Examining students’ perspectives on gender bias in their work-integrated learning placements

ABSTRACT

Work-integrated learning (WIL) affords students opportunities to apply skills and knowledge to practical work placements. Students potentially learn professional behaviours appropriate to their chosen industry sector. However, students may also face challenges they may not be prepared to navigate. One of these is gender bias due to assumptions about women and work, particularly within STEM sectors. This article presents findings from a pilot study that explores WIL students’ perspectives on gender bias related to experiences at their internship placements or other jobs. The findings suggest that the potential lack of gender neutrality within organizations such as WIL placements, is nuanced through an underlying bias around thinking about gender, women and work, and demonstrated through institutional structures such as branded recruitment campaigns or the individual micro aggressions of co-workers and supervisors. Further research needs to focus on the impact of gender bias on students’ sense of value within different organizations, and the strategies they employ to navigate bias. In the short-term, all students need tools to help them understand how gender is constructed within organizational processes and how to develop strategies to help them confront gender bias within the organizations in which they work.     

让快乐渗透到语文教学中

兴趣是欣赏的基础,要让学生体会到学习语文的乐趣,教师就应该创设乐教乐学的氛围.教师如何寓教于乐呢？巧设开场白,让每节课都有新意;教师要做艺术感染的天使;课堂要丰富学生的知识;满足学生审美的需要;增强学生的参与意识.这些都是行之有效的途径,我们要增加语文课的魅力,就要让快乐渗透到语文教学中.     

Creating spaces in a male domain: Sister Principals in Catholic schools, 1850–1974

This paper builds on recent scholarship on the gendered nature of educational work to argue that while conceptualisations of the principalship are underpinned by scholarship and policy assumptions that construct the work of the principal as a male domain, women have responded to opportunities presented by changing historical, political and social contexts, creating professional spaces for themselves as principals in primary and secondary schools within both state and Catholic school systems. It details how in the years prior to 1975, a time when the majority of state primary and secondary schools were led by men, the principalship of New Zealand Catholic schools was a largely female endeavour. The experience of Catholic Sister Principals was framed by the fact that they were women leading schools in a world dominated by men. Implicit in this arrangement were the ecclesiastical authority structures and their subjection to the convent hierarchy. Nevertheless, Sister Principals learned a range of strategies that enabled them to negotiate with Church and religious authorities and to undertake the diverse tasks associated with the leadership of Catholic schools.     

《守望灯塔》的性别化叙事策略简

从性别叙事学角度分析英国当代女作家詹妮特·温特森的小说《守望灯塔》的叙事策略。《守望灯塔》采用框式叙述结构讲述了女孩银儿和灯塔建造者巴比·达克两个不同故事。温特森以女性视角叙述银儿自身的故事,以男性宏大视角和女性私密视角交替讲述达克的故事,从而形成两个性别不同的叙述声音,最终女性叙述声音超越了男性叙述声音,实现了性别化的叙事策略。     

‘Proper masculinities’ and the fear of feminisation in modern Cyprus: university students talk about homosexuality and gendered subjectivities

The present article attempts to pay attention to the ways in which a group of young Cypriot students engage in the construction of conventional notions of masculinities through the negation and the fear of homosexual desire. Drawing on interviews with 12 male and female university students, I argue that many young men go through complicated processes of anxiety and fear in order to achieve a masculine heterosexual career and to prove that they are ‘real men’. In that way the male participants I interviewed expressed the idea that in the cultural space of Cyprus masculine subject positions are the most powerful ones. The participants commented on the unthinkable sexual choice of loving someone from the same sex and concluded that choosing to stay in Cyprus and live a gay life would be very painful if not unthinkable. The article concludes that gender anxiety in Cyprus is expressed through the abjection of homosexuality.     

Women teachers in Hong Kong: stories of changing gendered identities

In a time of mass schooling in most parts of the world, the discourse of the “woman primary teacher” is often the subject of discourse. Yet most stories of these women teachers emerge from other (Western) contexts, with little known about how changing education processes affect the gendered identities of women in other cultural settings. This paper explores how women teachers negotiate their gendered identities in Hong Kong, where modernization has already mingled with the indigenous Chinese culture. It provides the stories of four Chinese women teachers as they engage in ongoing construction and negotiations of gendered identities over their life histories in Hong Kong. All are ethnically Chinese, of different ages and at different stages of their personal and professional lives, and all have grown up in Hong Kong. A framework of post-colonial concepts of hybridity and border crossing helps to suggest how identity resources develop in relation to a range of contemporary practices which are experienced as both pressures and opportunities. These Chinese women teachers' identities are seen to be complex, fluid and multi-faceted, continually under construction in their daily lives, with changes experienced in both work and family settings.     

Types and dynamics of gendered space: a case of Emirati female learners in a single-gender context

This article is concerned with gendered spaces as they emerge from exploring Emirati female learners’ spatiality in a single-gender context. By conducting ethnographic research and utilising Lefebvre’s triad of perceived, conceived and lived space for the analysis and categorisation of students’ spaces, three types of gendered spaces emerged: ‘generally’, ‘absolutely’ and ‘conditionally’. These spaces were grounded in the sociocultural context of the institute and its participants. The research also revealed the dynamics associated with such gendered spaces, including mobility restrictions and the agency of the female learners through the ways these females contested gender segregation practices, negotiating and attempting to establish new positions of power within cultural and institutional constraints.     

When Identity and Leadership Intersect: The Experiences of Six Female Principals in South Africa

While literature on the interplay between educational leadership and context abounds, the attention granted to the experiences of female principals has, to a large extent, treated the construction of women as a homogeneous entity. Consequently, very little, certainly within the South African context, is known about how women in leadership positions construct and enact their leadership identities. Drawing on the experiences of six female principals at public schools, this article investigates the extent to which conceptions of gender give shape to the formation of leadership identity. To this end, the focus of the article is to explore the complex intersections of constructions of identity in relation to female principals; and how these constructions hold particular implications for conceptions of gendered leadership in South African schools.     

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.