Gender Identities in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework

Abstract

This chapter draws on Masters research examining the exclusion of gender identities within the context of governmental reform in Australian early childhood education and care services. The implementation of the Early Years Learning Framework introduced ‘identity’ as a Learning Outcome. Within the National Quality Rating and Assessment Process, educators are now accountable for documenting children’s ‘identity’, with the quality of the service rated in part on this documentation. This chapter explores the neoliberal assumptions underpinning accountability to these reforms both in terms of how children’s ‘identity’ is conceptualised and in the expectations of how educators will commit to these new accountabilities. The implications of excluding gender identities from the Early Years Learning Framework are explored and the chapter concludes with suggestions for documentation to take up queer and anarchist possibilities to work for activism and social justice in early childhood education and care services.