gender schema theory

• Martin and Halverson agree with Kohlberg that a child's thinking is at the basis of their development of gender role behaviours.
• They suggest that children's understanding of gender increases with age.
• They also share the view that children develop their understanding of gender by actively structuring their own learning, rather than passively observing and imitating role models.
• However, they argue that the process starts much earlier than Kohlberg suggested - children learn pre-programmed gender schema between age 2-3.

• Schemas are mental concepts that develop via experience and are used by cognitive systems to organise knowledge around particular topics.
• A gender schema is a generalised representation of everything we know about gender and gender-appropriate behaviour.
• According to Martin and Halverson, once a child has established gender identity around the ages of 2-3 years, he or she will begin to search the environment for information that encourages the development of gender schema.
• The schema helps the child make sense of the world i.e children form stereotypes of the ways that they think males and females behave.

• Children go on to develop scripts of activities and/or actions that males and females perform.
• Children monitor their environment for information and behaviours that are consistent with their ideas of appropriate male and female behaviour and add or assimilate this information into their thinking.
• If a behaviour is considered inconsistent, they may just ignore it so that their stereotypes or schemas don't ned to be altered- they need to be able to predict behaviour and stereotypes allow them to do this.

• Children have a much better understanding of the schemas that relate to their own gender- they view their own group as the 'in group' and the opposite as 'out group'
• In group identity serves to increase the child's level of self esteem.
• Boys play close attention to boy's toys, pay minimal attention to anything 'girly'. Girls focus actively on girly things and avoid anything perceived as 'boyish'
• Children look to the environment to build gender schemas.
• It is not until children are a little older (age 8) that they build more elaborate schemas for both genders.

• Martin & Halverson found that children under the age of 6 were more likely to remember gender-consistent information than they were gender-inconsistent.
• Researchers showed 5 and 6 year olds pictures of people carrying out activities. Sometimes these pictures were schema-consistent and sometimes they were gender-inconsistent.
• Findings showed that recall for schema-consistent pictures was generally good. However, when schema inconsistent pictures were recalled they were often distorted so that the expected sex was remembered as carrying out the activity.

Overemphasis on the role of the individual in gender development:

• Does not display enough attention to the role of social factors such as parental influence, surrounding culture (school and media). 
• It also ignores the role of reward and punishment- rewards and punishment shape behaviour and are likely to encourage gender-stereotyped behaviours in children. 
• Emphasises how schemas develop but not why gender schemas develop and take the form they do 

• Little and Martin found that children under the age of 4, who showed no sign of gender stability or constancy, nevertheless demonstrated strongly sex-typed behaviours and attitudes.
• Campbell and Poulin-Dubois et al have shown that children pay attention to same-sex role models much earlier than Kohlberg suggested. Young children turn to gender roles before they can speak.
• This research contradicts Kohlberg's theory but is consistent with the predictions of gender schema theory.