Early childhood

Tools to support early childhood education

These tools have been collated to assist practitioners supporting and partnering with early childhood services to develop, implement and evaluate an evidence based whole service approach to respectful relationships education (RRE).

Some tools are designed to build your skills and knowledge whilst other tools have been included so that you can provide them to the services’ staff to use with children, families or partner organisations.

Please email us with any resources and tools that you think would be useful to include in this page.

Featured resources

Building respect and equity among young children tip sheet series (2018)

This tip sheet series is co-developed by Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria and City of Melbourne to help all professionals who work with young children to promote respect and gender equity in their work. It covers seven topics, including taking a whole of service approach, supporting children’s sense of identity, intentional teaching, teaching for care, the importance of language, observing and documenting, and working with families.

Audit tools

The following tools are designed primarily for a school’s context and can be adapted for use in early childhood services:

• Respectful Relationships – A resource kit for Victorian Schools (2017) is developed by the Victorian Department of Education and Training to support schools in the implementation of a whole school approach to respectful relationships education. It contains a baseline assessment template.
• Our Watch’s School Gender Equality Assessment (2016) is a gender equity assessment tool for a school’s context.
• Maribyrnong City Council have developed a tool to assist in a gender audit of facilities.

Booklists

Gender equity books can provide a fantastic opportunity for children to think outside of traditional gender roles. Here are some lists to choose from:

• City of Monash Promoting Gender Equality and Challenging Gender Stereotypes Children’s Picture Books
• Mighty Girl Books for smart, confident, and courageous girls
• Welcoming Schools Books looking at gender
• A start to an anti-sexist reading list

Videos

PiP has compiled a list of videos for RRE practitioners to incorporate into the training they provide to staff, sessions they run with families or community organisations, or to be shared with educators as a curriculum resource to use with the children they work with. Please note that whilst some of these videos will be appropriate for use with children, others are more applicable for use by professionals or an adult audience.

Classroom activities

• Putting Children First Playing fair – gender equity in child care (2009) includes strategies and practical ideas for promoting gender equity in early childhood services, ideas for challenging gender play and patterns, and strategies for conversations with children.

Other resources

• The City of Darebin and Women’s Health in the North’s Creating Gender Equity in the Early Years aims at strengthening gender equitable skills and practices across Darebin early years centres. Each section of the resource for local government focuses on a theme or audience for improving gender equity in the early years, and is accompanied by a training video, additional resources and reflective practice questions.
• City of Melbourne’s Building Respect and Equity among Young Children pilot project, including a summary of the literature review, two introductory fact sheets for parents and early childhood educators and a series of tip sheets to help all professionals who work with young children to promote respect and gender equity in their work
• EDVOS’s Level Playground is a website and social media channels for early childhood educators, parents and caregivers, aiming to challenge rigid gender stereotypes and gender norms in everyday interactions with young children.
• Play Unlimited challenges the gendered stereotyping of toys.