‘Man-up,go and get an ice-pack.’ Gendered stereotypes and binaries within the primary classroom: a thing of the past?

Gendered expectations are deeply embedded within the fabric of a society and the classroom is no exception; binaries habitually pervade attitudes, practices and pedagogies. This small-scale qualitative-interpretive study, undertaken in one rural primary school in North Wales, explores how the learning of gender is constructed, enacted and challenged by participants functioning within Key Stage 2 (children aged 8–11 years), issues experienced by, both girls and boys, to cogitate implications for gender equity and for teachers' work. The fieldwork revealed that many school participants continue to draw upon essentialist binary discourse, predominantly based on biological theories, to explain differences between boys and girls relating to classroom behaviour, subject attainment, curricular preferences and career pathways. Constant reference was made to acceptable ways of ‘doing masculinity’ and the ‘high-achieving, conforming school girl culture’. Children recognised gender binaries used by teachers and were aware of societal advances in gender equity. Despite decades of research and policies, we are still some way to ameliorating gender binaries and stereotypes in this phase of schooling. Therefore, there is an urgent need for practitioners to become more reflexively aware about the complex ways in which gendered dualisms and hierarchies perpetuate and dictate relations and pedagogical practices, which constrain experiences and opportunities for girls and boys and, to incorporate multiple ways of thinking and doing gender in classrooms.     

English or Nothing: The Impact of Rigid Language Policies on the Inclusion of Humanizing Practices in a High School ESL Program

This article discusses the results of a qualitative case study that examined how school district language policies impact humanizing practices in a high school ESL program. The theoretical framework builds on Paulo Freire's concept of humanizing pedagogy to explore policy and instruction in a secondary ESL program. Participants of this study include school district officials and high school ESL teachers. Findings indicate that when ESL teachers adhere to rigid language policies, they fail to create humanizing practices in their classrooms. In contrast, when teachers do not hold themselves strictly accountable to the institutionalized discourse of ESL, they are able to enact humanizing practices where students' linguistic and cultural resources are validated as essential for the development of academic resiliency. Paradoxically, even teachers who enact humanizing practices fail to question district language policies that render students cultural and linguistic resources invalid.     

Gender and the Problem of Diversity: Action Research in Physical Education

This purpose of this paper is to explore the intersecrion of gender, equity and the discourse of diversity. The authors argue that while the goal of diversity in a democratic society is an admirable one, its advocacy could limit any real educational change. To explore the differences between the discourse of diversity and language of equity, they draw upon two action research studies conducted by two elementary school reachers who were not elementary physical education specialists. Through their action research projects, which included direct instruction as a way to confront the gender discrimination that was occurring in the physical education component of their classrooms, these teachers found that they had to abandon the discourse of diversity and embrace the language of equity for meaningful educational change to occur.     

Successful girls? Complicating post‐feminist,neoliberal discourses of educational achievement and gender equality

This paper examines how an ongoing educational panic over failing boys has contributed to a new celebratory discourse about successful girls. Rather than conceive of this shift as an anti‐feminist feminist backlash, the paper examines how the successful girl discourse is postfeminist, and how liberal feminist theory has contributed to narrowly conceived, divisive educational debates and policies where boys' disadvantage/success are pitted against girls' disadvantage/success. The paper illustrates that gender‐only and gender binary conceptions of educational achievement are easily recuperated into individualizing neo‐liberal discourses of educational equality, and consistently conceal how issues of achievement in school are related to issues of class, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship and location. Some recent media examples that illustrate the intensification of the successful girl discourse are examined. It is argued that the gender and achievement debate fuels a seductive postfeminist discourse of girl power, possibility and choice with massive reach, where girls' educational performance is used as evidence that individual success is attainable and educational policies are working in contexts of globalization, marketization and economic insecurity. The new contradictory work of ‘doing’ successful femininity, which requires balancing traditional feminine and masculine qualities, is also considered.     

