Teachers,Gender and Resistance

Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid‐1970s. Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity. Less often studied is the teacher herself or himself. In particular, the question arises of why, after a decade or so of feminist research on sexism and education, teachers appear to make relatively little effort to implement antisexist initiatives. The paper considers four possible explanations for this situation. Antisexist initiatives may be particularly uncongenial or threatening by their nature or mode of introduction. Characteristics of teachers such as age, sex or social class may influence receptivity to reform. Teacher ideologies about gender or education may set limits to what appears acceptable. Conditions under which teachers work may not be conducive to enthusiastic innovation. The challenge for sociologists is to tease out interrelationships and assess the relative weights of these factors; the challenge for feminists is to transcend the gap between principled scholarship and practical strategies.