University Lecturers' Perceptions of Gender and Undergraduate Writing

It has been argued that male and female undergraduates adopt different, gendered writing styles. This paper discusses findings from a project that examined this issue, and explores lecturers' perceptions of gender and undergraduate writing. It shows that, in the case of 'second-class' awarded essays, a majority of academics were unable to correctly identify the authors gender. Applying analysis of discourse to the explanations of academics concerning their attempts at gender identification, we found that narratives used by academics tended to support discourses of gender difference, particularly in terms of ability. These various narratives, and the resulting constructions of male and female students, are discussed. It is argued that the narratives position male and female students in stereotypical ways, with implications for their power positions. We conclude that while it is important that gendered trends around undergraduate writing are recognised and addressed, the stereotyping of students according to gender must be avoided.     

Dualing with gender: teachers’ work,careers and leadership in physical education

The discursive practices of physical education reflect not only the expectations and constraints of discourses in the wider society, educational organizations and bureaucracies, but also the pervasive influences of working with and within sport. Within physical education, and specifically in the lives, work and careers of physical education teachers, in what ways are gender dualisms breaking down and in what ways are powerful gendered discourses still influential? This paper will outline results from research on teachers’ work, careers and leadership in physical education, with a particular focus on gendered patterns. A mixed methods research design was used with 556 female and male participants in the quantitative phase and 17 participants in the qualitative phase. Some of the results challenged gender dualistic ways of thinking about physical education teachers’ work, careers and leadership while other results indicated ways in which powerful dominant discourses still shape gendered patterns.     

Issues of exceptionality,gender, and power: exploring Canadian children’s award-winning literature

This article explores the gendered ways in which issues of ability and exceptionality are presented in Governor-General award-winning Canadian children’s literature. In much of contemporary feminist thought, there is a strong focus on intersecting oppressions with gender as a central analytic lens. However, ability is still largely absent. Our aim is to bring ability to the forefront in an analysis of gendered representations in children’s literature. We therefore discuss gender, inclusion, and children’s fiction; detail our use of feminist discourse analysis; and present findings from our literature analysis, making connections to societal discourses of inclusion and gender. We conclude that educators must assist students in becoming aware of gendered and abled discourses, discussing their meanings, and deconstructing their hegemonic ideals. Without such critical discussions, the marginalisation of girls and individuals with exceptionalities will continue to be pervasive in children’s literature and, by extension, society.     

Teaching manfully? Exploring gendered subjectivities and power via analysis of men teachers’ gender performance

The notion that teachers’ classroom behaviour and interaction with pupils may be predicted on the basis of their gender underpins recent controversial campaigns to recruit more male teachers in the UK. Teachers’ performances of gender are explored in this article, which draws on three cases from a larger study to analyse the ways in which teachers ascribed male produced their gendered subjectivities in the classroom and in interviews. Findings highlight the extent of diversity in male teachers’ practice and in their constructions of gendered subjecthood, hence providing evidence to question assumptions that male teachers teach, or relate to pupils, in particular ways due to their identification as male. The analysis emphasizes the fluidity and complexity of gender, including the (novel) identification of ‘male femininity’ in male teacher performances. Yet while supportive of the argument that gender is not necessarily tied to sexed bodies, the paper illustrates how embodiment can constrain or facilitate access to, and exercise of, particular gendered discourses, with consequences for power positions. It also highlights how these processes can result in the consolidation of particularly powerful subjectivities, somewhat testing Foucauldian perceptions of power as ‘never localized’. Hence the paper presents a challenge both to education policy makers and to theorists of gender and power.     

Refusing the Performance: Disrupting Popular Discourses Surrounding Latino Male Teachers and the Possibility of Disidentification

Popular discourses surrounding male teachers of color can serve to reify confining and problematic notions of masculinity in schools. Taking a critical approach to the study of gender and race, this article highlights the ways schools reproduce specifically Latino male identity through the cultural expectations of Latino male educators, as well as the gender performance of Latino male teachers themselves. Through an ethnographic case study of a middle school Latino boys’ program in the San Francisco Bay Area, I explore the ways one Latino male teacher navigates cultural pressures surrounding the enactment of Latino masculinity. This study uncovers the ways the scarcity of Latino male educators creates a pressure to perform specified notions of masculinity; particularly that of the domineering, hypermasculine disciplinarian. Furthermore, this study looks at embodied resistance to dominant discourses of Latino masculinity through deviant gendered performances, locating the body as a key site of struggle.     

