Korean mature women students’ various subjectivities in relation to their motivation for higher education: generational differences amongst women

This qualitative case study attempts to conceptualize certain ‘patterns’ and ‘processes’ of which 28 mature women undergraduates give meanings to their motivation for higher education in their life contexts. Particular attention has been paid to include diverse groups of women according to their age, prior educational background, marital and occupational status. This was to seek for possibilities of differences amongst the mature women undergraduates, which is a scholarly neglected issue in the existing literature. Life history interviews were conducted with individual participants aged 25–75. Based on a combination of grounded theory approach and feminist post-structuralist theory, three types of learners were identified primarily in different generation—an age cohort that shares certain experiences in common. They are younger ‘careerist learners’, ‘personal growth learners’ and older ‘vicarious living learners’. Although the motivations for these three types of learners overlap to some extent, they disclose distinct gendered subjectivities. The analysis suggests that this partly reflects the historical dynamics of gender relations in Korean society. Drawing on empirical findings, this paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to diversities among mature women students and to socio-historical contexts under which those learners’ motivations and perspectives are constructed.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

从“学习”到“问学”:中国教育理性的文化回归之契机

教育理性意指思考教育的特定思维方式,不同国家和历史时期的教育文化、形态和制度对应着不同的显性教育理性。通过梳理21世纪西方现代教育理性从“学习”到“问学”(study)的转变,从中可以看出,中国的传统文化哲学可为正在全球兴起的“问学”理性的建构提供丰富的理性文化基础和空间。换而言之,西方当下的“问学”教育理性转向实则为中国教育理性的文化回归提供了一个历史性的契机。     

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.