This popular book focuses on the leader’s role in initiating and sustaining anti-bias education in programs for young children and their families. The second edition emphasizes how the journey requires thoughtful, strategic, long-term planning that addresses all components of an early childhood care and education program. A combination of frameworks and practical tools explain the structural and individual changes that leaders must foster. This updated edition features anti-bias leaders from diverse settings who share their insights and strategies for working with teachers and families. It is essential reading for current and aspiring leaders seeking change in early childhood settings. Finally, it includes an expanded section on responding to opposition to anti-bias education in the current political environment.
Online resource for Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide To Change, For Change.
Film – Reflecting on Anti-bias Education in Action: The Early Years
Reflecting on Anti-bias Education in Action: The Early Years, is a 48 minute film that features vignettes of anti-bias strategies in early childhood classrooms interspersed with teachers reflecting on their practice. A facilitator and viewer guide is available in English and Spanish. The film has received numerous awards including the Silver Prize for Documentary Feature (2021) in the Social Justice Film Festival and a nomination for Northwest Regional Emmy® (2022) in the category of diversity, equity, and inclusion – long form content.
Official Trailer
Stream film here
Purchase DVD and guide book here
Debbie LeeKeenan and John Nimmo produced the film which was released April 2021 for free streaming. They partnered with filmmaker Filiz Efe McKinney of Brave Sprout Productions to create a film that shifts the focus away from the talking heads of experts and on to the voices of teachers committed to equity on a daily basis. By taking viewers into diverse ECE classrooms, the film seeks to demonstrate the importance of teacher reflection on identity, context, and practice in anti-bias education and provides a much-needed resource for teacher education and professional development. Here is a blog post.
Louise Derman-Sparks is the film’s senior advisor. The film’s theoretical and research framework is based on her co-authored books, Anti-Bias Education for Our Children and Ourselves (with Julie Olsen-Edwards and Catherin Goins ) and Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change (with Debbie LeeKeenan and John Nimmo).
Latest news about the film * Awards and Festivals
Equal rights, fair play, justice are all like the air-we all have it or none of us have it.
-Maya Angelo, Academy of Achievement Interview
Anti-bias education is a commitment to supporting children who live in a highly diverse and yet still inequitable world. It is an underpinning perspective and framework that permeates everything in early childhood education. We stand committed to nurture a more diverse and inclusive generation of young children who thrive through their experience of equitable learning opportunities in early learning programs. We aim for each child to demonstrate self-awareness, confidence and family pride and positive social identities, express comfort and joy with human diversity, to increasingly recognize injustice, and to have the will and the skills to act against prejudice.
Our writing, including our 2023 book, Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs – A Guide to Change, for Change, 2nd Edition, our presentations, and our consultation services draw on many years as teachers, teacher educators and researchers, social justice activists, and leaders of early childhood programs. On this site you will find some background into who we are and the resources we have developed.
We also invite you to share your experiences with leading anti-bias change in your own early childhood or teacher education program and in implementing the ideas and strategies that we offer on this site and in our publications.
— Louise, Debbie and John
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