Problematizing the cisgendering of school washroom space: interrogating the politics of recognition of transgender and gender non-conforming youth

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how transgender and gender non-conforming youth are represented and shaped as specific subjects vis-à-vis the cisgendered problematics of the washroom space in schools. In the first part of the paper, I undertake a critical analysis of one policy-informing text on the implementation of the gender neutral washroom in schools to consider how the transgender and gender non-conforming student is constituted through specific discourses of accommodation, submission and protection that delimit their recognisability and force a potential risk of misrecognition. I also draw upon my own empirical research [Ingrey, Jennifer C. 2014. “The Public School Washroom as Heterotopia: Gendered Spatiality and Subjectification.” PhD diss., University of Western Ontario] to prioritize transgender and genderqueer voices and provide an analysis of the practice of recognition. The analysis is grounded in [Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Translated and edited by Colin Gordon. New York, NY: Pantheon Books; Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Afterword: The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Power, edited by James D. Faubion and Paul Rabinow, 326–348. New York, NY: The New Press] the analytics of subjectivation and pastoral power, [Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York, NY: Routledge] the politics of recognition of the self, [Juang’s, Richard M. 2006. “Transgendering the Politics of Recognition.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker, and Stephen Whittle, 706–719. New York, NY: Routledge] transgendering of the politics of recognition, alongside [Bacchi’s, Carol. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson: Frenchs Forest, NSW] critical approach to policy analysis.     

Reviews classroom materials for the gifted

Easy ears. A Scholastic Audio/Visual Program 50 W. 44th St. New York, New York 10036

Grimm's tales for young and old translated by Ralph Manheim, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1977

The uses of enchantment. Bruno Bettelhelm, New York: Random House, 1977 400 Hahn Rd. Westminster, MO 21157.

Capitalization and punctuation by Jennifer Price published by Curriculum Associates, 1977 6 Henshaw St. Woburn, Mass. 01801

Things that are red. Bowmar Artworlds Bowmar/Noble Publishers, Inc. 4563 Colorado Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90039     

Perceptions of gender in early years

This article presents an exploration of a group of Early Years Practitioners’ (EYPs) perceptions of gender that may provide some insight into the growing divide between boys’ and girls’ educational performance [Burusic, J., T. Babarovic, and M. Seric. 2012. “Differences in Elementary School Achievement between Girls and Boys: Does the Teacher’s Gender Play a Role?” European Journal of Psychology of Education 27 (4): 523–538]. I argue that the current media and educational interest in the gendered brain [Sax, L. 2005. Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. New York: Broadway Books] and the influences that surround the child [Eckert, P., and G. S. McConnell. 2013. Language and Gender. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], can result in children acquiring social expectations and attitudes to learning that are different for both sexes. The frequent dimorphic treatment of boys and girls is often based on assumed biological differences [Baron-Cohen, S., S. Lutchmaya, and R. Knickmeyer. 2004. Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: Amniotic Fluids Studies. Massachusetts Institute of Technology] that suggest that the sexes learn differently. This can result in the approaches to the care and education of children being established on their sex categories rather than their individual needs. My focus here is to explore practitioners’ expectations and understanding of children’s behaviour and learning in the nursery environment. The study is premised on the belief that practitioners’ perceptions of gender could, as argued by [Eliot, L. 2009. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps – And what we can do About It. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company], result in self-fulfilling prophecies being (re)produced and (re)created. The deployment of stereotypical assumptions and practices could, I suggest, limit children’s opportunities. The data used here are drawn from my doctoral study of the nature of gender as was understood by eight EYPs who took part in five discussion group sessions. An interpretative paradigm was adopted, where the EYPs’ discussed their experiences and understanding of gender from their practice. Following [Holloway, I., and S. Wheeler. 2013. Qualitative Research in Nursing and Healthcare. 3rd ed. West Sussex: John Wiley &; Sons Limited], the study explored experiences and perceptions in order to illuminate meaning and understanding. The findings indicated that there is a belief amongst the group of practitioners with whom I worked that gender is either innate or learned and that EYPs play no role in its development. The tentative conclusions suggest that changes to the education and training of EYPs are required in order to raise awareness of gender issues in nurseries. I suggest that there is a need to place gender back on the education and training agenda for EYP in order to support changes to practice that could, in turn, provide children with more equitable teaching and learning experiences.     