Bridging the Gender Gap through Gender Difference: Aiding Patriarchy in South Sudan Education Reconstruction

Abstract

The persistence of gender inequality in education in Africa is due to poverty, cultural beliefs and traditions linked to gender-role expectations. This article presents the findings of a study that evaluated the outcomes of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Gender Equity through Education (GEE) programme aimed at increasing the participation of girls in education through scholarship and mentoring activities in South Sudan. Using a convergent mixed-method design and feminist critique of gender difference in education approach as the theoretical framework, the study established that the GEE programme was only partially successful. Though increased enrolment and completion of studies by female students in secondary schools and teacher training institutions was noted, the programme failed to deconstruct the prevailing gendered power relations that subordinate women and may have intuitively strengthened them. The programme sought to bring about changes in the educational milieu through modifications of policies and practices related to education access and retention rather than engage in a process leading to a seismic shift in attitudes towards gender in the society.     

Catching Up: Gender values at a Canadian independent school for girls, 1978-93

Many studies over the past decade have examined the adverse ways in which gender differences inculcated by educational institutions have shaped girls' lives. This article begins by identifying the negative effects that traditional gender norms still have on even privileged young women who study in single-sex environments designed to foster their education and personal development. It goes on to examine the transformation over 15 years of the gender values at a Canadian independent school for girls and their effect on the students and the school structures. The article concludes that despite the progress in breaking down destructive gender divisions made by individual girls' schools, the gender-stereotyped realities of the outside world continue to influence the school environment and the students' thinking. Single-sex schooling for girls, therefore, becomes an even more important antidote to our society's tradition of gender bias.     

Accounting for the gender gaps in student performance in reading and mathematics: evidence from 31 countries

In most countries, girls perform better than boys in reading but worse in mathematics. However, there is much variation between countries. Explanations for the gender gaps include the organisation of the school system, students' expectations and macro‐societal factors. The purpose of this paper is to account for gender differences in both reading and mathematics among 15‐year‐old students using data from the OECD's 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) project. In most countries, school system factors are associated with the gender gap in reading but not in mathematics. Generally, gender differences in students' occupational expectations do not account for the gender gaps, although expectations contribute to the gender gaps in reading in New Zealand and the United States. Although several macro‐societal factors—the proportion of women in the workforce, societal inequality and public sector spending—are associated with the gender gap in reading, the correlations are only moderate, unstable and, importantly, are not associated with the gender gaps in mathematics. The much stronger association between the gender gaps in reading and mathematics across countries implies that they are both influenced by policy: the extent that countries have successfully implemented policies to promote the educational outcomes of girls and young women. In such countries the gender gap in mathematics is small or non‐existent but the gender gap in reading is relatively large. Policies shift both gender gaps in tandem.     

Supporting minority women and girls: Key frames of reference and understanding for educators

Recent high‐profile rape cases in Australia involving Muslim and Indigenous minority groups have heightened contention around issues of culture, gender and justice. The article critically examines the culturalising of rape as an ethnic minority issue in the public and legal discourse associated with these cases. This examination problematises the western‐driven narratives about minority women that undergird and make possible this culturalising and foregrounds Muslim and Indigenous feminist priorities concerning issues of gender equity and justice. Against this backdrop, the article draws parallels between the inferiorising of ethnic minority culture in dominant legal and public discourse and the reductionism of culture in education discourse. Towards realising the equity mandates of national schooling policy, the article outlines key frames of reference and understanding about culture, gender and justice necessary for enhancing educators’ support for ethnic minority women and girls.     

