Reading Gender in Early Childhood: Schemas, Scripts, and the Multimodal Shaping of Children’s Lived Performances

Abstract

Gender remains a significant yet often subtle dimension of literacy in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Picturebooks and digital texts may introduce young children to patterned cues about how gender is seen, valued, and enacted, sometimes reinforcing binary expectations even when such messages are not explicit. This paper considers how children may encounter and interpret gender through schemas, scripts, and multimodal features embedded in the texts they read and the literacy practices they participate in. Drawing on insights from picturebook scholarship, cognitive studies, queer theory, and childhood studies, the discussion explores how gender may be shaped through repeated visual, verbal, and affective cues that children learn to recognise and respond to. At the same time, a growing body of inclusive and counter-normative texts may offer opportunities for children to expand or adjust their existing understandings of gender, although such shifts are often partial and dependent on context, mediation, and broader cultural messages. By approaching literacy as an embodied, relational, and multimodal experience, this paper aims to open a reflective space for considering how early literacy practices may support more diverse and expansive possibilities for gender in ECEC settings.

1. Introduction

Gender continues to hold a quiet but persistent presence in early childhood education and care (ECEC). While young children encounter messages about gender in many aspects of daily life, literacy practices often become a particularly influential space where these messages accumulate (C. D. Martin, 2021). Picturebooks, digital texts, and other multimodal materials may offer children patterned cues about how gender is understood, valued, and enacted in their communities (Lindstrand et al., 2016). These cues are rarely singular or didactic; instead, they may be woven into recurring narrative structures, visual conventions, and affective tones that together form part of the cultural landscape through which young children make sense of themselves and others (Schaper, 2024).

In ECEC contexts, literacy is often conceptualised as a primarily cognitive or linguistic activity. Yet young children’s engagements with stories are embodied, relational, and multimodal, involving gesture, voice, play, and emotional resonance (Taylor & Leung, 2020; van der Mescht, 2023). When viewed in this broader frame, literacy becomes not only a site of meaning-making, but also a space where children interpret social categories, including gender.

Scholars have long noted that picturebooks may communicate ideas about femininity and masculinity through repeated patterns of imagery and characterisation (McCabe et al., 2011; Stephens, 1996; Key, 1971; Weitzman et al., 1972). More recent studies suggest that digital texts, too, may embed subtle cues that support or challenge normative expectations (Tso, 2023; Axell & Boström, 2021; Hamilton et al., 2006). These patterned cues may be absorbed quietly over time, shaping the interpretive repertoires that children draw upon when navigating gender in their everyday lives.

At the same time, children are not passive recipients of the messages they encounter. Research in childhood studies and developmental psychology suggests that children actively seek and interpret cues about gender from multiple sources, often synthesising these cues into early schemas that guide their expectations and behaviours (C. L. Martin & Ruble, 2004; Trautner et al., 2005). This means that literacy experiences in ECEC have the potential not only to reinforce familiar scripts but also to introduce alternative possibilities which children may adopt in partial, tentative, or context-dependent ways (Pahl & Rowsell, 2012). Picturebooks that present gender-diverse families or characters who resist normative roles may, for instance, offer spaces for children to reconsider or expand existing understandings, though such impacts are rarely straightforward (Hamilton et al., 2006).

Despite increasing attention to diversity in children’s literature, gender remains a dimension that can be easily overlooked within broader discussions of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Much of the focus has been on representation: who appears on the page and in what capacity (Peker & Aybars, 2025). While representation matters, an exclusive focus on it may overlook the relational and embodied ways in which young children hear, see, feel, and respond to gendered cues during shared reading, suggesting that literacy practices in ECEC may function not only as sites of illustration but also as multimodal spaces where gender is tentatively experienced and negotiated (Jewitt, 2008; Flewitt, 2011; Flewitt et al., 2015).

This paper takes a reflective and interpretivist stance towards these issues. It does not claim to offer definitive solutions, nor does it treat literacy as a straightforward pathway to gender equity. Instead, it seeks to open a space for considering how gender may be encountered, sensed, and lived through early literacy practices. By exploring the interplay of schemas, scripts, multimodal representation, and children’s agency, the paper aims to illuminate some of the tensions and possibilities that characterise gendered meaning-making in ECEC. The hope is that such reflection might support educators, researchers, and practitioners in thinking more carefully about the kinds of literacy experiences that could invite broader, more inclusive understandings of gender in ECEC settings. This paper adopts a conceptual, narrative synthesis approach rather than a systematic review, drawing together interdisciplinary scholarship to explore how gender may be encountered, interpreted, and negotiated through multimodal literacy practices in early childhood.