Global gender discourses in education: evidence from post-genocide Rwanda

This paper investigates global gender policy discourses within the education realm in post-genocide Rwanda. Drawing on interview data from students in seven secondary schools and Unterhalter’s gender framework (Unterhalter, Elaine. 2007. Gender, Schooling and Global Social Justice. New York, NY: Routledge), I analyse the extent global discourses are integrated into national education documents and how students understand global discourses around ‘gender equality’. I find that in national education policies and texts, discourses around gender equality are framed as a means to development, as a human right, and in relation to the past conflict rather than for the transformation of patriarchal structures. Similarly, students draw on themes from global policy discourse around development and rights but at the same time ‘re-gender’ this for a local context, propagating a public/private divide and cultural and biological stereotypes. Consequently, gendered hierarchies and biases persist in student attitudes. Findings carry important implications for the limitations of global gender policy discourses and the challenges of changing gender norms in a post-conflict context.     

From gender-not-an-issue to gender is the issue: the educational and migrational pathways of middle-class women moving from urban Bangladesh to Britain

This paper explores the educational and migrational pathways which a number of middle-class women from Bangladesh took as they grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. It draws on qualitative research, conducted between July and November 2011, with highly educated Bangladeshi women who migrated to Britain in the early 2000s. French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's critique of education, as a means of middle-class social reproduction [Bourdieu, P., and Jean-C. Passeron. ([1977] 1990). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. 2nd ed. Translated from the French by Richard Nice. London: Sage], and his notion of ‘academic capital’ [Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated from the French by Richard Nice. London: Routledge; Bourdieu, P. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research For the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood] are applied to this empirical data. While the participants’ experiences of early education confirms Bourdieu's arguments, in terms of the centrality of the family's educational and cultural capital in making a qualitative difference to their children's academic achievements, the analysis of the participants’ higher education complicates this picture. Here, the paper calls Bourdieu's umbrella term ‘academic capital’ into question. The author suggests that three categories of academic capital were needed to explain the different and unequal ‘value’ of the participants’ academic qualifications before and after migration. These are – elite, standard and general. Through this exploration of these women's educational and migrational pathways, and the classed and gendered nature which many of them took, this paper seeks to further the feminist project of making Bourdieu's theories ‘useful’ in understanding contemporary issues which affect women's lives (Adkins, L. 2004. “Introduction.” In Feminism After Bourdieu, edited by L. Adkins and B. Skeggs, 110–128. Oxford: Blackwell, 3).     

Executive power and scaled-up gender subtexts in Australian entrepreneurial universities

Deputy Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor positions have proliferated in response to the global, corporatised university landscape [Scott, G., S. Bell, H. Coates, and L. Grebennikov. 2010. “Australian Higher Education Leaders in Times of Change: The Role of Pro Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 32 (4): 401–418]. Senior leadership is the sphere where academic and management identities are negotiated and values around the role of the university are decided. This paper examines the changing and gendered nature of the senior leadership setting and its implications for diversity in and of university leadership. The analysis draws from a three-year empirical study funded by the Australian Research Council on leadership in Australian universities. It focuses on executive leaders in three universities – one which is research-intensive, the second, in a regional site, and the third, university of technology. The article argues that the university landscape and its management systems are being restructured in gendered ways. It utilises the notion of organisational gender subtexts to make explicit how gender works through structural and cultural reform.     

PSYCHOLOGY

Landscapes of Learning by Maxine Greene. New York: Teachers College Press, 1978. 255 pp.

The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1976 by Henry J. Perkinson. New York: Random House, 1977, Second Edition. 236 pp.

Innovation in Organizations: Innovation in School Organizations by Richard L. Daft and Selwyn W. Becker. New York: Elsevier North-Hollard, Inc., 1978. 277 pp. $15.95     

New girlhood and lost boys: analysing the cultural politics of gender and education through film

The ‘coming of age’ films Bend it like Beckham, Whale Rider and Harry Potter feature distinctive narratives about girlhood and boyhood that provide a perspective on the changing historical and political context of gendered identity construction in the new millennium. The early 2000s represented a particular moment in thinking about the possibilities, risks and threats of gender relations in Western countries. This was overwhelmingly represented by a discourse of crisis and loss in relation to boyhood and a discourse of hope in relation to girlhood. These films reflect the tensions and contradictory readings of the new cultural politics of gender in the early 2000s, drawing on many of the discourses present in academic discussions about young people's gendered identities. We show how an analysis of ‘coming of age’ films offers a lens for examining the cultural politics of gender and education, and for reflecting on social change and the perceptions and anxieties that this brings.     

