Persistent discourses in physics education: gender neutrality and the gendering of competence

In her article, Karin Due presents us with a contradiction in physics: the construction of physics as a symbolically masculine discipline alongside a simultaneous discourse of the “gender-neutrality” of the discipline. Due’s article makes an important contribution to the study of the gendering of physics practices, particularly in group dynamics, and how this serves to simultaneously reinforce the two competing discourses of physics as a masculine discipline, and the discourse of physics as a gender neutral discipline. Due also suggests that an implication of this contradiction is a limited number of available positions for girls in physics compared to those available to boys. I wish to take up this observation and discuss how available positions for boys and girls in physics are related quite closely to two other concepts discussed in Due’s article: competence and recognition.     

Beyond Plumbing and Prevention: feminist approaches to sex education

This article offers a feminist critique of existing sex education policies and programmes in Canada, as well as examining common right‐wing arguments against more progressive approaches. Two major forces shaping adolescent girls’ developing sexuality—male sexual violence and compulsory heterosexuality—are discussed, and recent initiatives in Ontario to introduce these issues into sex education programmes evaluated. Toronto Board of Education's new policy on sexual orientation and the Ontario Ministry of Education AIDS Education Curriculum are assessed and strategies for anti‐sexist, anti‐heterosexist sex education developed.     

Basic needs: New approach to development — But new approach to education?

The article is an examination of what has been called the basic needs approach to development and the implications of adopting such an approach for education.The authors trace briefly the sequence by which the basic needs approach reached the corridors of international development policy. This sequence, together with an analysis of some of the conceptual underpinnings of the basic needs approach, suggest that the approach may be biased toward the experience of the Western industrial nations, and some aspects may be inappropriate for the social realities found in developing countries.The authors take up the question of how education relates to the basic needs philosophy. They look at attempts to fashion a conception of education for basic needs and how such conceptions compare to the prevailing notions of basic education. Finally, the authors identify some key issues where, conceivably, education for basic needs could emerge as distinct from basic education and become consistent with the aspirations of the basic needs approach taken as a whole.

---

Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel werden der sogenannte Grundbedarfsansatz zur Entwicklung und die Implikationen seiner Übernahme auf das Bildungswesen untersucht.Die Verfasser zeigen kurz den Weg auf, auf dem der Grundbedarfsansatz in die Korridore der internationalen Entwicklungspolitik eindrang. Dieser Weg sowie eine Analyse der konzeptuellen Untermauerungen des Ansatzes deuten darauf hin, daß er vorrangig auf die in den westlichen Industriestaaten gemachten Erfahrungen ausgerichtet ist, und daß einige seiner Aspekte für die soziale Wirklichkeit in Entwicklungsländern ungeeignet sein dürften.Dann greifen die Autoren die Frage auf, wie sich das Bildungswesen zur Grundbedarfs-Philosophie verhält. Versuche, eine Konzeption der Erziehung für Grundbedürfnisse zu erarbeiten, werden besprochen und Vergleiche solcher Konzeptionen mit den bestehenden Vorstellungen von Grunderziehung angestellt. Schließlich identifizieren die Verfasser einige Schlüsselgebiete, auf denen sich möglicherweise die Erziehung für Grundbedürfnisse als unterschiedlich von der Grunderziehung erweisen und mit den Bestrebungen des Grundbedarfsansatzes als Ganzem übereinstimmen könnte.

---

Résumé Les auteurs de cet article examinent ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler l'approche du développement sous l'angle des besoins essentiels ainsi que les répercussions que pourrait avoir l'adoption de cette approche sur l'éducation.Ils relatent brièvement comment l'étude des besoins essentiels en arriva, par des étapes successives, à déboucher sur la voie de la conception du développement international. Ce cheminement et l'analyse de quelques uns des fondements conceptuels de l'abord des besoins essentiels, amènent à penser que l'approche pourrait être prédisposée en faveur de l'expérience des nations industrialisées de l'Occident et que certains aspects ne sont peut-être pas appropriés aux réalités sociales des pays en développement.Les auteurs envisagent la question des relations entre l'éducation et la philosophie des besoins essentiels. Ils considèrent les tentatives d'élaboration d'une conception de l'éducation réondant aux besoins essentiels et la confrontation de cette conception avec les notions prédominantes de l'éducation de base. Enfin, ils identifient quelques points clefs où, d'une façon concevable, l'éducation répondant aux besoins essentiels pourrait se dégager de l'éducation de base, devenir distincte et compatible avec les aspirations de l'approche des besoins essentiels que l'on envisagerait alors comme un tout.