2. Theoretical Anchors: Understanding Gender, Childhood, and Literacy

Young children’s experiences of gender in ECEC are shaped through a complex interplay of sociocultural expectations, embodied practices, and multimodal encounters with texts. This section draws together selected strands of theory that may help illuminate how gender is sensed, interpreted, and enacted within early literacy contexts. Rather than presenting a unified framework, the discussion offers a set of interconnected perspectives that together provide an interpretive foundation for later sections. These perspectives approach gender as lived and performed, address the nature–nurture dilemma of gender, recognise children as active agents in making sense of gendered cues, and situate picturebooks and multimodal texts as cultural resources through which schemas and scripts are repeatedly communicated.

2.1. Gender as Lived and Performed

A longstanding strand of feminist and queer theory conceptualises gender not as a static identity but as an unfolding practice shaped through repetition, social norms, and embodied action. Butler’s work positions gender as something continuously “performed” through gestures, behaviours, language, and relational interactions, rather than something one simply “has” (Butler, 1993). These performances may be subtle or pronounced, voluntary or constrained, and often orient towards culturally recognisable expectations of what boys and girls are understood to do, feel, or prefer.

Within ECEC, children’s gendered behaviours may be shaped through everyday conditions of participation, including the availability of materials, the organisation of activities, and adults’ responses to children’s choices. Such contextual cues do not function as direct determinants of gender, but may interact with children’s own sense-making processes, rendering some gendered positions more intelligible or accessible than others. From this perspective, gender is understood as relational and situational, emerging through interaction rather than being imposed in a linear or prescriptive manner.

Gender development is widely understood as a multifactorial process shaped by interacting biological, cognitive, social, and cultural influences (Bon et al., 2024; Mazzuca et al., 2020). Sociocultural accounts emphasise the role of peer norms, institutional expectations, and repeated social performances in shaping how gender is lived and recognised (Paechter, 2007). These perspectives highlight how children come to learn gender through participation in social worlds, without assuming that such participation fully determines gender identity.

Viewing gender as lived and performative, therefore, offers a productive lens for considering how picturebooks and digital texts participate in children’s early gendered experiences. Texts may present patterned cues related to behaviour, affect, and relationality that children encounter as normative, possible, or desirable in specific contexts. While such representations do not generate gendered performances in themselves, they may contribute to the interpretive resources children draw upon as they navigate gendered identities and social interactions.

2.2. The Nature–Nurture Dilemma of Gender

Debates about gender development have long been shaped by tensions between biological and sociocultural explanations, often framed as a nature–nurture dilemma. Biological perspectives have emphasised factors such as prenatal hormones, neurodevelopment, and evolutionary processes, while sociocultural accounts foreground socialisation, modelling, and institutional norms (Olson et al., 2022; deMayo et al., 2022). Contemporary developmental research increasingly cautions against treating these positions as mutually exclusive, instead conceptualising gender as emerging through complex interactions between biological predispositions and social environments across development (deMayo et al., 2022; Fine, 2010; Hyde et al., 2019).

Research drawing on non-human primates has been used to argue that certain gendered behaviours, such as toy preferences or play styles, may have biological roots (Hassett et al., 2008; Kahlenberg & Wrangham, 2010). While such studies offer insights into possible biological contributions, their relevance to human gender development remains contested. Critics note that human gendered behaviour is embedded within symbolic, cultural, and linguistic systems that exceed what can be inferred from animal models alone, and that biological findings are often overstated when translated into educational or social contexts (Fine, 2010; Jordan-Young & Rumiati, 2012).

At the same time, accounts that reduce gender development to peer conformity or environmental reinforcement have also been challenged. Developmental studies of transgender and cisgender children indicate that children’s internal sense of gender identity may emerge early and remain coherent even when it diverges from social expectations or assigned sex at birth (Durwood et al., 2017; Hässler et al., 2022; Gülgöz et al., 2019). These findings underscore the limitations of single-factor explanations and reinforce an understanding of gender as multifactorial. Within this view, ECEC contexts do not determine gender identity, but they may shape the interpretive, relational, and expressive spaces through which children negotiate and make sense of gender.

2.3. Children’s Agency and the “Gender Detective”

While structures and cultural expectations shape gendered meaning-making, children remain active interpreters of the cues around them. Developmental and cognitive research suggests that children begin forming gender labels and expectations at a remarkably young age, often before they can articulate their reasoning. C. L. Martin and Ruble (2004) describe children as “gender detectives,” actively searching for cues that help them make sense of how gender operates in their social world. This search may involve attending to language, clothing, emotional displays, and peer reactions, as well as cues embedded in the texts they encounter.