Educators’ responses to policy concerns about the gender balance of the teaching profession in Scotland

Concepts of gender equity are changing and the necessity of actively developing a fairer gender balance is now enshrined in the Gender Equality Legislation implemented in 2007 that required public bodies to positively promote equality. This study examines, from the perspectives of educators, their understandings of gendered inequalities in teaching and the issues that they raise for the profession. Overall, respondents did not see the numerical domination of women as a problem but instead they saw the benefits of maintaining the diversity of the teaching profession, since all pupils could benefit from the range of interests and attributes offered by both women and men. Respondents were both embracing and disputing popular discourses about the gender balance in teaching but argued strongly that there should be no discriminatory barriers to the profession. It is concluded that a policy approach to gender equality should address the material and social disadvantage experienced by those working in female‐dominated professions like teaching and this would ensure people would be enabled to exercise gendered preferences without penalties or unfair advantages in income or status.     

‘It's not bullying’, ‘It's just a joke’: Teacher and student discursive manoeuvres around gendered violence

Threats or harassment related to the enforcement of gender norms remain largely unchallenged in many schools. Possibilities for meaningful interventions have been undermined by an over-reliance on individual, psycho-pathologised understandings of ‘bullying’ and a reluctance to examine contextual and socio-cultural mechanisms of power. Poststructural feminist approaches offer an alternative view of gendered violence and its responses—one that focuses on the meanings that individuals and groups constitute through discourse around gender, violence and ‘bullying’. This article examines focus group data from teachers and students from one Australian school that experienced a significant event of gendered violence referred to as ‘Kick a slut in the head day’. Results demonstrate that participants minimised or dismissed the ‘seriousness’ of this event through employing particular ‘discursive manoeuvres’ drawn from hegemonic discourses of ‘bullying’. Teachers utilised essentialist discourses to illustrate that the incident was ‘not bullying’, while students suggested that it was a ‘joke’ or that the girl/s were deserving of the treatment. These findings suggest that ‘discursive manoeuvres’ are a helpful indicator for understanding contextual resistance to addressing gendered violence.     

Gendered distribution of ‘knowledge required for empowerment’ in Swedish vocational education curricula?

Sweden is internationally commended for a high degree of gender equality, but many divisions in Swedish society, including the labour market, disadvantage women. This paper addresses gendered divisions of preparation for civic participation in the vocational upper secondary national curricula, which may participate in reproduction of the pattern. In a comparative analysis of the curriculum guidelines for different vocational upper secondary programmes, we focus on the inclusion of important knowledge for empowerment and how knowledge is contextualised in terms of valued labour positions. We deploy Bernstein’s concepts of horizontal and vertical discourse and Connell’s concepts of production, consumption and gendered accumulation. A general finding is that vertical discourse is contextualised towards discourses of consumption in girl-dominated programmes and towards discourses of production in boy-dominated programmes. Boy-dominated programmes include more knowledge that can be clearly classified in recognised disciplines or fields, whereas girl-dominated programmes include courses of undefined knowledge, such as creativity and entrepreneurship. We conclude that the vocational curricula reinforce rather than challenge existing gender structures in the labour market and wider society. In a historical perspective, it can be concluded that Swedish vocational education policy has a continuum of ‘gender-blindness', and thus confirming with wider norms.     

Who is the competent physics student? A study of students’ positions and social interaction in small-group discussions

This article describes a study which explored the social interaction and the reproduction and challenge of gendered discourses in small group discussions in physics. Data for the study consisted of video recordings of eight upper secondary school groups solving physics problems and 15 audiotaped individual interviews with participating students. The analysis was based on gender theory viewing gender both as a process and a discourse. Specifically discursive psychology analysis was used to examine how students position themselves and their peers within discourses of physics and gender. The results of the study reveal how images of physics and of “skilled physics student” were constructed in the context of the interviews. These discourses were reconstructed in the students’ discussions and their social interactions within groups. Traditional gendered positions were reconstructed, for example with boys positioned as more competent in physics than girls. These positions were however also resisted and challenged.     

