Dr Rachel Buchanan

Rachel.Buchanan@newcastle.edu.au

Do some know more than others?How are we ‘assessed’? Equity and educational attainment

Do some know more than others?

How are we ‘assessed’? Equity and educational attainment

Key Concepts

• Gender

• The social contexts of educational achievement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ2mAeVl4YU

Gender

Key terms

Sex - Essentialism

Gender – sex role socialisation

Macro – social organisation

Micro - practices which constitute gender

Gender is ubiquitous.

From the ‘segregation of jobs, to the gender differentiation of voluntary organisations, gender acts as a fundamental principle of organising social relations in virtually all spheres of social life’

(Ridgeway & Correll, 2004, p. 521)

Judith Butler: gender performativity, heteronormality, heterosexual matrix

Raewyn Connell: hegemonic, complicit, protest masculinities

“knowing that they will be categorised in this way, most people carefully construct their appearance according to cultural gender rules to ensure that others reliably categorise them as belonging to the sex category that they claim for themselves” (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004, p. 515)

Source: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/10/lifetime-earnings-gaps-by-sex-and-raceethnicity/

Source: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/10/lifetime-earnings-gaps-by-sex-and-raceethnicity/

Source: http://bit.ly/r2WVzp

Source: http://bit.ly/r2WVzp

Gender norms are changing, but certain patterns are still discernible

Men – breadwinners, assertive, strong, providers – as the breadwinner wages should be higher. Men more likely to work fulltime

Women – certain work is women’s work (caring, nurturing, “easy”) either free, or low paid. Women more likely to take time out from paid employment to raise children, care for elderly. Women more likely to work on a part-time or casual basis

(Vickers, 2010, p. 212)

The school as a gendered organisation

Gendered dimensions of organisation include

In schools and education systems:

The division of labour: for example, there are gendered jobs in the organisations structure

Men are under-represented as teachers, especially in primary school and early childhood centres

Power-relations: for example, men and women, and boy and girls exercise power differently

Boys are often the perpetrators of bullying: they bully other boys as well as girls. Girls sometimes bully other girls but they rarely bully boys.

Emotional relationships: for example, patterns of antagonism and solidarity are gendered

Peer relationships often function to amplify and maintain boys’ dominant behaviours

Organisational cultures: for example, beliefs about gender difference and equal opportunity are gendered

It is assumed that boys are better than girls at ‘rational thought’ subjects: maths, physics, and computer science. Girls are thought to be more intuitive and social than boys, and more verbally fluent.

Theobald notes the endearing influences of nineteenth century ideas about the female brain (not robust, not suited to rational learning, readier sympathies and greater dependence on emotions) in development

of mass schooling. She states we are seeing “the translation in the mass educational practice of the enduring and oppressive myths that there is a natural affinity between the humanities and the female mind – with its equally enduring myth that there is a natural affinity between science and the male mind. Patriarchal social formations have proved remarkably resilient in periods of rapid economic social changes such as those set in motion by the rise of industrial Capitalism” (1996, p. 26).

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Theobald’s analysis is supported by recent research into

education. Teese and Polesel (2003) found that girls, especially

those from working class backgrounds, remain under-represented in high schools subjects such as maths and science.

Even in the present subject selection remains influenced by nineteenth century prejudices.

Girls remain over-represented in humanities subjects and boys tend to be concentrated into a smaller pool of science, maths and vocation-based subjects (Teese & Polesel, 2003).

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Boys in schools Debate

• Ed Policy in 1970s and 1980s concerned with increasing girls’ educational achievements

• Early 1990s saw underachievement of boys as an emerging area of concern, has now been central to educational debates over the past two decades

• Claims that teaching is a feminimized arena – harmful due to the lack of role models for boys?

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Underachieving boys?