The Story So Far: gender,literacy and social regulation

This article examines ways in which language practices in the classroom — particularly those involved with the reading and writing of stories — are gendered literacy practices. It argues that stories are closely identified with structuring the meanings by which a culture lives, and that popular and familiar stories rely upon dominant versions of femininity and masculinity to be understood or ‘read’. The article suggests that story genres are ‘gendered’ in the way in which they organise sequences of events, in the discursive fields from which they draw, and in the character‐traiting paradigms they prefer. The claim is made that when children write stories they enter into a form of social regulation implicit in the cultural conventions of popular narrative forms. Story‐writing is seen to be a social, ideological activity which often masquerades as personal expression. The article argues that the gendered nature of classroom literacy practices will be more obviously recognised if classroom language approaches are framed from within critical discourse theory and theories of subjectivity; and if the constraints posed by generic conventions and the cultural devaluation of many feminine’ genres, are more deliberately confronted and addressed in the classroom.

Telling fairy stories, even telling good fairy stories very well ... simply doesn't count. The positions of real power and influence in our society necessitate command of genres for which boys’ educational experience provides an appropriate preparation and girls’ doesn't ... girls’ genre competence at primary school is not merely irrelevant but positively disabling. (Poynton, 1985; p. 36)     

Learning practices of femininity through gendered craft education in Finland

This paper discusses the processes and practices that link crafts and gender in the upbringing and education of girls. The paper is based on a study conducted among female primary school trainee teachers in Finland. The data are comprised of their experiences with crafts as schoolgirls. The methods of the study were memory work and writing of craft autobiographies. The processes that interlink gender and crafts are culturally established and maintained both through informal sociocultural learning and formal education at school. The impact of the gendered tradition of crafts is strong and affects the teaching of crafts at school in Finland. This became clear in the analysis of the processes of girls learning to become full members of a community of such femininity practices as textile crafts. The gender‐based teaching of crafts is an example of the unofficial gendered practices of the officially gender‐neutral school.     

Schoolgirl to Career Girl. The City as Educative Space*

This article explores the way in which the "city" Throughout this article "city" functions both as place and representation. was represented in popular imaginations as the site where the metamorphosis from girl to woman could be achieved in late 1950s England. It uses a socio-semiotic theoretical framework in order to tease out the relationship between the city as an imagined space and the actual experience of living or working in the city. The article draws on material from both interviews and career storybooks for girls. The discourse of the city as representative of sophistication and freedom, at a time when the rules of society were still fairly rigid, is one which occurs in both areas. The city provided a site where girls could grow up away from the surveillance of parents and school. It was an educative space in which boundaries could be challenged and crossed without upsetting the established conventions of gender roles. The notion of the career girl was in its infancy and women were still expected to prioritise their domestic role. After a brief flurry of (relatively) independent living or working in the city, girls could emerge as young women who, having met Mr Right, returned to the suburbs or provinces and conformed to the gender expectations of the time. There was never any suggestion in the novels, or in the interviews, that the period spent working or training in the city was anything other than a transitional phase. The perceived sophistication of city life acted as an informal educative site where girls could learn to be women. They learned to dress properly, work through relationships and grow in worldly wisdom away from the safety of their home environment, to which inevitably they would return.     

The media,marketing, and single sex schooling

The Australian media’s interest in education, as in many Anglophone countries, is frequently dominated by concerns about boys in schools. In 2002, in a country region of the Australian State of Queensland, this concern was evident in a debate on the merits of single sex schooling that took place in a small local newspaper. The debate was fuelled by the inclusion in this newspaper of an advertising brochure for an elite private girls’ school. The advertisement utilized the current concerns about boys in schools to advocate the benefits of girls’ only schools. Drawing on research that suggests that boys are a problem in school, and utilising a peculiar mix of liberal feminism alongside a neo‐liberal class politics, it implicitly denigrated the education provided by government co‐educational schools. The local government high and primary school principals, incensed at this advertisement, contacted the paper to refute many of its claims and assumptions and to assert the benefits, to both boys and girls, of their particular schools. A letters to the editor debate then followed an article representing these government school principals’ views. These letters were from two private school principals. This country newspaper thus became a medium through which various school principals engaged with the current boys’ debate, and research associated with it, in order to market their schools. This paper examines this particular newspaper debate and argues that, in the absence of nuanced, research based, and thoughtful policy responses to gender issues, many school policies on gender are being shaped through and by the media in ways that elide the complexities of the issues involved.     

