Alistair Gibbs hails from Scotland. The course of his life changed rather dramatically when he first touched down in Melbourne. He said it straight away felt like home.

“As soon as I landed here it felt more like home than home ever did. There was an aura of acceptance and an aura of difference that just drew me in, and it felt a very natural place, it felt like it’s where I belonged.”

“It didn’t matter who you were, how you acted or what your interests were, you were just you and that idea of inclusion really stuck out for me.”

It was thereafter Alistair’s quest to find a visa that would allow him to stay. Along the way, he found an occupation that he truly believed in and compelled him to do more and connect more. As he later discovered, that occupation was intrinsically tied to his initial reason for staying in Australia.

Previously Alistair worked in a bookshop, where he managed the children’s section. He was readily connecting with children and literacy. He understood how that helped to form and influence a child’s development.

“When I was thinking of ways to stay in Australia, one of the first things that came to mind was teaching. I looked around at courses that would fit the visa criteria and doing my Masters at Melbourne University was one of the only ones that would do, for the length that was required.”

Alistair jumped into the Master of Teaching for early childhood which quickly reaffirmed the affinity he felt with the early years. 

Alistair said that he could see how the work done in early childhood had the power to set children up for their future: “really getting to the core of their development, their emotions, their abilities, their thirst and drive to better themselves and get to their next stage of development.”

It was in the kindergarten classroom that Alistair started to notice little things that piqued his curiosity.

One day, a corner was turned into the hairdressers with makeup and that type of thing. It was imaginative play, role play, pretend play- all wonderful for a child’s skill development. It was the children’s response that surprised Alistair, when he stepped in to relieve the female educator:

“I mimicked the exact same actions and language she was using within the space- which was, ‘can you make me look pretty’ and the response the children gave me was, ‘No. You’re not allowed to be pretty, you’re handsome. Girls are pretty, boys are handsome.’ I started to really question, where does this from?”

What stemmed from this was a learning course for Alistair himself and for the children he worked with. Both prompted one another with their curiosity and imagination. Alistair said that he aimed to tackle gender stereotypes through his own actions, his language and through the experiences the educators were providing for the kids.

“I then extended that further into different people’s abilities and how we could support and help each other in different ways.”

Alistair said he had the desire to share his findings and the experiences he was going through with others.

“I started to seek out conferences that I could speak at and different ways that I could engage in different learnings and different ways to support other people’s thinking and other people’s practice.”

He was keenly interested in bias in the early years in the most practical sense. He was drawing upon his own experiences and much like the BBC documentary, No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?, research was backing up his own observations that stereotypes were established at quite an early age.

“When I took on a role that allowed us to engage in these practices through a whole centre approach, it wasn’t necessarily to announce that we were doing gender or anti-bias or anything like that, we simply started asking families- what bias do you face. What do you come up against and people started to put up responses.”

“People started talking about their age or their gender or their sexuality or their parenting skills.”

Alistair wanted to open conversation, but not force it. It was something for everyone to ponder.

One mother shared that she had post-natal depression. She expressed that she felt judged. This was a big thing to share and this conversation provided an opening for others to feel comfortable to share.

“Having a space where you can start to connect within that more vulnerable level is key and that raw vulnerable interaction really helps to set-up, to go on that journey together. Not everyone is in the same space, so what is going to work for this group of people, may not work with a different group of families and group of educators.”

Alistair is now an Early Learning Manager at Gowrie Victoria, a not-for-profit organisation that specialises in championing good early childhood education through their early learning services as well as professional development and accredited training courses to the early childhood and education sector.

Alistair believes that one aspect of the role of early years educators is to bring the early years learning community together, to explore different challenges and create positives change. Anti-bias education can be woven through the teaching as families sharing culture, knowledge, ideas and build relationships.

We often talk about development in terms of intellectual milestones or physical benchmarks, but social and emotional development are also core, fundamental aspects of early childhood development. Alistair studies this carefully- what influences behaviour, ideology- and then he weaves this into his pedological practice.

“Through understanding each other, how each of you develop, you get that better understanding of how you can learn from each other.”

Alistair endeavours to create spaces to talk about varied things, different experiences and learnings, finding room to grow and to understand culture and beliefs in a new and different ways.

For Alistair, it all comes back to the children, their enjoyment, creating bright futures and positive relationships. It is also about facilitating a sense of belonging, that very one that Alistair described upon arriving in Australia.

Alistair will be the key note speaker at Playgroup Victoria’s 2020 Conference. He endeavours to bring his learnings and practices into discussion, generating further ways to create spaces where children and families can find comfort and establish a sense of belonging, therefore opening greater space for learning, creative thinking, growth and friendship.

“I want to get people thinking about the different ways that you can connect with people and that it doesn’t need to be as difficult as sometimes the words make it seem- like the word inclusion and the word diversity they are big words but it doesn’t need to have massive big actions to make that difference- so it’s starting to think about the different ways that we can connect with yourself and others on that deeper emotional level.”

It is part of human nature to accept much of the status quo, but this is changing, and the early years are part of the change.

Rich learning ensues in the early years as a child’s body and mind rapidly develops. Alistair sees our early years sector, our villages, our communities, our playgroups, as places full of opportunity. Forging early positive messages, ideas and habits helps to foster empathetic, kind, open-minded children.

They will long carry their early learnings with them, so we strive to make them good ones.

Article by Sinead Halliday

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