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The notion of equality is central to European public life. Yet, equality is a concept with as many definitions as it has varied use. Traditionally, equality in education focused on access to schooling and on boys’ underachievement. As globalised education systems are becoming increasingly socially, culturally and politically diverse, it is important to consider equality in education in relation to the school as a workplace. Employing a feminist research design and focusing specifically on the lives of six Irish male primary teachers, this article unpacks a number of assumptions relating to equality and masculinities. Many of these assumptions are discreet, which allow for inequalities to be created and maintained. In this context, discussions surrounding informal barriers will be explored in relation to teacher education colleges and the staffroom. The study's findings show that the number of males entering teaching is declining and that male teachers within the profession feel isolated due to various forces are not neutral occurrences. They are not natural economic patterns. Gender plays a pivotal role in this ideological drama. This article will be of particular interest to those educationalists interested in promoting gender equality in schools.
Primary teaching has traditionally been framed by assumptions about gender. These commonly held, but seldom voiced, assumptions have a strong impact on male primary schoolteachers and on men considering teaching as a career. Focusing on the lives of five Irish male primary teachers, this article unpacks a number of the assumptions relating to men who teach children at primary level. Many of the assumptions are often shrouded in silence, which increases the difficulty in addressing them. In this context, discussions surrounding the topics of care, men working with young children and teaching as a feminine occupation, are presented. The study employs three data-collection phases using the interview as the primary method of enquiry. Overall, two major challenges were identified: informal barriers and the concept of care in education. The study’s findings show that gender relations within a feminine environment are central to understanding masculinities in primary schools. This article makes a contribution towards revealing how issues of masculinities are navigated and negotiated on a daily basis. Allied to this, it also provides a context for understanding the challenges male teachers face on a continuous basis. This article is published as part of a thematic collection on gender studies.
Irish Educational Studies
Gendered positionality among Irish male primary teachers: the staff room as a site of performative masculinityIn response to repeated calls for the re-masculinization of the teaching profession, some governments have implemented policy decisions aimed at attracting, recruiting, and retaining male teachers in the school system. In this qualitative study, a purposive sampling method was used to obtain information from twenty-four participants about the type of men needed in the Trinidad and Tobago school system. Findings of the study revealed that preference was given to men who are father figures and positive role models for young boys. Such individuals should also be good disciplinarians, and physically strong men who exhibit a hegemonic masculinity. While the male role model argument resonated well with many of the respondents in the study, policy brokers were advised not to use gender as the sole basis for recruiting men into the teaching profession. Rather, those persons should demonstrate sound pedagogical skills and competence in teaching all children. Keywords: re-masculinization, teaching profession, policy, attracting, recruiting and retaining male teachers, school system
Gender, Work & …
Equal Opportunities Policies in English Schools: Towards Greater Gender Equality in the Teaching Workforce?2008 •
The under-representation of women in promoted posts is one particular pattern of occupational segregation by gender across post-industrial societies. This phenomenon also characterizes those professions which have been described as ‘women-friendly’, such as teaching. The development of national and European legislation and recommendations on equal opportunities reflects this concern to address the gender imbalance among the workforce. But do schools identify women's under-representation in promoted posts as an issue? To what extent do school's policies recognize and remedy the gender imbalance at managerial level? To answer these questions this article draws on a study of women teachers' careers in nursery, primary and secondary education in England. It shows that school equal opportunities policy statements widely ignore the under-representation of women in school managerial positions. It suggests that the constructions of gender issues in schools by those in charge of designing and implementing school policies, that is, head-teachers and governors, represent a key hindering factor for equal opportunities policies to contribute to greater gender equality. A major argument in the article is that because head-teachers' and governors' discourses do not always fundamentally challenge the position of women in society, school policies and practices can offer only a limited contribution to gender equality.
Gender and Education
A matter of time? Gender equality in the teaching profession through a cross-national comparative lens2018 •
This article draws primarily on a dataset of sixty semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers working in English and French state-funded secondary schools. Informed by feminist sociological theories of work and education and a cross-national comparative perspective, it explores the mechanisms leading to the production of gender inequalities in a profession which is often thought of as egalitarian or even favourable to women: teaching. A multi-level approach is adopted, which considers how the macro-social, meso-social and micro-social dimensions of the social world interact with each other and lead to the production of context-specific gender patterns (Crompton 1999; Le Feuvre 2008; Scott et al 2010), with specific attention to the effects of the spatio-temporal regimes of teaching which prevail in each country.
Curriculum Inquiry
Male Teachers as Role Models: Addressing Issues of Masculinity, Pedagogy and the Re-Masculinization of Schooling2008 •
South African Journal of Higher Education
GENDER UNDER-REPRESENTATION IN TEACHING: A CASUALTY OF THE FEMINISATION OF TEACHING2020 •
Much has been written on the relationship between gender and schooling, and teaching. In particular, the focus has been on the significant dis-proportion between female and male teachers, which remarkably, inverts in relation to educational leadership positions. Arguments abound as to the social factors and hegemonies, which have created not only what is referred to as the "feminisation of teaching", but the risks associated with feminised classrooms and pedagogies, particularly, in relation to boys. Not surprisingly, therefore, an equally dominant narrative calling for the (re)masculinisation of teaching has gained increasing momentum. The basis for this argument is not limited to a seeming need for male teachers as role-models. More disturbing, is the idea that the standing of the profession-invariably measured in terms of salary-might improve if more males are encouraged to become teachers. Our interest in this article is in the patriarchal hegemonies, which give shape to constructions of teaching as "women's work" in the first place. We argue, that rather than contributing to what has been an overdue preoccupation gender-based socialisations, the concern should be on ensuring that teaching transcends framings of "feminisation" and "masculinisation" so that it serves all teachers and all learners.
1994 •
This paper reports on an aspect of a longitudinal study (currently in its third year), which is providing important information regarding teacher education students' beliefs and understandings concerning gender. Ways in which these constructions of gender inform the student's curriculum experiences and teaching performance in primary schools is a major focus of this paper. Findings from the data are being interpreted using concepts from feminist poststructural theory as a means to understand the various positions of the students. In this paper, we begin to explore how eight students in the third year of their B.Ed (Primary) course construct their own understandings of 'appropriate' masculinity and femininity by considering their comments during two interviews which took place in May and in September, 1994. Their observations, made during their school experiences, concerning gender relations are reported on as are their reactions to the way in which the teacher educat...
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