The Anti-Bias Award
We have an annual award that recognises individual and service contributions to Anti-Bias work within the Early Childhood sector. Click the button below to get more information, the nomination guide and our latest winners.
The Anti-Bias Practice Network
This network is an opportunity for early childhood professionals across the country to come together in a supported and facilitated environment to explore and unpack the four anti-bias goals (2020). A copy of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood (4th edition) is recommended but not required for participation in this network. Books can be purchased at the Early Childhood Australia Shop
Over four live zoom workshops, your facilitators will support you to consider the meaning of each anti-bias goal as it fits within the context of your place and space. There are no wrong answers and no one person holds all the knowledge within this network. The experience is one of learning and collaborating with likeminded people.
- Four live Zoom workshops hosted and facilitated by members of the SJIEC Foundation Board and SJIEC Emissaries
- Reflective questions shared prior to the workshops
- Opportunity to share learning, thinking and reflections with colleagues through break out rooms
The Anti-Bias Goals
Goal 1:
Each child and educator will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities –
themselves and others.
Goal 2:
Each child and educator will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences –
reflecting how individuals express themselves; and deep, caring human and non-human connections.
Goal 3:
Each child and educator will increasingly recognise unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand
that unfairness hurts – themselves and others.
Goal 4:
Each child and educator will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice
and/or discriminatory actions.
The Anti-Bias Actions
Action 1:
Educational settings practice an Acknowledgment of Country, specific to their geographical location, as a foundation to all curriculum and pedagogical planning and decisions. They have a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and address racism.
Action 2:
Educational settings have a philosophy that makes the Anti-Bias Goals explicit to children’s learning, curriculum, and to educators’ learning and pedagogical practice.
Action 3:
Policies of educational settings are based on, and include the Anti-Bias Goals, and the policies recognize that children experience disadvantage because of the way that society is structured, rather than because of their individual or cultural diversities and differences.
Action 4:
Physical spaces within educational settings (indoors and outdoors including public and community spaces) consider for individual diversities and differences of children and educators, based on a whole service approach.
Action 5:
Inclusion support programs begin with a whole service anti-bias approach to curriculum rather than solely focusing on the diversities and differences of some individuals.
Action 6:
Worldviews, theories and cosmologies that shape pedagogical approaches in educational settings, dovetail with the Anti-Bias Goals. A whole service approach to critically reflect on these connections is consistently evident to actively identify and challenge bias.
Publications
The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood
The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood, now in its 4th Edition, continues to build momentum for centring equity, tackling bias and creating beautiful ethical learning experiences and environments with and for children in the early years. Featuring many new contributors who generously share their inspiring stories, directly from the classroom, walking us through their thinking, negotiating and practice processes of how they have been exploring anti-bias approaches in current time.
This edition also highlights contributions from children telling their stories about their experiences of childhood in a changing world. New to the anti-bias issues addressed is a focus on climate change and the ways children experience it as part of their worlds, working with children with intersex variations, gender diversity, and equitable learning environments beyond the classroom into cities and the bush. It is eclectic.
The 4th Edition also introduces a revised version of the anti-bias goals to reflect the changing nature of contemporary identities and how they are expressed. It also features a new set of Anti-Bias Actions to guide expression and integration of anti-bias approaches across operational and curriculum practices. The book is tied together by a fresh look at anti-bias curriculum guided by the Anti-Bias Goals and the Anti-Bias Actions.
The 3rd edition of The Anti-Bias Approach in Early Childhood is a celebration! This edition revisits and builds upon the content from the two previous editions to include research and practice that has shaped early childhood over the past 15 years. The pages of this edition hold the stories of the original editor – Elizabeth Dau along with many of the original contributors. Also nestled in these pages are the stories of over 50 early childhood educators who share their powerful stories of anti-bias curriculum approaches. The content of this book is essential to everyone in the early childhood community as we work together to make children’s lives beautiful and inclusive in pursuit of a fair and equitable world.
Fair’s Fair
How to tackle bias in education and care services is a practical guide to putting anti-bias and inclusive practices into everyday curriculum. It is easily accessible and offers clear examples practices, environments and relationships to support educators. It features an Anti-Bias Reflection Guide specifically designed to help educators with their pedagogical documentation and reflective practices.