Children’s early cognitive processes often rely on categorisation, which may lead them to form strong distinctions between boys and girls (Trautner et al., 2005). Such distinctions may initially be rigid, becoming more flexible as children encounter counterexamples or broader social discourses. Importantly, these cognitive tendencies are not separate from children’s lived experiences; they are shaped through interaction, affect, and embodied participation in literacy practices. As children engage with picturebooks or digital stories, they may adopt the emotions, gestures, and relational patterns depicted, weaving them into their own emerging understandings of gender.

This viewpoint highlights agency without overly romanticising it. Children may take up or resist gendered cues in partial or inconsistent ways, depending on the social and material conditions of the literacy encounter. Their interpretations may shift as they move between different texts, peer groups, and adult interactions. Recognising this agency allows for a more nuanced understanding of how literacy practices may influence, not determine, children’s gendered experiences.

2.4. Picturebooks as Cultural and Cognitive Scripts

Research on picturebooks has long emphasised their role in shaping children’s understandings of the world. Coats (2018) argues that picturebooks not only reflect cultural norms but also participate in transmitting and reinforcing gender schemas and scripts. Schemas refer to clusters of ideas that help individuals organise information, while scripts describe the expected sequences of behaviours or interactions associated with particular situations (Schank & Abelson, 1977). In the context of gender, picturebooks may present recurring patterns that children come to recognise: who acts, who cares, who leads, and who follows.

Cognitive research suggests that children often process visual cues more quickly than verbal ones (Holt, 2020; Croker & Maratos, 2011; Lieberman et al., 2001), highlighting the importance of images in picturebooks. Features such as clothing, hair, body size, and posture may subtly communicate gendered expectations even when not explicitly stated. Coats’ (2018) analysis suggests that these visual cues may make gender schemas feel natural and inevitable, particularly when repeated across many texts.

At the same time, some picturebooks intentionally disrupt conventional schemas by presenting gender-diverse families, challenging traditional roles, or creating characters who behave in unexpected ways (Van Horn, 2015; Naidoo, 2012). Such texts may encourage children to expand or adjust their scripts, though this process is often uneven and dependent on context. Schema disruption may require repeated exposure to alternative narratives, alongside supportive dialogue and reflection (Coats, 2018; Van Horn, 2015).

2.5. Multimodal Literacy and Embodied Meaning-Making

A multimodal perspective emphasises that literacy is not limited to decoding words but involves integrating meaning across images, sound, gesture, and embodied engagement. Scholars such as Kress (2010) and Painter et al. (2013) describe picturebooks and digital texts as inherently multimodal, inviting children to interpret meaning through multiple channels. For young children, reading often involves emotional responses, vocal play, physical movement, and an embodied connection with characters or caregivers.

This view resonates with the arguments made earlier: that gender is both performed and socially mediated, and that children draw on relational and sensory cues as they make sense of gendered expectations. Understanding literacy as embodied and multimodal opens possibilities for thinking about how children might experience gender in ways that exceed the representational surface of texts. It also provides a foundation for later sections, where the relational, sensory, and performative dimensions of early literacy practices are considered in more depth.

From an embodied cognition perspective, meaning-making is understood as grounded in bodily action, perception, and affect rather than abstract mental processing alone. Research in cognitive science suggests that language and narrative comprehension are closely linked to sensorimotor systems, with readers drawing on bodily experiences to simulate actions, emotions, and relational dynamics described in texts (Pulvermüller, 2005; Stockner et al., 2025). Related work on grounded cognition further proposes that understanding emerges through the reactivation of perceptual, emotional, and motor states associated with prior experience, rather than through symbolic decoding alone (Barsalou, 2008; Schoeller et al., 2024). When applied to early literacy, these perspectives help illuminate how young children’s engagements with stories are shaped by gesture, movement, vocalisation, and emotional resonance, and how gendered meanings may be felt and enacted through the body as much as interpreted cognitively. Such insights strengthen the argument that multimodal literacy practices provide fertile ground for examining how gender is lived, negotiated, and sensed in early childhood contexts.

3. Gender in Texts: Representation, Schemas, and Multimodal Cues

The picturebooks and digital texts that circulate in early childhood education and care settings carry meaningful and diverse cues about how gender is imagined, valued, and lived. These cues may be subtle, embedded in colour palettes, gestures, relational patterns, or narrative trajectories, but collectively they can contribute to forms of binary pressure that shape the interpretive environment through which children make sense of gender. Here, binary pressure refers to the cumulative effect of recurring representations that position gender as stable, oppositional, and limited to recognisable categories. This section considers how visual and verbal representations in children’s texts may evoke or reinforce certain gender schemas, how multimodal cues shape children’s interpretations, and how emerging inclusive texts may offer possibilities for expanding these scripts. Representation alone does not determine children’s gendered experiences; rather, repeated exposure to particular patterns may contribute to the interpretive resources that young children draw upon.

