Building an Inclusive Environment in Early Childhood Classrooms

Posted: October 20, 2022

As an early childhood educator, you have a unique opportunity to create a safe and welcoming learning environment for children. All children, regardless of family background, race and ethnicity, gender, and cognitive and physical ability deserve to feel they belong and that their teachers care about them. To promote these feelings of belonging and support the relationships you have with children in your care, it is important that you embed practices that support inclusion in your classroom environment and your teaching practices.

Young children playfully hugging on a playground.

Why inclusion matters

Research has established many long-standing benefits to promoting inclusion in early childhood. How young children are treated has a dramatic impact on how they view themselves and the world around them. When children are excluded, it can diminish their feelings of self-worth and confidence and have a negative impact on their social-emotional skills and the relationships they form with other children and their teachers. When children are included, they feel valued and respected and are more likely to have positive opinions about their teachers, peers, and learning. When you promote inclusion among children in your care, there are benefits for all children, their families, and you and your fellow educators!

Benefits to children

Promoting inclusivity has been shown to benefit all young children. Not only will children have positive feelings toward school and themselves, but an inclusive environment also helps teach important life skills, including empathy and compassion for others. Ensuring that children are exposed to different learning activities and have their developmental needs met will also greatly help prepare them to transition to kindergarten.

Benefits to families

An inclusive environment can also benefit the families of children in your care. To support children's unique needs, it is important that you can communicate effectively with children's families. They will appreciate your commitment to their children and hopefully recognize the importance of early childhood education. In addition, ensuring a diverse representation of resources in your classroom can be an excellent way to elicit engagement and connection between you and the families.

Benefits to you and other educators

Thinking about inclusion can push teachers to think creatively, problem-solve, and interact with children in different ways. All of these can make you a better teacher! And promoting inclusion in your classroom can spread to other classrooms and throughout your program, impacting other teachers and their children.

What you can do to support inclusion in your own classroom

Many early childhood organizations, including the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), identify three key tenets for promoting inclusion: access, participation, and supports.

Access. All children should have multiple and diverse learning opportunities and be able to learn through various activities and settings. Depending on the child's needs, you may need to make modifications to your classroom. For example, are there barriers to learning materials that can be removed? Think also about the type of materials in the classroom. Some children learn through words (either verbal or written), others are visual learners, and others are tactile learners (learning through touch). Having both a written and visual classroom schedule as well as different types of classroom manipulatives (e.g., number cubes) is important. It's also important to ensure that all children in your care feel represented. For example, think about the reading materials available in your classroom and their illustrations and pictures. Are there characters that are diverse in race, culture, and physical ability?
Participation. Even when children have access to learning materials, they may not participate in typical classroom activities in the same way. It is important to think about how you engage with children and the strengths and needs of each child. As you know, some children may be more comfortable speaking to you in a group, others may be more reserved and would prefer to engage with you one-on-one, and some children may be non-verbal. If a child is non-verbal, incorporating technology into your classroom may support them and help you connect. Ultimately, it is important that you adapt your approach to connect with all children in your care.
Supports. Some children in your care may need additional support, including speech and physical therapy. In these situations, it is important that educators, the child's family, therapists, practitioners, and program directors are all on the same page regarding how to best meet the child's needs and provide adequate support to ensure inclusion in the classroom.

Promoting inclusivity in your classroom may seem challenging. To ensure that you can meet the needs of all children in your care it is important that you have ongoing conversations with children's families and your director. Professional development can go a long way in supporting you with building an inclusive environment. To learn more about how you can incorporate inclusive practices into your own classroom, be sure to check out the following Better Kid Care professional development courses: