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.     

Power dynamics in teaching and learning practices: an examination of two adult education classrooms

The purpose of this research was to determine the ways in which power relations that exist in the wider social context are played out in the teaching and learning dynamics of adult education classrooms. The research design was a qualitative comparative case study of two courses taught by the authors in a university setting. Data sources included students’ evaluations, teachers’ observations, interviews with students, interviews with both teachers, and conversations with similarly situated faculty members. The themes of mastery, voice, authority and positionality found in previous research were used to organize the results. The results showed the many complex ways in which power relations based on race, class, gender, disability and sexual orientation played out across all four themes and how these dynamics directly influenced the teaching and learning process. The positionality of the teachers and learners, in particular the racial category of whiteness, emerged as a key power relationship mediating classroom dynamics. We suggest that the facilitation model of teaching does not account well for these dynamics and that further efforts are needed to better understand how societal power relations affect teaching and learning efforts and what responses adult educators can make to negotiate these issues.     

Lifelong learning and the Internet: Who benefits most from learning online?

This paper uses nationally representative survey data of adults Internet use in Britain to examine current patterns in the uptake of lifelong learning via the Internet. We develop and test a model that accounts for structure, agency and outcomes using structural equation modelling to address two questions: (1) how structure (as measured by age, gender, SES, Education and ACORN) is related to personal and capital enhancing outcomes of learning online; and (2) how agency (as measured by digital skills and engagement with online learning) mediates this relationship. We demonstrate that social structure remains an important factor in understanding patterns of uptake and outcomes of online learning, alongside an individual’s agentic behaviours. We suggest that countries such as the UK, which have become overly focused on individual interventions to increase the uptake of lifelong learning via the Internet, are going in the wrong direction. Such interventions have failed in the past, and we suggest that they will continue to do so unless policy makers reconceptualise lifelong learning and the Internet in ways that take social structures into account.     

Politicising the ‘personal’: the resistant potential of creative pedagogies in teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues

Drawing upon student narratives gleaned through qualitative interviews, this paper argues that teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues surrounding gender and sexualities through ‘creative’ pedagogies can be a mode of resistance against the reproduction of problematic social discourses, and to the negative impacts of neoliberalism on student’s learning within higher education. The findings point to the importance of speaking about sensitive issues; the value of creative approaches for enhancing learning; and that together these can enable students to articulate an agenda for social change. Students saw the ‘personal as political’ – of sharing personal journeys around sensitive issues as important. They further spoke of ‘apathy’ in an neoliberal era of student ‘consumers’ and how this could curtail ‘creative’ teaching and jeopardise learning. Overall, it is argued that creative approaches to teaching and learning sensitive issues can invoke a resistant potentiality which exposes the ‘hidden injuries’ (Gill, 2010) of the neoliberal university.     

Peer relations and access to capital in the mathematics classroom: a Bourdieusian social network analysis

The aim of this article is to explore the structure of social capital in peer networks and its relation to the unequal access of educational resources within mathematics classrooms. We hypothesise that learners can gain access to mathematics through friendship networks which provide more or less help from peers that might sustain (or curtail) their mathematics learning based on a Bourdieusian framework. We report a social network analysis of mutually-recognised helping within friendship groups. This is complemented by observation and interviews that illustrate how different classrooms have different network structures, positioning learners of different ethnic minorities and genders in significantly different ways regarding access to learning. We argue that friendship networks mediate social capital and access to further cultural capital, and that this may help explain structural differences in attainment. Because ethnicity and gender, inter alia, mediate friendship networks, they also mediate access to capital in the classroom.     

“They would make you feel stupid” - Ability grouping,Children’s friendships and psychosocial Wellbeing in Irish primary school

Increasing international attention on wellbeing places the onus on education systems to support children's positive psychosocial development. Despite broad and rich literature highlighting the limitations of implementing ability grouping as pedagogy and its impact on how children ‘do’ and ‘feel’ learning in school, this practice still persists in systems across the OECD. This Irish study draws on qualitative and sociometric data from 3 case study schools with 100 children. It explores how teachers cast an ‘invisible hand’ over children's peer networks, shaping friendships and patterns of inclusion/exclusion within the classroom. It builds on current literature in the field exploring how peer interaction is influenced by ability group assignment using network analysis. Findings also reveal the psychosocial impact of these dynamics, with children assigned to lower ability groups most impacted by lower social status, exclusion from peers and increased experience of bullying. These experiences evoked feelings of disengagement, anger and isolation.     

