Investigating Power in the Staffroom: issues in the study of power and gender relations in a professional group

This paper draws on a two year study of the power and gender relations between teachers negotiating the new design and technology curriculum for England and Wales between 1992 and 1994. In it I reflect on the experience of attempting to analyse gender and power relations between individuals and groups positioned in a variety of ways with respect to one another. Using a Foucaultian approach to power as multiple, distributed and subject to resistance, I consider the ways in which the study of power and gender impacts on and interacts with the researcher, research relationships and the research process. I then go on to discuss some specific issues arising from having the relationship between power and gender as a research topic.