3.1. Patterns of Representation Across Time

Studies of gender representation in picturebooks across decades have consistently observed imbalances in who appears on the page and in what capacity. Some of the earliest systematic analyses, conducted during second-wave feminist scholarship, revealed that male characters were far more likely to occupy active, agentic roles, whereas female characters were often positioned as passive, domestic, or peripheral (Collins et al., 1984; Williams et al., 1987). Similar findings continued into the 1990s, where updates to classic studies noted that although some progress had been made, significant disparities persisted (Kortenhaus & Demarest, 1993; Stephens, 1996; Turner-Bowker, 1996).

These cumulative patterns do not necessarily mean that contemporary picturebooks remain uniformly traditional (McCabe et al., 2011). Rather, they indicate that for many years, young children encountered texts that presented particular gendered arrangements as ordinary or expected (Abate, 2008). Even as more inclusive books have emerged, historical patterns continue to influence which texts are widely available and which become canonical. This continuity matters because children’s early exposures may shape the schemas and scripts they internalise, not through single stories but through recurring representational tendencies. At the same time, representation is not inherently deterministic; children may question, ignore, or reinterpret what they see. Still, the prevalence of certain portrayals may contribute to what becomes familiar or taken for granted.

3.2. How Gender Is Encoded Visually and Verbally

Picturebooks communicate gender through multiple channels. While some texts explicitly label characters as boys or girls, gender is often implied through visual features such as clothing, accessories, hairstyle, facial expressions, or body size. These multimodal cues may seem innocuous, yet they can function as rapid triggers for children’s existing schemas. As Coats (2018) argues, young children may learn to associate particular visual attributes with gendered behaviours or emotional expressions, especially when these cues recur across many texts.

For instance, larger bodies are frequently coded as masculine, while smaller bodies or delicate features are associated with femininity. Similarly, assertive stances or active postures may be paired with male characters, whereas nurturing or emotionally expressive poses may be paired with female ones. Such patterns are not universal, but they appear often enough to contribute to children’s expectations of how boys and girls “should” behave.

Verbal cues also play an important role. Narratives may attribute particular traits, motivations, or emotional responses to characters in gendered ways. In some stories, girls may be described as kind, thoughtful, or gentle, while boys are portrayed as adventurous, independent, or mischievous. These associations are historically grounded and culturally situated, and children may take them up or resist them depending on context. From an interpretivist standpoint, it is important to acknowledge that children’s responses to such cues are neither fixed nor predictable. Some children may strongly identify with gendered portrayals, while others may disregard them or rework them through play.

Thus, representation in picturebooks cannot be reduced to a simple accounting of who appears. It involves the subtle, multimodal ways in which bodies, behaviours, relationships, and emotions are patterned across texts.

3.3. Schema Reinforcement and Schema Disruption in Children’s Texts

Understanding picturebooks through the lens of schemas and scripts offers a useful way to consider how children interpret gendered information. Schemas, as cognitive clusters of associated ideas, may guide children’s expectations for how characters who appear “boy-like” or “girl-like” might behave. Scripts, in turn, may shape how children anticipate certain sequences of events, such as who rescues, who waits, who leads, or who nurtures (Schank & Abelson, 1977; Coats, 2018).

Many picturebooks reinforce gender schemas through consistent pairing of visual cues and behavioural traits. For example, protagonists in adventure stories are often male, while girls may be more frequently depicted in relational or domestic contexts. These patterns do not operate in isolation. They interact with children’s broader experiences, cultural discourses, and peer interactions, forming part of the interpretive landscape within which children negotiate their own gendered identities.

At the same time, numerous texts seek to disrupt or expand these schemas. Picturebooks such as Jacob’s New Dress (Hoffman & Hoffman, 2014) and Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress (Baldacchino, 2014) centre on named boy characters, Jacob and Morris, whose desire to wear dresses brings them into contact with peer scrutiny and adult mediation. In both narratives, moments of teasing, hesitation, or tentative support make visible the boundaries of acceptable gendered behaviour within the story world. Such portrayals may invite some children to reconsider the rigidity of gender scripts. However, schema disruption is not guaranteed by the presence of a counter-normative character alone. Children may categorise figures like Jacob or Morris as exceptional cases, interpret their stories as humorous departures, or incorporate them into existing schemas in ways that ultimately preserve a binary logic. Research suggesting that gender schema flexibility increases with age (Trautner et al., 2005) may help explain why some children respond more openly to these characters than others.

Thus, while inclusive texts hold promise for expanding children’s interpretive repertoires, their impact may be uneven and context-dependent. Rather than assuming disruption, it may be more productive to consider these texts as providing gentle openings, spaces where children may encounter possibilities that extend beyond familiar scripts.

