing fairness as a shared responsibility, educators help children internalize the belief that they can be active participants in creating a just society.

Create Learning Communities Where Everyone Feels Valued

Early childhood classrooms are not only places of academic learning but also communities where children develop a sense of identity, belonging, and fairness. When educators prioritize equity and equality, they help children experience classrooms as safe, inclusive spaces rather than hierarchical environments where some voices dominate and others are silenced. Building such communities requires intentional strategies that promote mutual respect, collaborative learning, and recognition of each child’s unique strengths.

Foster Collaborative Learning Communities

Cooperative learning environments help children build empathy and reduce bias by promoting positive intergroup relationships (Johnson & Johnson, 2009). Teachers can structure group activities where children of diverse backgrounds work together toward common goals, ensuring that responsibilities are shared equitably. For example, rotating classroom “jobs” and encouraging peer mentoring not only promote responsibility but also demonstrate that every child has valuable contributions to make.

Affirm Every Child’s Identity

It is important to affirm each child’s culture, language, and family structure (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). Teachers can incorporate children’s home languages into daily routines, celebrate diverse cultural traditions in authentic ways, and choose books and materials that reflect a wide range of identities (Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018). By doing so, educators can counteract the implicit messages of a hierarchy that privileges the dominant culture and instead communicate that all identities are valued and respected.

Promote Equitable Teacher–Child Interactions

Disparities in teacher expectations and responses often contribute to inequitable outcomes, particularly for children of color (Gilliam et al., 2016). Studies in classroom interaction patterns consistently show that teachers, often without conscious awareness, distribute their attention unevenly among students. Research on gender dynamics, for instance, has found that male students are called on more frequently than female students, receive more follow-up questions, and are given more detailed feedback (Sadker & Zittleman, 2009). This pattern persists across grade levels and subject areas, even among teachers who explicitly endorse gender equity.

Similarly, teachers may unconsciously provide more encouragement to high-achieving or outspoken students, while offering less support to quieter or marginalized children (Jones & Dindia, 2004). Such disparities are rarely intentional; rather, they reflect implicit biases and ingrained social norms that privilege certain groups. Yet over time, these subtle differences in teacher attention can accumulate, shaping students’ confidence, participation, and academic outcomes (Ferguson, 2010). Recognizing these unconscious patterns is therefore a crucial step in creating equitable classrooms where all students feel seen and valued.

Embed Social–Emotional Learning and Restorative Practices

Classrooms that emphasize social–emotional learning (SEL) and restorative approaches help reduce hierarchies by teaching children skills for empathy, self-regulation, and problem-solving (Gregory & Fergus, 2017). When conflicts arise, restorative conversations allow children to reflect on the impact of their actions and work collaboratively toward repair rather than facing punitive consequences. Such approaches reduce exclusionary discipline, which disproportionately impacts children of color, and instead cultivate inclusive communities where all children learn accountability and care (U.S. Department of Education, 2016).

Empower Children as Agents of Fairness

Finally, teachers can support equity by encouraging children to recognize and respond to unfairness in their daily lives. Research shows that even preschool-aged children can articulate notions of justice and fairness when guided by supportive adults (Beneke & Cheatham, 2019). Educators can nurture this sense of agency by validating children’s observations, providing them with language to describe unfairness, and supporting collective problem-solving. These practices help children internalize the belief that everyone deserves respect and equal treatment, laying the foundation for lifelong commitments to equity.

References

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2. Delpit, L. (2012). “Multiplication is for White people”: Raising expectations for other people’s children. The New Press.
3. Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2020). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves (2nd ed.). National Association for the Education of Young Children.
4. Ferguson, R. F. (2010). Teacher perceptions and expectations and the Black-White test score gap. In J. E. Chubb, T. Loveless, & J. H. Peterson (Eds.), Bridging the achievement gap (pp. 79–126). Brookings Institution Press.
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10. National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). Advancing equity in early childhood education: Position statement. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/equity
11. Sadker, D., & Zittleman, K. (2009). Still failing at fairness: How gender bias cheats girls and boys in school and what we can do about it. Scribner.
12. Souto-Manning, M., & Rabadi-Raol, A. (2018). (Re)centering quality in early childhood education: Toward intersectional justice for minoritized children. Review of Research in Education, 42(1), 203–225. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X1875955
13. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2016). 2013–14 civil rights data collection: A first look. https://ocrdata.ed.gov
14. Winkler, E. N. (2009). Children are not colorblind: How young children learn race. PACE, 3(3), 1–8.