Mean girls,homosociality and football: an education on social and power dynamics between girls and women

Relationships between girls and women have typically been explored through the lexicon of ‘friendship’ or, where there is a presence of sexual desire, ‘lesbian’. This article suggests the complexity and impact of female (same-sex) sociality, and its relationship to heteronormativity and power dynamics between girls and women runs deeper than the terms ‘friendship’ or ‘lesbian’ give rise to. Exploring social and power dynamics amongst girls and women, this article explores how gender is policed and negotiated within a framework of homosociality. Drawing on empirical research within a women's Australian Rules football team, I explore the complexity of female same-sex bonds, the negotiation of gender embodiment and performance within female homosocial spaces, and the emergence of women's own lexicons in making sense of their relationships with other women in this particular social sphere, further considering how this might be applied to other female homosocial spaces, including same-sex educational and sporting sites.     

Flowers,Dancing, Dresses,and Dolls: Picture Book Representations of Gender-Variant Males

Over the past fifty years, children’s picture books have made great strides toward literary equity by including more perspectives from and stories about marginalized groups, such as those whose gender identities do not conform to heteronormative standards. While texts featuring gender-variant male characters engage in topics that are far too often shoved into the proverbial closet, what is yet to be determined is the degree to which they adequately reflect the complexity of (gender) identity and to what extent such picture books can counter narratives related to traditional “masculinity.” The purpose of this paper is to critically examine picture book representations of gender variance, as exhibited by male characters, in order to determine the books’ potential for exploring issues of social justice with elementary-age students. This study utilizes a critical multiculturalist lens to challenge the ways in which gender variance is represented in children’s literature and the reasons that young gender-variant male protagonists achieve—or do not achieve—communal acceptance.     

Issues of Power,Masculinity, and Gender Justice: Sally's story of teaching boys

Despite calls for a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and equity that recognizes how broader relations of gender and power continue to produce injustices for many females, essentialized accounts expressing concern about boys’ poor educational performance remain the most common refrain in dominant equity discourses across Western contexts. This common refrain characteristic of current large scale gender reforms, such as Australia's parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys, Boys: Getting it right, is driven by a standards rather than social justice focus and thus creates silences around issues of gender injustice, power, and constructions of hegemonic masculinity. In this paper, I present “Sally's” story as a disruption of these silences. Sally is a young English teacher at “Penfolds College”, an all boys Catholic school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). Her story, in illustrating how particular boys draw on broader discourses of masculinity to sexually harass and intimidate her, highlights the inadequacies of dominant public and policy discourse in terms of its failure to locate boys’ educational issues within broader contexts of inequitable gender relations.     

Women,literacy and health: comparing health and education sectoral approaches in Nepal

Functional adult literacy interventions have been regarded for many decades by policy makers as an effective way of imparting health knowledge. Supported by research on the statistical relationships between women’s literacy rates and health indicators, this dominant policy discourse is based on assumptions that non-literate women lack understanding and confidence, and that formal programmes and institutions constitute the main sites of learning. Proposing a broader conceptualisation of literacy as a social practice and of health as connected with social justice, this article draws on policy analysis and the authors’ earlier research in Nepal to re-examine the relationship between gender, literacy and health. By comparing health and literacy approaches used within the education and health sectors and taking account of new and indigenous informal learning practices, the article points to ways of investigating the complex interaction of factors that influence inequalities in gender and health at community level.     

‘I don’t want to catch it’. Boys,girls and sexualities in an HIV/AIDS environment

This paper examines young South African school children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children’s discourses of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We show that young children’s meanings of sex, sexuality and are not straightforward and are actively produced and defined through a range of social processes. These processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure. Young children’s meanings of HIV/AIDS are explored in the second part of the paper. Here we show how their knowledge of HIV/AIDS is socially structured through class/race and gender and these forms of social relations provide the framing and reference points for children’s constructions of meanings around HIV/AIDS. We finish the paper by raising some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of what we have found for HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.     