     

Playing the game: critical literacy,gender justice and issues of masculinity

This paper explores issues of critical literacy, gender justice and masculinity through ‘Mr A’s’ story. Mr A is head of English at ‘Grange College’ – an all boys’ school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). The paper highlights how the privileging of rationality, control and ‘the masculine’ within Mr A’s ‘teaching‐as‐usual’ discourse constrains his efforts to pursue gender justice through critical literacy. While Mr A scaffolds his students’ critical analysis of gender and power in texts, his investments in teacher/student binary relations draw rigid boundaries between himself and his students in ways that delegitimise the terrain beyond the rational and ignore a theorising of the self. Drawing on Mr A’s story within Davies’ theorising about the possibilities of critical literacy, this paper adds to key work in arguing the importance of teachers’ interrogating their classrooms as lived texts where the relations of domination and power that derail the social justice possibilities of critical literacy can be made both recognisable and revisable. Such interrogation is foregrounded here as particularly urgent within the current moment where rationalist discourses within and beyond schools are increasingly working to circumscribe and constrain teacher practice in ways that stifle transformative social agendas.     

Theorising Inner-city Masculinities: 'Race', class,gender and education

Inner-city boys continue to be stereotypically associated with a range of social and educational 'problems', despite feminist calls for more nuanced and complex analyses to be undertaken of the racialised and classed aspects of masculinities. This article engages with the question of how to theorise diverse, working-class male pupils' masculinities within an inner-city, multicultural context. Data drawn from discussions with boys at one inner-city London school are used to illustrate the boys' complex constructions of 'culturally entangled' masculinities. Particular attention is given to the boys' constructions of 'bad boy' masculinities that are positioned in opposition to education and which we discuss in relation to themes of hegemony, patriarchy and racial/class inequalities.     

Women and gender studies and multicultural education: Building the agenda for 2000 and beyond

Abstract

Multicultural education has always been contested terrain, yet within the last five years a significant consensus about its scope and function has evolved. The discourse about multicultural education has not adequately attended to the debates surrounding the terms “gender” and “sex” or the multiple feminist theories that focus on the more critical aspects of a social change agenda. This article focuses on some of the tensions between women and gender studies and multicultural education such as: understanding gender as a category of analysis, theoretical constructions of feminism, and building an educational agenda for social justice in an effort to further the agenda for 2000 and beyond.     

Crossing Borders and Changing Pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education

ABSTRACT We are living in times of change and uncertainty, where many groups are challenging existing structures. Challenges to education have come from postmodernists and poststructuralists, calling into question previously held beliefs and ideologies, and from people from a variety of cultural and ethnic groups, examining the relationship of the oppressed and the exploited to educational structures. Through consideration of the work of Henry Giroux and Paulo Freire, considered to be liberatory and radical, I will consider ways in which their work might inform feminist theory, but also consider how feminists in turn have built on their work, considering new levels of insight. I will call for feminist perspectives to be interwoven with the already rich and valuable ideas of educationists such as Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux to enable us all-women and men-to move towards a feminist pedagogy of change.     

Bionic Woman (2007): gender, disability and cyborgs

This paper explores a representation of overlapping categories of gender, disability and cyborgs in Bionic Woman (2007). The television show Bionic Woman (2007) is a popular culture representation that uniquely brings together these categories. Three themes emerged from an analysis of blogger discourse surrounding the show. The themes reveal significant disempowering potentialities for women, individuals with and without disabilities and cyborgs. Conclusions and implications of these themes are offered.     

