Blog Posts

Posts

Aug 25, 2025

Ensuring children’s voices are heard in research

Content coming soon References Greig, A., Taylor, J. & MacKay, T. (2013) Doing research with children: A practical guide, 3rd edition. SAGE Publications. Hart, R. A. (1992) Children's participation: From tokenism to citizenship. UNICEF Interna...

Aug 25, 2025

Ensuring children’s voices are heard in research: Preschool children's perceptions of gender stereotypes and norms - Poster

Content coming soon

Sep 27, 2024

My experience and reflections on attending EECERA 2024

EECERA 2024 took place in Brighton, UK, from the 4th-6th September, with special interest group meetings and registration taking place from the 3rd. This was my third year of attending and presenting at EECERA, and this year I was chairing a symposium...

Sep 5, 2024

'Boy kittens play over there'

This blog post is based on a talk that was initially presented at EECERA 2024: Developing sustainable early childhood systems: Comparisons, contexts and the cognoscenti. Research has been undertaken into the role that parents, early childhood settin...

Jun 13, 2024

Finally becoming Dr Kilburn!

"So, you have submitted your thesis, what happens next?" This was the question that kept going around in my head. I knew I needed to prepare for my viva, but how did I do that? I knew I needed to take a break from my thesis, but I also needed to ensur...

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Aug 25, 2025

Ensuring children’s voices are heard in research: Preschool children's perceptions of gender stereotypes and norms - Poster

Content coming soon

Aug 25, 2025

Finally becoming a Dr!

The countdown is on - the last weeks before submitting your thesis through to the final sign-off.

Oct 4, 2023

What is it like attending a conference as a PhD student?

Back in August, I attended the 31st EECERA conference held in Estoril, Portugal. This was my second in-person conference, but it was the first time I would present as part of a symposium group. After registering at the conference front desk, my exp...

Aug 29, 2023

Competing pressures of supporting agency and challenging gender stereotypes - Poster

Aug 5, 2023

The challenge of balancing the competing pressures of enabling children’s agency and the practitioners’ role in challenging gender stereotypes?

This blog post provides an overview of the literature that examines the competing roles that practitioners have in supporting the development of children's agency, whilst also challenging their reinforcement of gender stereotypes. It aims to provide i...

Aug 25, 2022

Not Always Innocent - Poster

Jul 18, 2022

Not Always Innocent: Pre-school children's reinforcement of gender stereotypes during play

"We know that children police or control their peers' gender development" but how do we know and where is the literature that supports this view. The opening 'quote' is paraphrased from the introduction of many articles that examine the role of peers ...

Jun 27, 2022

“Girls can’t do physics!” and other damaging stereotypes

I’ve been trying to work out how to respond to the BBC headline “Girls see physics as for white men only, MPs told” since it was published on their website on the 19th May. My initial response was anger over the headline which reinforces gender stereo...

Mar 24, 2022

What is the problem with gender stereotypes?

My research focuses on how pre-school children reinforce gender stereotypes and norms through their play with others. But this raises the question – what is the problem with gender stereotypes? I have just finished reading Hidden Figures by Margot Lee...

Jan 29, 2022

“I’m a big boy now, and big boys don’t cry!”: Peer reinforcement of gender stereotypes within pre-school settings

Blog post based on my ECSDN conference presentation. A little boy was standing on the climbing frame in front of me and started to talk to me. “I don’t cry” he said, “what do you mean?” I asked him “I’m a big boy now, and big boys don’t cry!” he rep...

Jan 27, 2022

Inequality of experience: Pre-school children’s control of the environment through the use of gender

Blog post written for BECERA - https://www.crec.co.uk/becera-posts/becera2022-inequality-of-experience-cathy-kilburn Whilst writing my Masters dissertation around superhero and weapon play, I became interested in the literature that I was reading whic...

Dec 27, 2021

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to the Early Childhood Academic blog. My intention is to share my PhD journey, research and teaching experiences. I am currently in the third year of my PhD and focused on analysing my data. Over the last year, I was lucky enough to be able to...