In my thesis paper I researched the recognition of gender stereotypes in children’s play and learning by kindergarten teachers. Gender stereotypes are certain preconceptions about what it means to be a boy or a girl. They refer to a person’s appearance, opinions, psychological characteristics, occupation, as well as interests, and originate from social context. The main goal of the paper was to research and check whether kindergarten teachers are aware of the importance of gender equality in their communication, educational work, reactions to a children’s emotional responses and in kindergarten children’s play. In the empirical part of my paper, I designed a questionnaire based on the findings of both foreign as well as domestic scholarly works on the topic and tried to find out to what degree kindergarten teachers were aware of the existence of gender stereotypes in children’s play, learning and behaviour. I was also interested in finding out which advantages do kindergarten teachers see in ensuring gender equality among children in their play, learning and behaviour. I wanted to determine which personal beliefs regarding gender stereotypes were being held by kindergarten teachers and how these beliefs differed based on their job position. I explored how often kindergarten teachers offered gender non-stereotypical toys to children of different genders in their group and in what other ways they tried to eliminate or decrease the amount of gender stereotyping in the play, learning and behaviour of children. 61 kindergarten teachers and 51 assistant kindergarten teachers from kindergartens all over Slovenia were included in the study. Based on the given results I concluded that gender stereotypes were still present in Slovenian kindergartens and that most teachers were aware of them, but they did not always fully recognise them. They try to do away with gender stereotypes through various methods. However, passive methods of doing so are still the predominant ones, despite the fact that ideally kindergarten teachers should try to reduce or get rid of gender stereotyping in an active way.
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