Inter- and transdisciplinary university: A systems approach to education and innovation

In response to various pressures for change arising from the present situation, the university will have to adopt a new purpose which may be recognized as a means of increasing the capability of society for continuous self-renewal. With this new purpose in mind, the structure of the university will be determined by the concept of an integral education/innovation system for which four principal levels are considered: empirical, pragmatic, normative and purposive levels. From multi-, pluri-, and crossdisciplinary approaches, all pertaining to one systems level only, the university is expected to develop increasingly interdisciplinary approaches, linking two systems levels and coordinating the activities at the lower level from the higher level through common axiomatics. Ultimately, the entire education/innovation system may become coordinated as a multilevel multigoal hierarchical system through a transdisciplinary approach, implying generalized axiomatics and mutual enhancement of disciplinary epistemology. Current university approaches to develop interdisciplinary links between the pragmatic and normative systems levels are discussed. Finally, a transdisciplinary structure for the university is briefly outlined; its main elements are three types of organizational units-systems design laboratories, function-oriented departments, and discipline-oriented departments-which focus on the interdisciplinary coordination between the three pairs of levels in the education/innovation system, i.e., on method and organization rather than on accumulated knowledge. An important role for policy sciences is seen in the linkage between the top pair of systems levels.

---

Résumé Pour répondre aux sollicitations de son environnement actuel, l'Université devra se donner de nouveaux objectifs en partant du principe qu'il lui faut procurer à la société les moyens d'un renouvellement continu. On peut déduire la structure de l'Université, qui est ainsi exigée, de l'idée d'une liaison intime entre éducation et innovation: aux quatre niveaux à considérer, niveau empirique, niveau pragmatique, niveau des normes et niveau des stratégies. On attend de l'Université que, dépassant les activités multi- ou pluridisciplinaires qui ne se situent qu'à un niveau du système, elle réussisse à élaborer une méthodologie interdisciplinaire lui permettant de relier les différents niveaux et de coordonner d'un bout à l'autre du système les activités conformément à une logique unifiée. En somme, le système d'éducation et d'innovation considéré dans son ensemble pourrait tendre vers le modèle d'un système intégrant hiérarchiquement des niveaux et des objectifs multiples, grâce à une méthodologie transdisciplinaire impliquant le développement d'une logique généralisée et des échanges réciproques entre l'épistémologie des différentes disciplines. L'article soumet à la discussion les méthodes dont usent aujourd'hui les universités pour établir des liens d'interdisciplinarité entre le niveau pragmatique et le niveau des normes. En conclusion, est présentée une brève esquisse de ce que pourrait être la structure transdisciplinaire de l'Université: trois types d'unités s'y trouvent distingués dans l'organisation, les laboratoires d'élaboration des projets, les départements tournés vers la satisfaction d'une fonction et les départements tournés vers le travail dans une discipline; l'accent y est mis sur la coordination interdisciplinaire dans les trois mises en relation unissant deux à deux chacun des quatre niveaux du système d'éducation et d'innovation, autrement dit, sur la méthode et l'organisation, plus que sur l'accumulation de la connaissance. On fait voir le rôle important qui est réservé aux sciences de la décision dans la mise en relation des deux niveaux supérieurs du système.

---

---

While developing some of the concepts reported in this paper, Dr. Jantsch held a visiting appointment as Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is reprinted fromPolicy Sciences (American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc.) 1 (1970) 403–428.     

强迫的异性恋和压抑的女同性恋--从女性主义角度解读伍尔夫的《达洛维夫人》

作为现代主义及女性主义小说家,弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫把意识流创作手法和女性主义思想高超地结合于《达洛维夫人》的小说创作中.她通过女主人公克拉丽莎的内心意识流动来揭示女性在婚姻生活中的真相--强迫的异性恋和压抑的女同性恋,旨在批评作为社会权力规范的异性恋婚姻制度.伍尔夫的女同性恋意识对20世纪60年代的女同性恋女性主义批评的产生及20世纪90年代的酷儿理论的兴起都具有前瞻性的意义.