Chapter 1 The Four Goals for an Anti-Bias Approach T he four goals for an anti-bias approach are for children across all age groups. They are also for the adults who raise and teach chil- dren. To effectively implement an anti-bias approach that culti- vates the four goals in children’s development, we need to cultivate them in our own development as well. We must constantly increase understanding of our own identity, our skills for interacting with diver- sity, our ability to recognize bias and injustice, and our willingness to act against it. For these reasons many of the discussion questions are designed to help adults reflect on our own identity development and experiences with bias. These discussions will help provide insight into what our own experiences have taught us. They will help us add on to that learning and translate it into effective ways to work with children. The ways people work toward the four goals must take into account diverse developmental levels as well as our own diverse cultural styles and those of the children and adults with whom we are working. While the goals may be the same for all of us, the specific strategies will vary from person to person and from program to program. A cen- tral challenge is to continually develop our awareness of how children and adults communicate and learn and of what cultural factors influ- ence them in doing so. We must also commit ourselves to deepening our understanding of our own cultural lenses, how they differ from or are similar to the lenses of others, and what the implications of the differences are for effective communication and facilitation of learn- ing. For example, in addressing Goal 4, if we want children to