Conference Program

Sexuality and gender education has increasingly been recognised as a relevant dimension of early childhood education. Educational services for children aged 0–6 represent contexts in which children begin to encounter and negotiate social norms related to bodies, relationships and gender roles. Pedagogical practices within early childhood settings contribute to shaping children’s early understandings of difference, belonging and relational life. Early childhood education and care services influence children’s cognitive, emotional and relational development as well as early identity formation (Catarsi & Fortunati, 2004).

Within this debate, increasing attention has been devoted to gender-expansive childhoods. Research suggests that diverse expressions of gender may emerge in the first years of life and become visible between the ages of two and three (Li et al., 2017). Gender-affirmative approaches emphasise the importance of educational environments capable of recognising children’s gender expressions and supporting their wellbeing without pathologising gender diversity (Ehrensaft, 2016). These perspectives challenge binary understandings of gender and invite educators to consider gender as a socially and culturally situated dimension of childhood. Research has also shown how early childhood settings may reproduce cisnormativity and gender stereotypes unless educators intentionally develop pedagogical practices supporting trans and gender-expansive children (Burgio & Santambrogio, 2024; Di Grigoli, 2024).

Recent debates in gender and education research highlight the need to critically interrogate the epistemological frameworks through which gender diversity is interpreted in educational contexts. Much of the scholarship on queer and gender-diverse childhoods has been developed within Euro-American contexts and risks being universalised as a normative framework for understanding children’s experiences across culturally diverse settings. Decolonial and feminist approaches therefore call for unsettling dominant hierarchies of knowledge production and recognising the plurality of situated epistemologies shaping educational research and practice (Manion & Shah, 2019). Similarly, early childhood scholarship emphasises the importance of questioning colonial assumptions embedded in educational practices and reflecting on how relations to place, culture and knowledge are framed in early childhood contexts (Nxumalo, 2019).

From this perspective, the notion of epistemic justice becomes central, as it calls for recognising whose knowledge, experiences and cultural meanings are legitimised in educational discourses about gender, childhood and family practices. Recent work in queer studies in education shows how Eurocentric understandings of queer identities risk being normalised as universal models, marginalising cultural imaginaries and epistemologies emerging from the global majority (Coloma, 2024). These reflections invite educators to approach gender education through perspectives attentive to epistemic plurality and cultural diversity. This paper develops a theoretical-pedagogical reflection on the education and training of early childhood educators, focusing on how teacher education programmes can support inclusive pedagogical practices in culturally diverse early childhood services. In particular, it argues for approaches that promote gender-expansive pedagogies while maintaining critical awareness of epistemic plurality, in which the category of queerness is critically interrogated through perspectives attentive to epistemic justice and cultural plurality in early childhood education. Such competencies are particularly important in the integrated 0–6 educational system, where teachers play a crucial role in shaping inclusive environments and challenging cisnormative assumptions.