What is Anti-bias Education?

“At the table of peace – you will find bread and justice”

What do young children need to grow up feeling safe and strong in a world where injustice still flourishes? How do we teach children in age-appropriate ways to stand up for themselves and for others – to be an upstander rather than a bystander? What does it look like for a child to see themselves and their family valued and worthy, neither superior nor inferior?

Anti-bias Education is an educational philosophy and practical approach that works to address these questions both in the lives of children and in the lives of adults.

The Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education:

Goal 1: Identity Who am I? How does the world think of me and my family?
Children will demonstrate self- awareness, confidence, family pride and positive social identities.

Goal 2: Diversity Who are you? How are we alike? How are we different?
Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human differences.

Goal 3: Safety What is fair or unfair? What hurts me? What hurts other people?
Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness and understand that unfairness hurts.

Goal 4: Empowerment How can I stand up for myself? How can I stand up for others? How can we make unfair – fair!
Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.

Anti-bias Education For Young Children & Ourselves

A selection of wonderful children’s books

The following is a list of wonderful children’s picture books for infants through five-year-olds, selected as companions to each of the social identity chapters in the second edition of NAEYC’s Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. Click on a highlighted chapter topic for suggested books.