The Mathematically Able as a Marked Category

Most literature on gender and mathematics is based on assumptions that the value of mathematical accomplishment is unquestionable and wholly good, and that any failures of women to achieve in mathematics are due to problems within her or the larger society, problems which should and can be resolved. This article argues that the situation is not so simple. Drawing on literatures of sociology, cultural studies, and education (among others), the article sets forth characteristics shared by 'marked categories' of persons as deviant. Drawing evidence from a wide range of sources, it is then argued that 'the mathematically able' share these characteristics and can therefore be considered as a marked category. Moreover, women in mathematics are doubly marked (as women and as mathematical), making their position doubly difficult socially. There are thus two discourses of mathematics in Western society, a discourse of power and a discourse of deviance. Drawing on the practices of other marked categories, I make a few recommendations for educators based on the analysis.     

School violence,school differences and school discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence‐resilient school. In six inner‐city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of well‐connected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. The authors suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept.     

School Differences in Producing Gender‐Related Subject Choices

Gender differences in mathematics are well‐documented. This article reports the results of a longitudinal study on the development of mathematics achievement and choice behaviour of both boys and girls between 12 and 15 years of age in higher general secondary education. First of all, it is shown that there are differences in the development of mathematics achievement between schools. There are, however, no gender‐related differences between schools in these development patterns. The main issue is that differences in choice behaviour between boys and girls can only partially be explained by differences in mathematics achievement. It therefore seems worthwhile to assess the role of schools in this process. Results indicate that schools neither differ in gender differences in choice behaviour, nor in their potential to transform initial achievement differences between boys and girls into an inclination to choose mathematics as a final examination subject. In other words: differential school effects in terms of gender‐specific school effects could not be demonstrated.     

Power Plays: Children's constructions of gender and power in role plays

ABSTRACT This paper examines the way in which children's constructions of gender via discourse impact upon their interactive power positions. Discourse analysis is utilised in a feminist endeavour to investigate the social effects of gender discourse. Analysing the discussions of primary school children in group role plays, I conclude that although power is discursively produced (meaning that the myriads of different factors contributing to discursive power positioning cannot be analysed independently), children's constructions of gender appear potentially to empower boys and disempower girls in interaction. Foucault has been criticised by feminists such as Soper and Davis for failing to provide an adequate explanation of social power differences: my findings suggest that discourse analysis can reveal trends in power inequality.     

Gender discourse in an Arab-Muslim high school in Israel: Ethnographic case study

Although the school constitutes a key cultural arena for the production and reproduction of gender identities, few studies have addressed gender discourse in educational institutions in developing societies. Such studies are especially sparse in Arab society in Israel. This study goes some way to addressing what is often absent from many sociological portrayals of young pupils and schools, since it uses the words of the teachers and students to clarify the construction of gender discourse in an Arab high school in Israel. It points to activities considered to be gendered; identifying distinctions between the sexes (if they exist) in the staff’s and students’ perceptions of educational experiences at school; and examining to what extent school authority is seen as masculine and whether the school promotes debate and socialization for equality between the sexes. The research employed an inductive methodology including ethnographic data-collection techniques: observations, focus group interviews of students and in-depth personal interviews with school role-holders. Findings indicate that a covert learning program influences gender construction in the Arab school, a program intended to maintain the existing hegemonic social hierarchy. Patriarchal control of the adolescents’ agenda appears weakened and a generation gap separates teachers from students. Voices of students and younger staff advocate deconstruction of the traditional structure and norms of Arab society, suggesting a new agenda, promoting egalitarian discourse, and new personal and collective identities. Conclusions are drawn concerning the school’s role in the deconstruction of the existing male hegemony, the promotion of gender equity. The paper provides ethnographic insights concerning the Arab high school in Israel, pointing up a need for empathetic educator-student dialogue, that will promote egalitarian perceptions and practices, listen to the voice of the younger generation and challenge residual social norms of Arab Muslim society. The findings indicate that a more open gender discourse could offer symbolic resources and/or practical tools to enhance the every-day implementation of equity in the school. The paper also suggests some new research directions.     

