Persona Dolls

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Persona Dolls
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A brief history The persona doll method was
developed in the USA And then brought to Europe
by Babette Brown, London, UK Marianne Egedahl,
Copenhagen, Denmark and Anke van Keulen, Utrecht,
The Netherlands who adapted and further
developed the approach for a western European
context
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What are Persona Dolls?
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• Persona Dolls are Dolls with a personality.
• They have a name, a family, a history, things
  they like and dont like. They have a home and
  speak one or more languages, they have favorite
  food, and there are some foods they dont eat at
  all, they enjoy doing certain things, and at
  others theyre not very good.

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• Persona Dolls represent the diversity in our
  world

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• The Persona Dolls visit the children in the
  day-care centre or at school and invite the
  children to talk with them.

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• Persona Dolls-
• For which age group?

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• You can use the Persona Doll for working with
  school children, but also with children under 5
  and as young as 1,5 to 2 years.

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• Anti-Bias Education

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• The Persona Dolls support the educator in
  addressing challenging issues
• anger, conflicts, sadness.
• experiences with exclusion and discrimination,
  with injustice and name calling
• The method supports anti-bias education

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• The anti-bias approach
• was developed in California, USA, by Louise
  Derman-Sparks and her colleagues. In the
  Kinderwelten Project it was adapted and developed
  further for the German context.

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• The Anti-Bias-Approach
• encompasses Prejudices and Biases of every kind
• addresses all children
• takes into account each childs family culture and
  his/her concrete day-to-day life (in contrast to
  a national culture)
• is integrated into the every-day work in the
  day-care centre
• can be differentiated from colourblind and
  touristic approaches to intercultural work.

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Anti-Bias goal 1

• Supporting the development of a confident and
  well-informed self- and group identity of each
  child

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Identifying with the Persona Dolls

• The Doll represents the diversity in the
  childrens group
• Information for the biography of the dolls
  Families of the children, people outside of the
  family, books, internet etc.
• Its important that the doll looks real, to
  support the childrens identfication with it.

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Anti-Bias-Goal 2

• Enabling experiences with diversity

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Making diversity come alive

• The dolls support meeting diverse family
  cultures.
• Personal dolls support children to express their
  own feelings, to be empathetic with others and to
  meet people with respect who are different from
  themselves.

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Making diversity come alive

• Its important to start with things the children
  (and the doll) have in common and then to move on
  to making differences an issue.

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Anti-Bias-Goal 3

• Supporting critical thinking about prejudices and
  discrimination

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• Persona Dolls can support childrens
  understanding about fairness and unfairness.
• The teacher / educator can help the children to
  learn more words for feelings and emotions.

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Anti-Bias-Goal 4

• Encouraging and supporting children to resist
  prejudices and discrimination

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• The anti-bias approach combines respect for
  diversity and a decisive stance against
  discrimination and prejudices.

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• Children are encouraged to actively challenge,
  together with others, biases, discrimination and
  exclusion that target themselves and / or others.
• The didactic principle in this step is to
  address and make public.

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Persona Dolls and their stories pick up on these
goals, by

• Reflecting the diversity of the children and
  their families,
• Supporting an active encounter with a wide
  diversity of life-stories ,
• supporting children to reflect on their own and
  others experiences and to engage them in
  reflecting on the effects of unfair attitudes and
  behaviour.

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• Supports children to be compassionate and
  respectful of the feelings of others and to
  engage themselves in helping and standing in for
  others and themselves,
• Prompts children, to reflect on how they can
  protect themselves against and challenge unfair
  behaviour,
• Supports children in developing problem solving
  skills.

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• Persona Doll Stories

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• The Persona Doll represents the children in the
  group and the stories represent experiences the
  children have made.
• Persona Dolls do not only share problematic
  stories with the children. Just like the children
  they experience happy, funny, sad and difficult
  situations.
• And of course they tell of experiences the
  children might not have had so far, to help them
  broaden their horizon.

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Resources for a Persona Doll story

• A situation, that took place in the childrens
  group
• Issues, that the children might not talk about,
  but that play a role in their environment

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• Using the Persona Doll

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• The Persona Doll sits on the
• lap of the teacher/educator.
• From time to time the teacher
• bends down to the doll, to
• hear what the doll wants to say
• to the children.
• The teacher then tells the
• children using the third person,
• what she has heard, leads the
• conversation, invites the children
• to tell about themselves and lets
• them develop their thoughts.
• The doll does not speak.

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• Should the children be allowed to play with the
  Persona Doll?

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• Some teachers allow the children to play with the
  doll, others dont. This is left to each one
  personally.
• Its important to remind the children, that the
  doll represents a person who has to be treated
  carefully and with respect.

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• How do the children benefit?
• Acknowledging their uniqueness and special needs
• Respecting and valuing their group identity
• Expanding their knowledge of their own and other
  childrens family culture
• Experiences with empathy and solidarity
• Protection against discrimination
• Decisionmaking and responsibility in the face of
  unfair behaviour
• Dialogue and negotiation skills
• Development of a dialogue culture

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• Persona Dolls and language skills

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• Persona Dolls animate children and stimulate
  communication. As the stories of the dolls are
  close to what the children experience themselves,
  they easily develop an emotional access and are
  engaged in the exchange with the doll. At the
  same time children are challenged on a cognitive
  and linguistic level they reflect about events
  in the past, imagine what they would do if they
  were in the same situation as the doll and try to
  find solutions for it.
• They experience I have something important to
  contribute.

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Persona Doll Trainings

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Persona Doll Trainings

• Training sessions running over several months
• Introduction into the Anti-Bias-Approach
• Introduction to working with the Persona Doll
  method

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Persona Doll Trainings

• The making of the Persona Doll

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Persona Doll Trainings
Practicing the handling and
talking to children
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Persona Doll Trainings

• Developing stories

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Persona Doll Trainings

• 
  Videotaping the Persona Doll in
  action
• Videotapes are the basis for peer consultation
  in the training sessions. The teachers analyze
  together strengths and weaknesses of the persona
  doll session.

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Literatur

• Enßlin, Ute/Henkys, Barbara Vielfalt ins
• Gespräch bringen mit Persona Dolls.
• In Kleine Kinder-keine Vorurteile?
• Brown, Babette Combating Discrimination.
• Persona Dolls in Action. London Trentham
• Books 2001
• Derman-Sparks, Louise A.B.C. Task Force
• Anti-Bias-Curriculum. Tools for empowering young
• children. Washington NAEYC 1989.
• Trisha, Whitney Kids like us Using persona
• dolls in the classroom. Redleaf press, 1999.
• ISBN 1-884834-65-5

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Literatur

• Videos
• Citizenship for all. Respect, rights,
  responsibilities (70 min)
• Celebrating diversity. Inclusion in practice (69
  min)
• Persona Dolls in Action
• Source
• 51 Granville Road, London N12 OJH, UK, Tel. 020
  8446 7056
• E-Mail personadoll_at_uk-gateway.net
• Website
• www.kinderwelten.net
• www.persona-doll-training.org
  

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The End