Teacher talk: producing,resisting and challenging discourses about the science classroom

The aim of the project which forms the basis of this article was to make the science classroom more inclusive by challenging discriminatory practices. Science teachers from two secondary schools in Sweden agreed to be involved in an action research project over one year. Each teacher was to carry out a study concerning their own teaching and regular meetings were held for planning, evaluation and discussion. These meetings were analysed and suggest that science subjects are gendered and female science teachers face more resistance than their male peers, sometimes even being positioned as unprofessional. However, the science discourse is continually negotiable with the analysis showing challenge both to science as a male field and to the content that makes up science. Power relations other than gender are also visible and make patterns more complex. The analysis will offer a conceptual framework for understanding how gender in education is produced and reproduced in practice.