ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two iterations of the educational intervention. The first was in a first-grade classroom and the second in a third-grade classroom. Theory is vital to design-based research (DBR), since theory informs the initial design of an educational intervention and is then applied during data analysis. DBR’s unique capacity to blend theory and practice while promoting cycles of improvement was central to the project. DBR requires the researcher to reflect back on the intervention through “retrospective analysis”. The chapter describes how children experienced a critical gender curriculum, in the hope of contributing to understandings of educational interventions aimed at challenging children’s ideas about the gender binary and the limitations of gender stereotypes. Few research studies have focused on critical gender classroom experiences. Despite the wide range of independent reading levels in the classroom, the children were able to have a shared experience to draw upon for the critical gender discussions that were an integral part of the intervention.