3.4. Embodied, Sensory, and Multimodal Perspectives

There is an increasing interest in how children engage with texts through embodied (Monahan, 2021; Lenters & McDermott, 2019) and sensory means (Kucirkova, 2022; Mills et al., 2017). Picturebooks and digital texts are multimodal artefacts: children not only look at them but touch, hear, gesture, and respond affectively to them. Such embodied engagement forms part of the meaning-making process, shaping how stories are experienced in shared reading contexts. Recent interdisciplinary work further suggests that multisensory and gender-diverse texts may offer opportunities for inclusive engagement, particularly when sensory-rich or multimodal features support children’s sense of belonging and participation (Gacumo et al., 2024, 2025b).

From this perspective, literacy may be understood not solely as a cognitive or representational activity, but as one that involves the body, senses, and emotions. Approaches that attend to sensory or multimodal dimensions may help illuminate how children experience gender not only through what is depicted on the page or screen, but also through how stories are felt, enacted, and relationally negotiated during reading. Gendered meaning-making, in this sense, may emerge through tone of voice, rhythm, gesture, or proximity, as much as through narrative content. Attending to these dimensions allows for a more nuanced understanding of how gendered cues are encountered in early literacy practices, without assuming uniform or predictable effects.

A multimodal literacy perspective further emphasises that children actively design meaning by orchestrating multiple modes rather than passively receiving textual content. Serafini (2014, 2015) argues that picturebooks invite readers to engage in layered interpretive work that integrates visual, spatial, material, and affective resources alongside written language. From this standpoint, gendered meanings are not simply located in representations but are distributed across modes and realised through situated acts of interpretation. Attending to how colour, layout, gesture, gaze, or material interaction function together may help illuminate how gender is encountered as an experiential configuration rather than a discrete message. This perspective provides a conceptual bridge to the next section, which examines how children perform, negotiate, and sometimes resist gendered cues during literacy events.

4. Gender as Performed in Literacy Events

If gender in picturebooks is shaped through representational patterns, it is during shared literacy events that these representations acquire life. Early childhood reading practices are rarely static or solely textual; they occur through gesture, voice, proximity, emotion, and interaction with peers and adults. In these moments, children do not simply receive gendered cues; they animate, negotiate, and sometimes resist them. This section considers how gender becomes lived within literacy encounters, drawing on work that foregrounds children’s agency, multimodal meaning-making, and embodied participation. This paper explores how literacy activities may provide spaces where children perform gendered identities in ways that are both patterned and open-ended.

4.1. Children’s Enactments of Gendered Scripts During Reading

Research in childhood studies suggests that children actively participate in producing and reproducing gendered identities. Davies (2003) argues that young children draw upon “discursive positionings” available in their environment, taking up roles that feel recognisable within their peer group. Reading activities may offer one such site where children experiment with these roles. For instance, during dramatic retellings of familiar stories, children frequently adopt character roles aligned with dominant gender scripts: girls may volunteer to “be” the caring figure, whereas boys may choose adventurous or combative characters. These selections are not merely preferences but may reflect the gendered repertoires children feel permitted to inhabit.

At the same time, literacy events can create opportunities for children to explore identities beyond dominant narratives. Some studies have observed children choosing characters across gender lines or adopting voices and gestures that challenge normative expectations (Blaise, 2005). These moments are often small and fleeting, but they demonstrate the fluidity with which children can move between positions when space permits. Whether such movements endure or remain isolated depends on the social and material conditions of the literacy encounter: who is present, how peers respond, and how adults frame children’s contributions.

The performative nature of literacy activities thus highlights how gender is not simply pulled from text but emerges through the interplay between representation, interaction, and embodied action. For example, characters such as Morris or Jacob, already positioned as gender-deviant within their narrative worlds, may be taken up by children as roles that are either cautiously explored or actively avoided during dramatic retellings, depending on peer dynamics and adult framing.

4.2. Multimodal and Sensory Engagement as Part of Gendered Meaning-Making

Shared reading is a multimodal event. Children listen, look, gesture, point, mimic, and respond with facial expressions or bodily movement. Kress (2010) describes these processes as part of multimodal meaning-making, where children orchestrate modes in ways that align with their interests, identities, and affective states. When applied to gender, this perspective suggests that children do not extract gendered meaning from texts alone; instead, they generate it through embodied and sensory engagements.

For example, research has shown that children may imitate the postures or affective expressions of characters during reading, adopting gestures coded as culturally masculine or feminine, depending on their interpretations (Rowsell & Pahl, 2015). Similarly, tone of voice, volume, and rhythm during reading can signal alignment with certain character roles or emotional states associated with gendered patterns (Brass & Jenson, 2023; Stutey et al., 2020). These embodied responses are not merely imitative; they contribute to how children experience themselves in relation to the gendered possibilities that stories evoke.