• NAPLAN results reveal bigger differences in regards to SES than gender – numeracy no significant differences, girls achieve slightly higher in writing (Vickers, 2010)

• School completion rates 2010 – Males 73.2%, Females 83.0% (ABS, 2011)

• University (Bachelor degree or above - % of the pop.n aged 25-29 years) Males 30%, Females 38.3%

• Girls relatively recent success in schools has not translated into success outside of school

Which boys and which girls are not being well served by the education system and why?

How do students do gender in school?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlucQZZL9MQ&feature=fvsr

Students themselves create, maintain and interpret gender norms.

Swain (2004) notes that the acquisition of peer group status is ‘inextricably linked’ to boys’ construction of masculinity.

‘it is not something that is given, but is often the outcome of intricate and intense manoeuvring, and has to be earned through negotiation and sustained through performance, sometimes on an almost daily basis’

(p. 171)

How is Jonah enacting gender?

In the school yard, various gender and sexual identities are

collectively imposed, yet, individually taken up.

“In Foucaultian terms, it would appear that the individual is both an effect of power and the element of its articulation” (Nayak & Kehily, 2006, p. 465)

Renold examines the ‘heterosexual matrix’ and notes how it regulates boy/girl relationships in the school context – gendered and sexualised bullying and harassment were often the primary way by which children created and consolidated gender and sexual norms. Particular gendered subject positions (e.g. tomboy) offer and escape route from coercive and frequently compulsory heterosexual positioning. One third of the children in her study ‘routinely positioned themselves as Other to hegemonic heterogendered scripts with all of them reporting being systemically teased, excluded and humiliated for choosing not to invest in and project (thus directly challenge and resist) normative forms of age-appropriate heterofeminity and heteromasculinity’ (2006, p. 499).

Teacher Expectations

Teachers’ expectations of their students form a powerful socialising agent.

Jones and Myhill (2004) note that teachers have gendered expectations in terms of student achievement. Teacher perceptions saw underachieving boys and high achieving girls conforming to gender expectations, high achieving boys were seen to challenge gender norms and ‘troublesome’ underachieving girls largely overlooked.

“The apparent tendency to associate all boys with underachievement and all girls with high achievement does little service to the complex needs of individuals, not least the troublesome girls and compliant boys” (Jones and Myhill, 2004, p. 560).

Judith Butler

“Any radical pedagogy has to think its plans in light of that overriding need to provide a sustainable life for an emerging and dependent person…how does one stay in the matrix of rules long enough to survive and, how does one bend and redirect those rules in order to breathe and live” (2006, p. 533), as “what is at stake are the activities through which gender is instituted and, then, stands a chance of being de-instituted or instituted differently” (p. 529).

References:

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2011). Gender Indicators. Accessed from: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4125.0?OpenDocument

Butler, J. (2006). Response. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27, 529-534.

Jones, S., & Myhill, D. (2004). ‘Troublesome Boys’ and ‘Compliant Girls’ : Gender identity and perceptions of achievement. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25, 547-561.

Nayak, A., & Kehily, M.J. (2006). Gender undone: Subversion, regulation and embodiment in the work of Judith Butler. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27, 459-472.

Renold, E. (2006). “They won’t let is play…unless you’re going out with one of them”: Girls, boys and Butler’s ‘heterosexual matrix’ in the primary years. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27, 498-509.

Ridgeway, C.L. & Correll, S.J. (2004). Unpacking the gender system: A theoretical perspective in gender beliefs and social relations. Gender & Society, 18, 510-531.

Swain, J. (2004). The Resources and Strategies that 10-11-Year-Old-Boys use to Construct Masculinities in the School Setting. British Educational Research Journal, 30(1), 167-185.

Teese, R. & Polesel, J. (2003). Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary education in Australia. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press.

Theobald, M.R. (1996). Knowing women: origins of women’s education in nineteenth century Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vickers, M. (2010). Gender. In R. Connell, C. Campbell, A. Welch, D. Foley, & N. Bagnel, (Ed.s). Education, Change & Society (2nd Ed.) (pp. 205 - 234). Sydney: Oxford University Press