Interrupting Discourses Around Gender Through Collective Memory Work and Collaborative Curriculum Research in Middle School

Many schools in recent years have implemented curricular projects to 'deal with' homophobia and sexism as problems that affect adolescent students and make schools unsafe. The ways in which we, as teachers and researchers, confront such problems, however, depends upon how we view their power within schools. When viewed as discursive elements of a generally heteronormative school environment, gender and sexuality norms become more complicated and subtle, as they are a part of systems of language, actions, and expectations that can be difficult to problematize with students and teachers. Drawing on feminist post-structuralist theory related to normativity and discourse analysis, our research looks at two middle-school projects aimed at interrupting heteronormative thinking by including students in the process of analyzing and re-creating school discourse. In one project, a whole class looks at gender identity formation through analyzing collective memory works collaboratively with the teacher. In the second project, a smaller group of girls works to re-think ways that the science/math curriculum could be more responsive to girls, in the end also analyzing the work that comes out of the collaboration. Together, the projects raise important questions about the effectiveness of such curricular projects, the power of school language around 'adolescence', and the potential for addressing gender normativity on the level of discourse, especially in the face of such powerful ideas of gender/sexuality in the middle grades.     

Community‐Based Art Education in China: Practices,Issues and Challenges

Art educators have been promoting Community‐Based Art Education (CBAE) in schools in order to enhance students’ sense of socio‐cultural identity and contextual learning about local art and culture. It cannot only bridge the gap between the students’ daily lives and the communities and art, but can also enhance their inquiry, discovery and meaning‐making abilities. In China, the community‐based approach plays a significant role in the National Standards for Visual Arts, and Chinese art educators have been applying CBAE in school art education for decades. However, Western art educators are still unfamiliar with the issues, practices and challenges related to CBAE in China owing to language constraints. In light of the above, this article aims to initiate a dialogue between Western and Chinese CBAE researchers through discourse and discussions on the main issues related to CBAE in Chinese art education. It outlines current practices of, and issues related to, CBAE from the perspective of Chinese art education. It also discusses the three major challenges to the implementation of CBAE in China, namely the conflict between indigenous knowledge and official knowledge in the school art curriculum, lack of motivation among teachers, and neglect of context in the practice of local art in schools. It is hoped that this article it will enrich our overall knowledge of CBAE and contribute to the understanding of CBAE from a global perspective.     

Boys as only‐children and girls as only‐children—parental gendered expectations of the only‐child in the nuclear Chinese family in present‐day China

Studies on the effect of only‐child status on girls’ education indicate that the only‐child policy has had an unintended consequence of engendering a child‐centered culture with a strong belief and shared interest among the urban community in educating the only‐child regardless of the child’s sex. As the distribution of education by sex is frequently argued to be a key determinant for gender inequality, this finding seems to carry an unquestioned message that gender equality has been largely achieved for the only‐child generation. So far, however, few studies have examined parental gender‐specific expectations for their only children as an important factor in preparing boys and girls for their different school and social experiences. Based on data collected through semi‐structured interviews with 20 families in north China, this paper explores parental gender‐specific expectations of their only‐children. Parents’ SES is also considered in order to see how class may interact with gender in parents’ expectations for boys and girls as only‐children. The study reveals patterns of differences in parental expectations based on gender, and to a lesser degree, class. The author argues that it would be over‐optimistic to believe that only‐child status and the equally high academic aspirations parents hold for boys and girls have done away with all the deep‐rooted factors against gender equality in Chinese society. Drawing on Bourdieu’s social theory, the author discusses the implications of the findings and provides suggestions for policy efforts and further research.