This multimodal orientation resonates with emerging work on sensory and embodied literacy, which suggests that children’s engagements involve bodily attunement, affective resonance, and material interaction with texts (Hackett & Somerville, 2017). These dimensions are not separate from gender but are part of how children sense and interpret gendered cues. For some children, sensory aspects of reading, such as sound, rhythm, or even tactile interaction with books, may make certain gendered scripts more salient or less constraining, depending on how they are taken up in the moment (Kucirkova, 2022; Kucirkova & Mackey, 2020).

4.3. Adults’ Framing and the Social Regulation of Children’s Gender Performances

While children exercise agency during literacy events, their performances are shaped by the expectations, interventions, and interpretive cues provided by adults. Educators’ responses may reinforce or complicate children’s gendered interpretations, intentionally or unintentionally. Wohlwend (2011) observes that teachers often encourage children to adopt certain narrative roles or discourage others, thereby shaping the range of gendered possibilities that become available in classroom literacy practices. These moments reflect not only individual pedagogical choices but also broader institutional norms, cultural expectations, and political sensitivities surrounding gender diversity, which can delimit what educators feel able to acknowledge or support during everyday literacy practices.

Recent research suggests that these dynamics may be especially visible when literacy events focus on texts that challenge normative scripts. In Nguyen’s (2022) study of interactive anti-bias read-alouds, children demonstrated thoughtful and sometimes unexpectedly sophisticated understandings of race and gender, yet they also struggled to resist prevailing binaries. Some children, particularly boys, experimented with gender-nonconforming practices during reading activities, while others reproduced discriminatory language or actions. Importantly, the adult’s responses to these moments varied: at times, the teacher facilitated exploration, and at other times, they hesitated or did not intervene, inadvertently signalling which performances were acceptable or troubling. These adult responses may intensify or soften the binary pressure already embedded in texts, reinforcing which gendered performances are recognised as legitimate within the literacy event.

Similarly, during everyday literacy routines, when a child selects a character whose gender presentation deviates from normative expectations, adults may respond with discomfort, redirection, or humour, subtly indicating which identities “fit” within the social order of the classroom or learning environment. Conversely, when educators offer neutral acknowledgement or active support, literacy events may open into spaces where gender scripts loosen, and multiple identities become thinkable.

These interactions highlight a broader tension in ECEC: educators aim to uphold children’s autonomy and curiosity while navigating institutional norms, parental expectations, and wider societal discourses surrounding gender. Literacy events thus become sites in which children negotiate gendered possibilities, but also where adults’ own understandings of appropriate gendered behaviour are revealed and reproduced.

4.4. Literacy Events as Openings for Expansive Gender Possibilities

While much of the literature documents how gender scripts are reproduced, there is also evidence that literacy events can foster more expansive understandings of gender. When children encounter inclusive picturebooks or stories featuring gender-diverse characters, they may take up alternative roles or perform identities that challenge binary expectations (Ryan & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2018). These performances may not dismantle gender norms entirely, but they can create small openings where children practise alternative ways of being.

Empirical work on multisensory or embodied reading suggests similar possibilities. Studies examining children’s responses to sensory-rich or multimodal texts indicate that diverse engagement pathways may allow children to participate more freely, regardless of gendered expectations surrounding attention, emotion, or behaviour (Gacumo et al., 2025a). Although these studies do not explicitly focus on gender, their findings suggest that embodied and sensory engagement may offer inclusive routes into reading that do not hinge on gendered assumptions about how boys or girls “should” behave.

These insights point to a broader possibility: that when literacy practices make room for diverse forms of participation, vocal, embodied, affective, children may have greater freedom to explore identities that are not tightly bound by dominant gender scripts. Such possibilities remain fragile and contingent, but they invite further reflection on how literacy events might serve as spaces of imaginative and embodied openness.

4.5. Towards an Interpretive Understanding of Gendered Literacy Encounters

Taken together, the perspectives in this section suggest that literacy events are dynamic, multimodal, and relational spaces in which gender is enacted rather than merely represented. Children draw from the cues in texts, the responses of peers, the expectations of adults, and their own embodied dispositions as they make sense of gender. The processes are neither predictable nor uniform; they involve negotiation, improvisation, and affective intensity.

5. Towards Inclusive and Reflexive Pedagogies in Gendered Literacy Practices

This section does not seek to prescribe definitive pedagogical strategies; instead, it offers a reflective space for considering how educators might sensitively attune to children’s gendered performances and cultivate literacy environments that accommodate diverse, fluid, and emergent identities. These reflections draw on existing research while acknowledging the tensions that arise when seeking to support inclusivity in ECEC settings.

