Week 6: social justice and our responsibility as teachers

This week in class we discussed social justice and our duty of care as early childhood teachers. What came to mind the most was that many teachers often claim that they are being socially just and that their centres accept diversity and respect all children within their care. If you read many early childhood centre philosophies it can be seen that they all are aware of inclusion, diversity and discrimination. The centres beleive they are doing the right thing by accepted all children no matter what their skin colour, their background or their gender for example. However most of these centres are in reality not putting to practice their own ideas and values. For example the centre may be full of anglosaxon middle class children, so it is therefore not right to claim that the centre is diverse. Perhaps teachers need to think about what they cannot see in the centre rather than what is there. In other words teachers need to question why their centre is not diverse rather than trying to find diversity where their is not. Centres I beleive need to include diversity and respect through every single aspect, a very small example is having books in the centre written by authors from all over the world and being aware of this. The community is also very important in helping to make a change to the society around the centre, a teacher cannot change this on her own.