Gendered educational leadership: beneath the monoglossic façade

Recent gender retheorisation has drawn on Mikhail Bakhtin's literary and linguistic theories of monoglossia and heteroglossia to reconcile seemingly contradictory gender discourses. Thus, girls/women and boys/men as they are biologically sexed might be discussed within a poststructural gender theory discourse that disconnects gender from the body. The concepts of gender monoglossia, gender heteroglossia and polyglossia have been applied here to empirical research into the construction of gendered leadership as it was seen to be done by one woman head teacher. The accounts of members of staff expose heteroglossia in the articulation of their understandings of gendered leadership beneath the construction of a monoglossic façade. They also reveal an understanding of polyglossic simultaneity as the head teacher is observed to ‘switch’ seamlessly between modes of doing gendered leadership depending on context and circumstances. There is also evidence of polyglossic simultaneity in the reports that might lead to the rejection and/or redefinition of gender theory discourses.     

‘The world must stop when I’m talking’: gender and power relations in primary teachers’ classroom talk

The present paper examines male and female teachers’ language practices in relation to ‘censuring’ talk in the primary classroom, in the context of the debate around boys’ ‘underachievement’ and the ‘feminisation’ of primary school culture. Through an analysis of classroom observations with 51 men and women teachers, it looks to see whether gender differences could be found in the ways individual men and women teachers communicated in terms of their ‘censuring’ comments of pupils’ work or behaviour. Secondly, the paper takes issue with the notion that teachers operate within a ‘feminised’ educational culture, by looking at the ways in which teachers’ classroom talk can be seen to be constrained by two contrasting discourses relating to the power relation between teacher and pupil: a ‘traditional’ disciplinarian discourse, and a more ‘progressive’ liberal discourse. Both discourses have complex gendered and class dimensions, challenging the conception of a ‘feminised’ primary school culture.     

Gender,Identity, Status and the Body: Life in a marginal subject

This paper considers the situation of secondary teachers working in two marginal school subjects, design and technology and physical education. Focusing on the interaction between gender, identity, status and the body, we explore the similarities between these subjects, and suggest that marginality is itself gendered. Through a consideration of the gendered legacies of these subjects, their contradictory status positions, the importance of the body to their work and the specific problems of women teachers, we draw out features that seem to be specific to such gendered marginality. We argue that there is an increasing tendency for lower status school subjects to become more 'masculine' in orientation and that in these areas co-education has done a disservice to both girls and women teachers, who are now isolated in areas governed by paradigms developed in a purely male context.     

‘You better not get pregnant while you’re here’: tensions between masculinities and femininities in military communities of practice

Using a life history approach, this article explores the ways in which women in the military who are also mothers learn to embody various masculinities and femininities as they negotiate workplace gender processes. Complex intersections of gendered communities of practice result in the participants’ learning to variously understand, accept, shape and/or resist interlinked personal, professional and organizational gendered discourses. First, I discuss theories of learning in communities of masculinity and femininity practice, exploring how they connect to the military context. Second, I explain how life history methodology enables an examination of participant learning through personal, organizational and societal constructs. Third, I detail the findings as they relate to the complex ways in which women in the military learn to embody various masculinities and femininities as they negotiate workplace gender processes. Last, I conclude that participants transgressed and reinforced certain boundaries between various military communities of masculinity and femininity.     

Black Stockings and Pot Pourri: Gender Issues in Design and Technology

Product designers are an integral part of bringing technology to life and it is predominantly males as designers who ‘clothe’ technology in the designs which utilise it. Consequently products used by and identified with women are in fact designed by men. One of the guiding precepts of design as it is taught and practised, is that people buy particular artefacts in order to express and/or confirm their identity. It has been argued that the success of gendered designs in the late nineteenth century reflected the social construct of gender difference. I argue that this has remained unchallenged to date and that the gender stereotyping of products further stereotypes technology. The theoretical debates about gender and technology are rarely introduced to product design students because the predominantly male lecturers are reluctant to deal with the issues themselves.     