5.1. Recognising Literacy as Relational and Situated

Inclusive pedagogies begin with the recognition that literacy events are deeply relational. Shared reading often unfolds through proximity, touch, voice modulation, and shared emotional engagement (Flewitt et al., 2014). Dyson (2016) argues that children’s literacy practices are woven into the social worlds they inhabit, with identities negotiated moment by moment in relation to peers and adults. When applied to gender, this view suggests that reading becomes a site where children not only interpret stories but also negotiate their positions within the social dynamics of the learning environment.

For educators, attending to relationality means noticing how children align with characters, how they respond to peers’ interpretations, and how they enact or resist gendered scripts during reading. Such attention does not require continuous intervention; rather, it invites a stance of sensitive observation, allowing practitioners to understand the complexities of children’s meaning-making before responding pedagogically (Hackett & Somerville, 2017). Inclusive practices in literacy, from this perspective, emerge as an ongoing relational attunement rather than a set of predetermined steps.

5.2. Providing Texts That Offer Diverse and Expansive Possibilities

Research suggests that access to inclusive and gender-diverse texts may broaden the range of identities children encounter, offering potential openings for reimagining gendered scripts (Ryan & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2013). Botelho and Rudman (2009) emphasise that critical literacy entails providing children with texts that reflect varied experiences and perspectives, including those that challenge dominant norms. In the context of gender, this may involve making available picturebooks that depict gender-diverse families, non-binary or transgender characters, and protagonists who disrupt stereotypical roles.

However, simply introducing diverse texts does not guarantee transformative outcomes. Children may interpret such books in ways that reinforce binary scripts, or educators may unintentionally diminish their disruptive potential through humour, discomfort, or attempts to avoid sensitive conversations (Ferfolja & Ullman, 2021). Thus, inclusive pedagogy involves not only providing diverse materials but also creating a learning environment that fosters a climate where such texts can be meaningfully explored, allowing children to ask questions, express curiosity, and engage with stories in ways that feel safe and supported.

This approach sits alongside earlier sections in recognising that children’s responses to gender-diverse texts are shaped by multiple factors, including peer reactions, cultural norms, and their own developing schemas. Inclusive pedagogy in literacy events, therefore, is less about predicting responses and more about cultivating openness.

5.3. Attuning to Embodied, Multimodal, and Sensory Dimensions of Reading

As earlier sections noted, children’s literacy engagements are not solely cognitive but multimodal, embodied, and affective. These dimensions offer important insights for inclusive literacy pedagogy. When children participate through gesture, vocal play, sensory exploration, or movement, they may express identities that differ from those they articulate verbally. Brass and Jenson (2023) suggest that young children often use their bodies to make sense of texts, forming connections that exceed what is visible on the page.

For educators, attuning to these bodily and sensory aspects may reveal how gendered meaning-making unfolds in ways that are not always captured by language. For instance, a child may imitate a character’s posture in a way that challenges expected gendered behaviour or may respond affectively to a story’s rhythm or imagery in ways that signal openness to alternative identities. Observing these subtle cues may allow educators to support children’s explorations without imposing predetermined interpretations.

This perspective aligns with research suggesting that sensory-rich or embodied reading experiences can create more inclusive participation pathways for young children (Gacumo et al., 2025a). This could illuminate how multimodal approaches may reduce reliance on narrow behavioural expectations that are often implicitly gendered. Inclusive literacy pedagogy, from this standpoint, involves making space for varied forms of participation that honour children’s bodily and affective engagements.

5.4. Adopting Pedagogical Reflexivity: Educators as Co-Learners

Supporting gender diversity in literacy practices also requires a reflexive stance. Educators bring their own histories, cultural norms, and gendered assumptions into the classroom, all of which shape how they respond to children’s performances (Blaise & Taylor, 2012). Renold (2005) emphasises that adults often unconsciously reinforce binary expectations through everyday interactions, such as praising boys for assertiveness or girls for kindness. These subtle cues can influence how children perceive the gendered possibilities available to them.

Pedagogical reflexivity involves acknowledging that educators are also navigating gendered norms and may feel uncertain about how to respond to children’s non-normative performances (Blaise, 2010). Rather than positioning themselves as experts on gender, practitioners might adopt a stance of co-learning, engaging alongside children in exploring the meanings, tensions, and ambiguities that arise during reading. This does not require educators to have all the answers; it invites humility, curiosity, and a willingness to think with children rather than for them (Osgood, 2011).

Such reflexivity may also involve attending to institutional and cultural constraints. Some educators work within settings where explicit discussions of gender diversity are discouraged or politicised. In such contexts, inclusive pedagogy may take the form of small gestures, such as offering diverse texts, validating children’s interpretations, or gently expanding what counts as acceptable participation, rather than overt instruction.

