Reading gender: a feminist,queer approach to children's literature and children's discursive agency

Children's literature helps young people make sense of gender. However, while books offer children the imaginative ability to create their own worlds, normative gender can manifest in characters and stories. The study described in this article draws upon ‘disruptive’ storytimes with 114 preschool children, interviews with 20 parents and staff, and observations at 20 preschools. Employing a feminist, queer approach, I develop two derivative books that switch a boy-hero for a girl and vice versa. These books are read to children in educational settings. This method interrogates gendered characters and stories’ attachments to such concepts as love, acceptance, bodily agency, and adventure. Results show how children interact with these characters and stories and how they use categorisation and narrative construction to make sense of gender. I focus on the gender discourses at play and moments of childhood discursive agency. Themes include literature, doing and being, positioning, bodies, and feminist tales.     

Mapping the educational work of governesses on Australia’s remote stations

This article is about the educational work of governesses on Australia’s remote cattle and sheep stations. These stations occupy vast tracts of land in the outback, and form part of global food supply chains exporting meat to countries around the world. The article explores the nature of governesses’ work, the boundaries they negotiate to perform their work, and the spaces and places in which it takes place. The governess occupies a unique position within the occupational and social hierarchy of the station. She lives and works in the same domestic space as the family/employer, unlike other station employees, and is valued for her success in managing the social and spatial dynamics of power both with the students/children and the employer/family. The article focuses on the negotiation of boundaries between domestic/public spaces, paid/unpaid, affective and educational labour involved in governess roles.     

The political dimension of consuming animal products in education: An analysis of upper-secondary student responses when school lunch turns green and vegan

Abstract

Addressing the consumption of animals as an educative and environmentally crucial question, this paper empirically examines the meaning of meat and animal consumption for learners in school settings. This study is based on focus groups with Swedish upper secondary students and is centred around their responses to a vegan month at their school as an initiative to emphasise the environmental consequences caused by human consumption of animal products. In order to make sense of the students´ responses in light of the disruption of animal products in the school restaurant, the school initiative is analysed as a dislocatory intervention. The analysis shows that ‘eating environmentally’ in education caused conflictual responses closely connected to political and gendered aspects of animal consumption. In conclusion, the author argues that a neutral or un-political position is not possible when animal consumption is on the educational table, and moreover, that there is a need to take political–conflictual responses seriously within education.     

Productivity and Collaborative Patterns of Physical Educators

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which gender ratio and patterns of collegiality intersect among physical educators in higher education. An indirect measure of patterns of collegiality was obtained from an examination of the gender of authors and of author teams. Specifically, the investigator focused on publication rates, gender of primary authors of mixed teams and dyads, and size and gender composition of author teams. The data base consisted of articles published by physical educators in 14 research-based physical education journals 1980–1984. In addition, a measure of change was obtained through a comparison of selected data of 1980 and 1984. The results showed that although on the average, women and men had published the same number of articles, type and degree of collaboration differed significantly. Women tended to publish alone while men tended to publish in groups. The data also indicated that men were accorded senior authorship of mixed sex teams significantly more often than were women. In addition, the longitudinal data indicated a decrease in the number of women who were senior authors. The results were explained in terms of the numerical and institutional domination of men physical educators in higher education.     

(En)gendering responsibility: a critical news analysis of Argentina's education reform, 2001–2002

Education reform continues around the globe, though questioned and critiqued in relation to goals of democratizing educational decision-making. Newspapers are one site of contestation and negotiation where struggles over global reform discourses are contextualized in ‘obvious’ and ‘natural’ local language. In this article, I argue that gender discourses are a powerful heuristic employed to push particular education agendas and particularly gendered ones that do not necessarily reflect education reform goals for democratizing educational decision-making or improving equity. I analyzed Argentina's education reform in two national newspapers from 1 November 2001 to 1 November 2002 to reveal the role of gender in reform mediation at the national level. The findings and their interpretation illustrated how educational institutions and actors were situated in a gendered hierarchy with responsibilities and authority. Evoking masculine and feminine roles, representations, and identities in everyday ‘natural’ language lent a familiarity to seemingly abstract and neutral global education reform goals, replicating context-specific educational decision-making processes.     

Learning crafts as practices of masculinity. Finnish male trainee teachers' reflections and experiences

Craft education in Finland has long gendered traditions that effect the present situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the processes of learning the interlinking of crafts and gender. The analysis concentrates on male trainee teachers' experiences of craft education in comprehensive schools in Finland. Data were collected through memory work and autobiographical writing. The analysis revealed how the boys had linked the term ‘technical crafts’ with masculinity, (1) as part of their upbringing at home surrounded by the gender order of their childhood families; (2) following the school model that technical crafts are a masculine sphere for boys; and (3) the importance and pressures of the boys' peer culture. Through learning crafts, the boys were learning the masculinities of their local ‘communities of practices’. The prospective teachers' reflections revealed the importance of studying gender issues in teacher education.     

Greek male early childhood educators: self and societal perceptions towards their chosen profession

In choosing to become early years teachers, men are positioned in a context which is numerically dominated by women. Male early years teachers may feel they experience difficulties, being induced into a predominantly female culture. The present study intended to examine whether Greek male early childhood educators experience difficulties. More precisely it has a twofold aim: on the one hand to explore Greek male early childhood educators' perceptions of their chosen profession; on the other to explore how different social groups encountered the entry of those males into that profession. Concurrent with previous international research results, the present study suggests that there are males who love working with young children and are committed to early childhood education and thus, as in other countries, in Greece too male childcare workers experience difficulties and mistrust of their choice.     

Gendered nationalism and otherization: transnational prostitutes in South Korea

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand how masculine ideologies become (re)produced in the trope around transnational prostitution, by examining a lawsuit case concerning Filipina prostitutes in Korea. While several actors, including nation‐states, journalists, and activists engaged in constructing the images of Filipina prostitutes as ‘sex slaves,’ as ‘deceived or exploited victims’, or as ‘abused poor women,’ the actual economic, political and cultural processes that contribute to the complex process of women crossing borders are elided. Such homogeneous images of transnational prostitutes function to symbolically demarcate and maintain the boundaries of the nation, gender, and sexuality, and to neglect actual women’s agency and experiences as workers. This paper demonstrates how, complicit in the representations of the transnational prostitutes as victims, are ideologies of traditional gender norms, nationalism, and colonialism. Ultimately, I argue that this case will enable us to re‐examine contemporary discourses on trafficking and transnational prostitution in a more critical and subversive feminist perspective.     

关于师范院校开设女性教育课程的思考

在师范院校中，女生所占比例历来较高。她们大多未能在基础教育阶段接受正常的生理卫生及性别知识教育。带着源于家庭、传媒及社会各方面对女性性别角色定位的陈旧观念，在现实中遭遇着种种冲突和困惑。有针对性地开设女性教育课程，不仅有益于女大学生认识自我，增强自信，更好地参与社会。更由于师范院校学生的性别意识、社会角色定位和人生选择，还会以教育的名义，通过教育的渠道而直接影响到成千上万的未成年人的发展。因此，开设女性教育课程，在师范院校学生中实施性别教育是十分必要的。