Not even well begun: women in computing courses

Concern is often expressed about the underrepresentation of women in scientific and technological programmes in higher education. This concern prompted us to undertake a study of Australian computing science courses at the top level of professional accreditation. Our concern was with the numbers of women enrolling and how women fared in the early stages of the courses. The work from our study provides the basis for this paper in which we examine the ways in which women tend to be disadvantaged in computing courses. We discuss the issues both in terms of factors which are identifiable from the perspective of the discipline at large and those which are associated specifically with the presentation of courses within institutions of higher education. At the discipline level we discuss the apparent technology-centredness of computing, the emphasis accorded mathematics as well as narrow problem solving skills and the undervaluing of broadly based problem solving and communication skills. In the institutional context, our concerns lie with the consequences of gender stereotyping on attitudes and interactions, the significance of prior computing knowledge and experience as well as of mathematical background, and the way the curriculum is structured and organised.     

Constructions of caring professionalism: a case study of teacher educators

This article investigates the professionalism of a group of women teacher educators working on initial teacher education (ITE) courses for intending primary school teachers in England. The article draws on data from an empirical study in the education departments of two universities. At the time of the research, these universities had just undergone major changes to the ways in which their ITE courses were organized and taught. The data show how the women teacher educators challenged these changes to their established ways of working and the implied threats to their constructions of caring professionalism. The article analyses how and why the changes affected the women’s senses of professionalism, drawing on Davies’ concept of gendered inclusion in professional life. It also discusses how and why these women’s form of professionalism developed within these institutional settings by identifying a cumulative convergence of discourses within the field of primary ITE.     

Who cares? Gender dynamics in the valuing of extra-curricular activities in higher education

Despite the assertion that higher education is becoming increasingly ‘feminised’ and that male students are the relative losers, gendered meanings continue to permeate higher education in ways that mean that the recognition of women's experiences are frequently marginalised. Our paper reports on research designed to explore student participation in extra-curricular activity from a perspective informed by a broader conceptualisation of the extra-curricular as a site of gendered, raced, and class practices intimately tied to the development of an employable self. We found that women frequently undervalue their participation and are more likely to be dismissive of extra-curricular activity as of value to their employability than men and that they rarely consider caring to be a form of capital which can be utilised or invested in to support their future employment. We argue that higher education institutions need to support students, in particular women, to recognise the value of their participation.     

Gender differences in introductory undergraduate physics performance: University physics versus college physics in the USA

Efforts to ameliorate gender disparity in pursuit of science careers in the USA have focused on equalizing girls' participation in pre-college science courses and out-of-school activities. Our examination of nearly 1500 US college students at 16 universities found that gender and preparation both have an impact on success in introductory college physics courses. In terminal, algebra-based physics females perform better than their male classmates. However, in calculus based introductory college physics courses, which are prerequisite to advanced study in many fields, women do significantly worse than their male counterparts with the same background. For both genders, taking a high school course that limits coverage and concentrates more time in in-depth study is associated with better performance in college physics. We conclude that efforts to ensure the success of women entering the physical sciences should concentrate on increasing the depth and reducing the vast coverage of most high school physics courses as well as addressing the apparent bias in college courses that mark the first step in careers within scientific research and engineering.     

Im Working Class and Proud of Itgendered experiences of non-traditional participants in higher education

This article examines the gendered experiences of a small group of working-class participants in higher education through an analysis of interview data of students’ recollected and current experiences around four themes: their school experiences; their later learning experiences; their views about higher education; and their attitudes to being working class. It is argued that how people describe their experiences reflects the ways in which they construct their feminine and masculine identities, which are not static but are historically and spatially situated and evolving. It is suggested that whilst a person's subjective position is as importantly influenced by, for example, race and age, as by class and gender, these are always key factors in interpreting lived experience. It concludes that through questioning the discourses of class and gender that frame the ways of thinking, problems and practices which are regarded as legitimate, it begins to be possible for students to open up new ways of thinking reflexively about the social construction of their experiences of education.