5.5. Opening Space Rather than Delivering Outcomes

A recurring theme across this paper is the value of creating spaces rather than prescribing outcomes. Inclusive pedagogy in ECEC is not a blueprint for changing children’s gender identities, nor is it a guarantee that children will adopt expansive understandings of gender (Kuby et al., 2015). Instead, it is an invitation to notice how gender is lived in literacy practices, sometimes quietly, sometimes vividly, and to consider how reading can become a space where multiple possibilities coexist.

This perspective aligns with interpretivist approaches (Willis, 2007) that emphasise meaning-making as situated, relational, and emergent. It acknowledges that children’s engagements with gendered cues are shaped by the integration of social, cultural, and affective factors, many of which lie beyond the direct control of educators (Spyrou, 2018). Inclusive pedagogy, from this standpoint, becomes a practice of careful attention and gentle openness, recognising the complexities involved without assuming linear or predictable effects.

6. Conclusions

Gendered meaning-making in early childhood literacy is a complex, layered, and continually unfolding process. Across this paper, the intention has not been to offer definitive claims about how children understand gender, nor to position literacy as a straightforward solution to entrenched social inequalities. Rather, the aim has been to consider how gender might be sensed, negotiated, and enacted within the everyday literacy practices that shape children’s early educational experiences.

The preceding sections have shown that children’s texts continue to carry powerful representational patterns, some of which reinforce familiar gender schemas and scripts while others subtly or explicitly challenge them. These texts, however, do not operate in isolation. Their influence arises in the relational spaces where reading takes place: in the gestures, glances, silences, and shared attentions that constitute early literacy encounters. Children draw upon the cues within texts, but they also draw upon one another, upon adults, and upon their own embodied dispositions as they navigate the gendered possibilities available to them.

Viewing literacy through an embodied and multimodal lens highlights the ways in which gender is lived during reading, not only interpreted. Children’s voices, postures, and affective responses may reveal alignments, resistances, or playful reimagining that exceed what is shown on the page. These small moments can be fleeting, but they matter. They remind us that gender is not formed in a single act of representation but through repeated and situated engagements across relationships, materials, and sensory experiences.

The pedagogical reflections presented here suggest that inclusive and reflexive pedagogies in ECEC do not require prescriptive procedures. Instead, they involve cultivating openness: noticing children’s interpretations without hastily steering them, offering diverse texts without assuming predictable outcomes, and attending to the embodied and relational nuances of literacy without reducing them to measurable indicators. In this sense, inclusive practice becomes a posture rather than a programme, one grounded in humility, curiosity, and attentiveness to the varied ways children inhabit gendered identities through reading.

It is also essential to recognise the challenges that educators encounter. Institutional norms, cultural expectations, and political debates surrounding gender diversity can shape what is possible within literacy practices. Openness does not eliminate these constraints, but it may provide room for subtle acts of support, such as validating children’s questions, recognising alternative interpretations, or making available texts that gently expand what counts as imaginable. These actions may not radically transform gender norms, yet they may create conditions where children can encounter gender in ways that feel spacious rather than prescriptive.

This paper has drawn on research from picturebook studies, cognitive psychology, queer theory, childhood studies, and multimodal literacy to offer an interpretive account of how gender might be encountered within early literacy practices. While these perspectives vary, they converge in suggesting that children’s meaning-making is relational, embodied, and context-dependent. Gender is neither fixed nor free-floating; it is lived through engagements with stories, with others, and with the multimodal textures of early learning environments.

These insights invite a reconsideration of literacy’s role in ECEC. Literacy is often framed as a foundational academic skill; yet, for young children, it is also a social and sensory experience, one that can affirm, constrain, or open up gendered possibilities. Recognising this multiplicity does not resolve the tensions inherent in supporting gender inclusivity; instead, it helps illuminate them, offering pathways for thoughtful reflection.

Future research might explore how children navigate gendered cues across different modalities, such as digital, embodied, and sensory, or how inclusive texts are interpreted differently across cultural and linguistic contexts. Further attention could also be given to how educators’ own gendered understandings shape literacy interactions, particularly in settings where discourses around gender diversity are contested. Such inquiries may deepen our understanding of how literacy can become a space where children encounter themselves and others with greater nuance and complexity.

Ultimately, this paper suggests that literacy practices in early childhood hold both tensions and possibilities. They may reinforce familiar gendered scripts, yet they can also offer small openings where children sense and explore identities that do not fit neatly within binary expectations. By remaining attentive to these complexities and approaching literacy with care, educators may support environments where children feel invited, not instructed, to inhabit gender in ways that feel authentic, imaginative, and expansive.