Making a Place for Gender and Sexuality in the Early Years of Primary Schooling

Abstract

This book is an ethnography of teachers and children in grades 1 and 2, and presents arguments about why gender and childhood sexuality should be taken seriously in the early years of South African primary schooling. The opening chapter presents an overview of the relationship between gender and childhood sexuality. Taking issue with gender and sexual innocence, the book questions the epistemological foundations of childhood discourses that produce innocence. The paradox between teachers’ dominant narratives of childhood innocence and children’s own conceptualisation of gender and sexuality are set in motion. The chapter shows that children are actively invested in gender and sexuality. The chapter provides the theoretical framing of this study that draws from a structural social constructionist framework with critical reflections on gender power relations. It argues that children are social actors and gender and sexuality are negotiated under social conditions that constrain agency in South Africa. The chapter provides methodological details of the study in four schools with attention to the varying social contexts in which they schools are situated. The chapter ends with an overview of each chapter in the book.