"Boys Don't Wear Dresses!" Deconstructing gender representations in an elementary school classroom

Abstract

Critical literacy pedagogy suggests that by developing skills of questioning, critiquing and inquiring, students are able to apply a critical perspective in order to recognize and actively deconstruct socially-developed norms present in the world around them. A critical literacy perspective provides a lens to address social justice issues, such as those pertaining to gender, gender representation, gendered norms, and identity. This paper presents action research conducted in my all-girls elementary school classroom and my students’ interactions with identity and the gender representations presented in the picturebook 10,000 Dresses (Ewert, 2008), in which a transgendered boy dreams about wearing beautiful dresses. The pedagogy of critical literacy was applied during the discussions and activities documented.

Keywords

• critical literacy
• picturebooks
• gender
• identity
• language