Children’s Varied Reasoning About Gender and Professions in an Arts-Based Intervention

This study examines how Finnish primary school children (grades 3–4, ages 8–10) understand and negotiate gender norms related to professions, through an arts-based educational intervention. Drawing on norm-critical pedagogy and employing professional role poems as creative prompts, the intervention combined poetry reading, creative writing, and visual arts to explore children’s occupational perceptions. The research utilized the mosaic method, integrating children’s creative outputs – fairytales, poems, illustrations – with individual interviews and classroom observations. Twenty-one pupils participated in a two-week intervention in a small western Finnish town. Findings reveal that children demonstrated three distinct perspectives on occupational gender: egalitarian views rejecting gender-based occupational divisions; gendered associations based on physical attributes, cultural products, or assumed interests; and reflective positions where children questioned their own stereotypical assumptions. Prior research by Miller and Budd (1999) on British children aged 8, 12, and 16 showed that occupational stereotyping decreases with age, with girls exhibiting more liberal views than boys. Our findings extend this work by revealing how Finnish children actively negotiate these stereotypes through creative expression. The study demonstrates that arts-based approaches can make visible children’s implicit understanding of professional gender norms, while providing opportunities for norm-critical reflection.