Gender and Curriculum: power and being female

Focusing on gender relations in a working class co‐educational school, this paper reports on the differences in power, status and control when male and female students interact with school‐based curricular processes. The research site provided an interesting arena for the empowerment of pupils, particularly female, through a negotiated school‐based curriculum fragment of the total school organisation. This paper aims to portray teacher/student negotiations in the context of classwork and classroom behaviour and the making of appropriate subject selections, a process which portrays an experimental interaction between students and the organisation and authority of the school. The research identified areas linked closely to emerging shifts in female student career options, as well as reflecting perspectives relevant to policy and theory development for the 1990s.