Pendleton—Plus

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers. August Aichhorn. Edited by Otto Fleischmann, and others. (New York: International Universities Press, 1965. Pp. 244. $5.00.)

Elementary School Organization and Administration, fourth edition. Henry J. Otto and David C. Sanders. (New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, 1964. Pp. 409. $6.50.)

The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture. Jurgen Herbst. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965. Pp. 262. $5.75.)

Helping High School Students to Read Better. Will J. Massey and Virginia D. Moore. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp. 102. $1.95, paper.)

Linguistics and English Grammar. Henry Allan Gleason, Jr. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp.519. $7.95.)

Social Studies in Secondary Education. Jonathon C. McLendon. (New York: Macmillan, 1965. Pp. 556. $7.50.)

The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay on the Historiography of American Education. Lawrence A. Cremin. (New York: Bureau of Publication, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965. Pp. 81. 95¢, paper.)

Writing and Literature in the Secondary School. Edward J. Gordon, editor. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp. 295. $3.95, paper.)     

THE TEACHING OF THE GOD IDEA TO THE CONFIRMANDS

Abstract

From a Ruined Garden—the Memorial Book of Polish Jewry, translated and edited by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, 275 pp. New York, Schocken Books, $18.95.

The Five Scrolls. Trans. and ed. Herbert Bronstein and Albert H. Friedlander. New York: CCAR Press, 1984. xiv + 383 pp. $12.     

The role of education in nineteenth‐century doctrines of political economy

Human Characteristics and School Learning. By B. S. Bloom. Pp. 284. New York. McGraw‐Hill, 1976. £8.20.

Child Language, Learning and Linguistics. By David Crystal. Pp. 106. London: Edward Arnold, 1976. £4.25. Paper £1.95.

Schools Council Working Paper No. 60: Examinations at 18+—The N and F Studies. Pp. 272. London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1978. £4.50.

In and Out of School (The ROSLA Community Education Project). By R. White &; D. Brockington. London: RKP, 1978. 200pp. Hardback £4.50, Paperback £2.25.

County Grammar School: A History of Ludlow Grammar School Through Eight Centuries Against its Local Background. By David J. Lloyd, 1977.

Adolescence and Youth in Prospect. Edited by John P. Hill and Franz J. Monks. Pp. 216. IPC Science and Technology Press, Ltd., Guildford; 1977. £6.80.

Resource‐Based Learning. By N. Beswick. Pp.xiv+264. Heinemann, London, 1977. £6.50.

Instead of Education. Ways to help people do things better. By John Holt. Pp. 252. Penguin Books, 1977. 8op.

Philosophical foundations for the curriculum. By Allen Brent, pp. 233. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978. £7.50 hardback, £3.50 paperback.

The Politics of Curriculum Change. By Tony Becher and Stuart Maclure. Pp. 192. London: Hutchinson, 1978, £2.95.

Power and the Curriculum: Issues in Curriculum Studies. Edited by Colin Richards. Pp. 170. Driffield: Nafferton Books. 1978. £2.95.

The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, Edited by Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin. Pp. 213. London: Croom Helm 1978: £7.50.

The training of teachers in England and Wales 1800—1975. By H. C. Dent. Pp. viii, 163. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977. Paperback £2.35.

American Education: An Introduction to Social and Political Aspects. By Joel Spring. Pp. vi, 234. New York and London: Longman, 1978: £4.50.     

LANGUAGE

The Schools That Fear Built by David Nevin and Robert E. Bills. Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books Ltd., 1976. 186pp. $10.00.

Ideology and Education by Richard Pratte. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1977.305 pp.

Helping Students Help Themselves: How You Can Put Behavior Analysis Into Action in Your Classroom by Dwight L. Goodwin and Thomas J. Coates. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976. 205 pp.

