Port Folio Objective 4.3

Objective 4.3

Shows recognition of your own potential prejudices & projections, noting ways you hope to overcome them.

Ability

Within the educational scene there are many different values experienced by the educators. There are times when bias opinions come into play which can either bring progress but also has the potential to be detrimental to the learning abilities. I have always been one to believe that no matter what gender you are, every ability and career can be performed equally and to a high standard. It is important for children to realize that they can achieve anything if they want and believe in themselves. I do however without even realizing, offer gender specific activities to children and more exact offer colours that represent genders to children.

Within my swimming classes I have noticed myself giving the pink noodles to the girls and the blue noodles to the boys within the class. Since taking part in this university degree, I have made myself aware of this and changed my thought process to ask the children which colour they would like. This works well as children get choice and although it may be the colour that represents their gender, it is nice to see children not focus too much on colour but on the activity at hand. I have asked my supervisors to include noodle colours that are gender neutral, for example yellow and green that are often favourite colours among the children.

Other colour prejudices I have made changes to, is giving out toys to the children in the pool. Originally I would give the pink horse to the girls while the boys would get the toy boat or hammer. I have since changed how I distribute the toys and rather give out the toys, I instead allow the children to pick their own toys that they would like to work with for the lesson. Choice is important when it comes to working with children and I have come to realise that if I give a child the ‘wrong’ toy they get quite upset and don’t perform as well in the activity as they would if they got to choose the toy that most interests them.

These are some prejudices that I have noticed in my own behaviour when working around children and I have made the conscious efforts to change the methods I teach. I have noticed these proving to be beneficial to child’s ability and learning interests, and will continue to put these ‘choice’ actions into practice. As I learn and understand new methods of teaching, I am sure to stumble across some prejudices within the learning environment, however I am confident that I will be able to recognise such bias and change tactics for the better of the individual.