‘Doing identity’ in the Botswana classroom: negotiating gendered institutional identities

Drawing on post-structural and post-colonial conceptions of gender, this paper explores multiple student masculinities and femininities in the classrooms of four junior secondary schools in Botswana. These gendered identities, it is argued, are negotiated within broader institutional constraints that have been socio-historically produced. Such constraints include the colonial legacy of heavily authoritarian (and inherently gendered) teacher-student relations, which in turn are sustained (and resisted) through the practice of English as the medium of instruction, and a punitive disciplinary regime, which has corporal punishment at its core. Three similar gender performances are identified for both girls and boys: ‘good classroom students’, ‘classroom rebels’, and ‘docile bodies’, though these are discursively produced and interpreted differently, against the norms of masculinity and femininity, and within a pervasive and stereotypical binary gender ideology.     

Gender differences in formal,non-formal and informal adult learning

At first sight, participation rates in adult learning do not differ strongly between men and women. Further exploration, however, makes clear that differences exist at the level of the type of learning. Men participate more in work-related learning and experience more job-related motives to participate. Women take on the main responsibilities in the home, resulting in less employment in knowledge intensive jobs and fewer opportunities for work-related training. In this paper, we use the Harvard gender analysis framework to gain insight into the differences in adult learning activities between men and women. In the empirical part, we use the Eurostat Adult Education Survey, which provides sex-aggregated data, which are needed to gain insight in the broader activity profile of the population divided by men and women.     

Girls’ biology,boys’ physics: evidence from free‐choice science learning settings

Many of the explanations for girls’ disinterest in physics focus on the role of the educational system in creating this situation. Here, we use evidence from free‐choice science learning settings to study if this lack of interest is also expressed in non‐school settings. Three sets of self‐generated questions raised by children, adolescents and adults in the fields of biology and physics were used. The outcomes of this analysis show that the polar pattern previously described in school science settings, in which physics proves significantly less interesting to girls than to boys, while biology is of greater interest to girls than to boys, also appears in free‐choice science learning settings. While boys develop an interest in physics with age, girls do not develop such an interest to the same degree. Thus, the initial gap in interest is probably not based on school‐related causes, but its widening in later years probably is. A difference was also found between the genders in the type of information requested and in the motivation for raising the questions. Using topics that appeal to girls’ interest as the context of science learning could prove beneficial in the process of mainstreaming science education. These topics can be identified using girls’ spontaneous questions.     

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.     

Test of the Three-Mathematical Minds (M3) for the Identification of Mathematically Gifted Students

In this study, psychometric properties of the test of the three-mathematical minds (M3) were investigated. The M3 test was developed based on a multidimensional conception of giftedness to identify mathematically talented students. Participants included 291 middle-school students. Data analysis indicated that the M3 had a .73 coefficient as a consistency of scores. Exploratory factor analysis yielded three separate factors explaining 55% of the total variance; however, one-factor solution seems to best fit the data. The convergent validity analysis showed that M3 scores had medium to high-medium correlations with teachers' ratings of students' mathematical ability and students' ratings of their own ability and their liking of mathematics. The findings provide partial evidence for the validity of M3 test scores for the identification of mathematically gifted students.     

Transformation of Women's Mass Sport in the Process of Urbanisation in Contemporary China

Since the 1980s, China has initiated a new era of urbanisation. Urbanisation, like a social engine, has driven a dramatic change in the way that people take part in sport. The particular focus of this article is to explore the impact of urban development on the systematic transformation of women's sport at the grass-roots level. Based on Riess's perspective of the relationship between cities and sport, and socialist feminist's points of view concerning female sport, this research applied a qualitative research paradigm using an in-depth interview method to examine the major social forces which stimulated the rise of women's mass sport in urban China. It is argued that urban development has provided Chinese women with a governmental guarantee, comparatively free individual choices and diversified opportunities to pursue their own interests and fulfilment in and through sport. Generally speaking, Chinese women's mass sport has improved. However, there are still limitations within the institutional structure, physical structure and value systems of the urban society, as well as its sport subsystem to support the sustainable development of women's mass sport. Ideas concerning women's inferiority and gender inequality still remain during this transformation.     

Mary Garber's Coverage of Black Sports in the US Segregated South, 1944–1964

This paper addresses the gap in literature that ignores sport as practiced, managed or communicated by women by focusing on sportswriter Mary Garber, and the meanings engendered through her coverage of black high school and collegiate athletics in the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during the mid-1940s through early 1960s. She received numerous prestigious awards during a career that spanned seven decades, but limited historical treatises examine this influential figure. Few scholars have attempted to understand the history of women in this male-dominated field or the sociocultural forces and obstacles that contextualise and hinder their contributions. It is a sad irony that Garber was atypical for her time, and remains so in the contemporary climate. Therefore, one major objective of this paper is to create a discourse through Garber's body of work that will help to eradicate the gender inequalities of women in sport media. In contrast with representations of women and racial minorities in mainstream sport media, this paper demonstrates that Garber addressed pertinent social concerns and supplemented dominant ideological content with more inclusive depictions of the population she covered by resisting white, masculine, heteronormative assumptions about which sports and athletes merit attention.1 ^1. I use ‘black’, ‘African-American’ and ‘white’ throughout the paper not to reinforce false notions of race as an innate biological trait, but to refer to the ways ‘race’ has been socially constructed with real, material effects.     

生态女性主义视角下的《紫色》

美国黑人女作家爱丽丝·沃克的作品关注黑人女性及自然的命运,本文试用生态女性主义分析小说《紫色》,体现在父权社会下黑人女性与自然同时受到了男性的压迫,批判二元论的男性中心主义思想,呼吁建立一个男女平等,人与自然和谐相处的社会。     

Internationalism: A Need in American Education

The author's middle school has created a mediated set of electronic learning resources designed to more effectively meet students' research needs. These research strategies help students with a variety of reading skills and allow students, and their teachers, to focus on higher-level thinking activities because the resource collections provide time-saving shortcuts through open-ended Google searches.     

The Sassenach

Although researchers have studied the effectiveness of single-sex education (SSE), the findings have been mixed. This exploratory study reports the perceived goals and effectiveness of single-sex education based on interviews with a small group of educators involved with SSE in various ways. Research participants included a school principal and two teachers from the same elementary school, and two university professors. The interview data regarding single-sex education for girls and boys are categorized according to the following areas: reasons for using single-sex settings, strengths and weaknesses of single-sex schooling, suggestions for successful SSE implementation, and future directions of and suggested research for single-sex education. The study participants offer experience-based ideas that both resonate with and expand on current literature.