The Politics of Higher Education: Lawmakers and the Academy in Illinois by James Dunlap Nowian. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. 109 pp. $2.95.

Education for Human Development: Understanding Montessori by Mario M. Montessori, Jr. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. 119pp. $7.95.

Gaming: The Future's Language by Richard D. Duke. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Halsted Press Division, 1974. 223 pp. $11.50.

Teacher Expectations and Pupil Learning by Roy Nash. Boston: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1976. 89 pp. $7.75.     

The gendered politics of historical writing in History of Education

This article looks through the lens of the gendered politics of historical writing at the main forms and direction of scholarship on gender in History of Education since its publication. It discusses how social, women’s, feminist and gender history has been treated in the journal and how developing approaches around the body, space, materiality, and the construction of the archive, are informing the production of new knowledge around gender. The article argues that History of Education has contributed to ways in which gender has been imagined in historical reconstruction and analysis. As the gendered politics of history has been treated in the journal, gender analysis has contributed to the development of history of education as discipline. The article concludes that in re-writing and re-theorising traditional educational history, the radical openness of the future of gender analysis lies in the continuing transformation of gender analysis itself.     

“Our speech”;

Stage Scenery and Lighting. By Samuel Selden and Hunton D. Sellman. New York: F. S. Crofts &; Co., 1934; pp. xvii+398. $4.50.

Modern Theatre Practice—A Handbook for Non‐Professionals. By Hubert C. Heffner, Samuel Selden, and Hunton D. Sellman. New York : F. S. Crofts &; Co., 1935 ; pp. xviii+378. $3.00.

A Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Edited by Harley Granville‐Barker and G. B. Harrison. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1934 ; pp. x+408. $3.

Shakespeare and the Audience. By Arthur Colby Sprague. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935; pp. xi+327. $2.50.

Comparative Comedies Present and Past. By Rowena Keith Keyes and Helen M. Roth. New York: Noble and Noble, Inc., 1935; pp. viii+628.

Behind the Footlights. By Charles Chambers Mather, Alice Howard Spaulding and Melita Hamilton Skillen. New York: Silver, Burdett, 1935; pp. 495. $1.72.

The Theatre. By Malcolm Morley. New York: Pitman Publishing Corp., 1935; pp. xiii+204. $1.50.

Public Speaking — As Listeners Like It! By Richard C. Borden. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935; pp. 111. $1.50.

Principles and Types of Speech. By Alan H. Monroe. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1935 ; pp. 410.

Good Speech Primer. By Fannie E. Daniels. New York: E. P. Dutton &; Co., 1935; pp. x + 83: together with Teachers’ Manual for same, separately bound; pp. x + 65.

The Psychology of Wants, Interests and Attitudes. By Edward L. Thorndike and others. New York: D. Appleton‐Century Company, 1935; pp. 301.

The Psychology of Radio. By Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport. New York: Harper &; Bros., 1935; pp. 276.     

Spoken English

Effective Speech. (A textbook for beginning courses in speech.) By Harry B. Gough, Lousene Rosseau, Mary E. Cramer, and J. Walter Reeves. New York: Harper &; Bros., 1930; pp. 572; $1.60.

Argumentation. By James A. Winans and William E. Utter‐back. New York: Century Company, 1930; pp. xii, 462; $2.25.

Modern Oratory. By the Right Hon. Lord Hewart of Bury. The English Association, Pamphlet No. 74, 1929; 13 pp.

University of Michigan Plays. Edited by Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, with an Introduction by Louis A. Strauss. Ann Arbor: George Wahr, 1929; pp. xiii, 169.

Mental Aspects of Stammering. By C. S. Bluemel, M. A., M. D., L. R. C. P. (Lond.) M. R. C. S. (Eng.); Baltimore, The Williams and Wilkins Co., 1930: pp. 145, and index.

Why English Sounds Change. By Janet Rankin Aiken, Ph. D. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1929. vii + 146 pp.

The Way of the Drama. By Bruce Carpenter. New York: Prentice‐Hall, Inc. 1929; pp. 263. $2.50.

A Book of Dramas. Arranged and edited by Bruce Carpenter. New York: Prentice‐Hall, Inc. 1929; pp. 1,115. $3.50.