Learning difficulties and social class: exploring the intersection through family narratives

This article is concerned with the intersection between learning difficulties and social class. It also inevitably tells of the gender‐class interface in relation to women’s caring roles. I use the life story narratives of three mothers and a grandmother of a person with learning difficulties, together with concepts from Bourdieu, to explore the ways in which class‐related capital and habitus affect their life experiences and their interactions with educational and other professionals. The data are the stories of (grand)mothers reflecting on life events, particularly in relation to decision making surrounding education, while simultaneously providing subtle, rich pictures of their socio‐economic contexts. I illustrate how privilege and disadvantage are reproduced partly for the families through their institutional interactions, which are differentiated according to economic and social resources. The stories re‐presented in this paper provide powerful examples of how experiences of living with learning difficulties and disabilities are situated in one’s class position and how struggles for inclusion are at once common and particular.     

Urban public space and the construction of social life: a social-pedagogical perspective

This paper addresses the question of what meaning urban public space has in relation to the process of children’s socialisation. It builds on data from qualitative research into the social-pedagogical meaning of three contrasting neighbourhoods in the city of Ghent. In this research, the neighbourhood was studied as a social and spatial context in which particular socialising practices are constantly constructed and reconstructed through the everyday social actions and practices of people, including children, and hence influence the socialisation processes of children. The research shows that different patterns influence the strategies through which children learn to deal with issues like diversity, otherness and unpredictability in different ways, ranging from excluding this diversity from the everyday lifeworld, through enclosing oneself within one’s own social group, to learning through the everyday confrontation with diversity.     

Gender Integration and the Promotion of Inclusive Classroom Climates

The purpose of this article is to highlight the important role that gender plays in organizing and affecting the quality of the classroom climate. We review research showing how students’ peer relationships tend to be segregated by gender and discuss the consequences of children spending much of their time almost exclusively with same-gender peers, which perpetuates and exaggerates gender segregation. We suggest that a more beneficial pattern is enhancing students’ exposure to other-gender peers—that is, promoting gender integration. We describe the theories that support the benefits of integrating across social groups. Next, we review methods and results of strategies we have used to promote integration. Finally, we draw attention to the issues about gender integration that require further consideration and argue for more research that can help guide the development of effective strategies that build more inclusive environments, practices, and policies for today’s children and youth.     

“Women made it a home”: representations of women in social studies

This article explores recently published P-12 social studies lesson plans that include women to examine how attending to women is “getting done” in the field and how the lessons represent women and women’s experiences. Using discourse analysis methodologies, the author demonstrates that women have been included as topics in ways that do not work toward disrupting problematic discourses about gender norms. Through their avoidance of issues of power and patriarchy, most of the lessons fall short of addressing gender inequity – in the past or the present – in a significant way. More critical attention to women and gender in lessons, as well as in other curricular spaces, are important steps toward harnessing social studies’ potential to engage students in the meaningful consideration of inequitable gender relations.     

Professional development for university scientists around issues of equity and diversity: Investigating dissent within community

We investigated the role of dissent in a community of university scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and social scientists engaged in a 2‐year professional development project around issues of equity and diversity. Members of this teacher learning community explored issues related to gender and ethnicity in science education, and attempted to develop course materials and instructional strategies inclusive of students from underrepresented groups. We focused our attention on those professional development sessions (6 of the 19) devoted to a contentious yet integral topic in science education: the gendered and multicultural nature of science. We examined conversations initiated by a member's concerns to learn how dissent led (or failed to lead) to new insights into feminist science studies scholarship or to greater understanding of ways to address equity issues in undergraduate science education. We also explored how teacher learners' resulting views of feminist science studies scholarship informed (or failed to inform) changes in their own educational practices. From our qualitative analyses, we highlight the challenges in balancing respect for members' individual voices with collective progress toward project goals, and in structuring conversations initiated by dissent to provide adequate space for deliberation and movement toward deeper understanding of equity and excellence. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 738–771, 2002     

