This Training Kit for Early Childhood Education teachers and practitioners was developed to introduce teachers to the prevailing gender and social issues in society (including schools) and to improve gender relations and children’s understanding of gender roles, by engaging in more equitable socialisation practices in the classroom. The specific goals of the Training Kit are to:

1. introduce teachers to the concept of gender and to how this concept relates to and how it is different from sex;
2. help teachers to understand how gender can produce unequal relations of power;
3. provide opportunities for teachers to identify and confront their own stereotypical beliefs about gender and to work through challenging and expanding their ideas and notions of gender;
4. introduce teachers to innovative ways of creating gender-sensitive classroom learning environments and experiences;
5. increase teachers’ capacity to conduct gender analysis of curriculum materials, teaching and learning practices, and school structures and cultures; and
6. introduce teachers to the ways in which they can use their increased analytical capacity to select and invent gender-sensitive, as well as, developmentally appropriate books, toys and other teaching and learning resources to inform the creation of gender inclusive settings.

The times allocated to each Activity in the Kit are to be considered as guidelines only.