August Strindberg: The Bedeviled Viking. By V. J. McGill. New York: Brentano's, 1930; pp. 454.

Make‐Up. By John F. Baird. New York; Samuel French, 1930; pp. x, 155.

Parliamentary Law. By Edith Theall Chafee, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1930. 114 pp.

The Nervous Child. By Hector Charles Cameron, M. A., M. D., F. R. C. P. New York. Oxford University Press, 1929: pp. 236.

The Mirror of Gesture, the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikesvara, translated into English. By Ananda Coomaraswamy and Gopala Kristnayya Duggirala. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1917. 52 pages, 15 plates.

Greenleaf Theater Elements. I. Action. By Constance Smedley. Duckworth and Company, Covent Gardens, London, W. C. 1925. 61‐78 pages.

The Art of Pantomime. By Charles Aubert, translated into English. By Edith Sears. Henry Holt and Company. New York, 1927. $3.50. 210 pages, 196 diagrams.

The Technique of Pantomime. By Florence Lutz. The Sather Gate Book Shop, Berkley, California. 1927. $2.25. 174 pages.

Middletown. By Robert and Helen Lynd. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.     

The Improvement of Teaching Based on Group Reports of the Oxford Conference,Miami University,Oxford, Ohio,July, 1947

The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification, and Development by Ronald Dore. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. 227 pp. $15.00 cloth, $5.50 paper.

Public Policy and Private Higher Education edited by David W. Breneman and Chester E. Finn, Jr. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1978. $16.95 cloth, $7.95 paper.

Toward a New World Outlook: A Documentary History of Education in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976 edited by Shi Ming Hu and Eli Seifman. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1977. 335 pp. $21.50 cloth, $9.95 paper.

Classroom Discipline for Effective Teaching and Learning by Laurel N. Tanner. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978. 214 pp.

The Gifted and the Creative: A Fifty-Year Perspective edited by Julian C. Stanley, William C. George, and Cecilia H. Solano. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. 284 pp. $4.95.     

Reparative readings: re-claiming black feminised bodies as sites of somatic pleasures and possibilities

Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound black girls. In this paper, we use Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips [Lee, Andrea. 1984. Sarah Phillips. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press] and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia [Senna, Danzy. 1999. Caucasia. New York: Riverhead] to trouble said dominant discourses by engaging in ‘reparative readings’ [Sedgwick, Eve. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press Books] of the texts’ black female protagonists. We re-read these main characters' bodies as sites of pleasure and possibility, not singularly or solely harm. In doing so, we show how curriculum theorising can be mobilised for repair, and can function to humanise othered and marginalised bodies.     

Networked texts: discourse,power and gender neutrality in Ugandan physics textbooks

Research within science textbooks has dominantly focused on examining explicit representations of women and men using quantitative methodology. The assumption that gendered arrangements are necessarily explicit and therefore visible and countable, overlooks how power works explicitly and implicitly through discourse to produce specific gendered subjectivities. In taking up feminist post-structuralisms, this study contributes to textbook studies within sciences by illuminating both explicit and implicit representations of gender. Using discourse analysis, ‘gender-neutral’ and/or disembodied subjects and objects were ‘unmasked,’ revealing a generic male and/or masculine subject. Gender-neutrality, which is pervasive within the physics textbooks, was thus exposed as a mask for generic maleness/masculinity. I argue that this objectivist science, which remains compatible with a narrow range of student gendered identities, forecloses possibilities for a wide range of scientist subjectivities, to produce a more inclusive physics curriculum, with a greater possibility of developing physics using diverse subjectivities.     

Troubling gender binaries in schools: from sumptuary law to sartorial agency

This article derives from a larger study on gender fluidity to focus primarily on the sartorial aspects of gender. Secondary school students were interviewed to investigate how they speak about gender expression, performance and fluidity in their school. Using a Foucaultian analytic of subjectivation through regulated surveillance and Butler's theory of gender performativity and the abject, as well as queer theorists such as Wilchins, my aim is to draw attention to the need to de-naturalize the notion of a gender binary. Furthermore, I draw on Garber's analytic framework of sumptuary law to provide insight into the limitations of gender expression and the potential for sartorial agency. The educational significance lies in the need to disrupt the heteronormative education system to resist the exclusion of gender non-conforming students.