Adult education and indigenous people: Addressing gender in policy and practice

Adult education programmes developed for or by indigenous communities rarely seem to have addressed gender inequalities. Yet, compared to mainstream adult educational interventions promoting instrumental approaches to ‘functional literacy’, such programmes often appear highly politicised, starting from a standpoint of promoting indigenous peoples’ rights. We look at the reasons for the absence of gender analysis from policy and research on indigenous adult education and highlight key issues within indigenous adult education, when viewed from a gendered perspective, particularly language, assessment, learning structures and programme objectives. Drawing on case studies of indigenous adult education programmes in South and South-East Asia, we emphasise the need for participatory, non-hierarchical processes in adult education that can provide legitimate space for multiple voices within indigenous groups, without enhancing the sense of marginalisation. The principles underlying indigenous adult education programmes can help planners to challenge and respond to gender inequalities.     

Lifelong learning and demographics: a Japanese perspective

This paper explores the social dimension of lifelong learning from the perspective of demographics, with particular focus on the issue of the birth of fewer children, which has become one of the most important current social issues in Japanese society. When considering the relationship between lifelong learning and demographics, the issues arising from an ageing population are usually the focus of policy‐makers. This perspective often overlooks crucial children’s issues, such as child development and the influence of the child’s daily environment. This paper suggests that it is necessary to analyse the issues arising from a society with fewer children independent of the concept of an aged society with fewer children in an attempt to emphasize these essential issues. The presented relationship between lifelong learning and the issues surrounding the birth of fewer children is based on two perspectives. The first perspective seeks to remove barriers such as the economic burden of educating children and the traditional stereotypical gender‐roles that have contributed to the birth of fewer children. The second perspective includes a response to the negative influences that the birth of fewer children has had on family’s experiences of child rearing and on children’s growth. Specifically, this paper develops the second perspective by focusing on three aspects: the development of children’s social skills; children’s growth as influenced by a high adult:child ratio; a decline in the quality of child rearing. Three issues are identified as necessary in order to build a Japanese society that fosters children: (1) embracing the concept of the ‘family‐friendly company’; (2)creating opportunities for mixed age groups to participate in learning programmes based on communities and schools; (3) reconsidering an intergenerational exchange programme.     

Civic Knowledge,Engagement, and Participation Narratives of Youth of Color in Urban Schools

The issues associated with students’ civic knowledge, engagement, and participation have been heightened in intellectual debates and public discussions. However, these discussions have not focused heavily on urban youths’ civic identities or the locations of these identities within the youths’ personal narratives of ethnicity, race, class, and gender. This article presents the narratives of four urban high school youths of color, selected from a larger study about youths’ experiences in school and society and the ways in which classroom learning encouraged their inquiry, assessment of their social worlds and personal goals, and emerging personal and civic identities. Our purpose was to gain insights regarding the youths’ sociopolitical perspectives on local educational and social issues affecting them and to understand their multiple literacies in the context of their civic engagement, increasing youth advocacy, and larger political tensions. The theoretical framing of this investigation is grounded in democratic education and sociopolitical consciousness and draws upon research that focuses on civic participation and democratic society. Four dominant themes emerged from the analysis: educational inequality, social media, schooling, and race and mass incarceration. This article contributes to an expansive framing for civic education by examining the civic knowledge of urban youths of color and offers implications for research, practice, and policy.     

Public domain or private data? Developing an ethical approach to social media research in an inter-disciplinary project

This paper discusses the ethical issues faced in undertaking research about the role of learning in the subjective experience of chronic illness, where data were taken from social media. Drawing on psychology and education, this paper discusses the ways in which authors from these disciplines are laying the groundwork for legitimate online research by actively debating the public versus private nature of online spaces. The paper explains how this debate informed the development of an ethical approach to research. Relevant ethical guidelines and previous research are used to support the argument that individuals’ informed consent is not necessary in online contexts where data exist within the public domain, and where risk of harm to users is low. This paper provides an insight into one educational researcher's journey through the process of doing ethical social media research, and suggests ways forward for others embarking upon that same journey.