Gender, culture, and learning
These notes are part of a series for the book.
Outline
- Introduction
- Agency and identities in learning
- Subject cultures and the positioning of students
- Science class
- Resistant materials class
- Challenging subject cultures, enabling legitimate peripheral participation?
- Taking practice forward
Notes
In England in the 1990s, girls were doing better than boys on national tests. That led this author to ask two questions:
- How does gender shape practice?
- How can practice be modified to support participation?
Terms
- Gender: Symbolic, historically produced, culturally specific, and shared by community members.
- Lived world: Part of social situations, in which people negotiate and commit to meanings and positions in activities; this is part of culture.
- Learning: Forming an identity.
- Identity: The pivot between the individual and the collective; it is a trajectory from past to future by negotiating the present.
More about gender
Cultural scripts define masculine and feminine as opposites. Historically, Western European cultures saw:
- The feminine:
- Aligned with nature
- Women were not allowed in skilled work positions
- Because the definitions of masculine and feminine were opposites, the feminine was specifically not reason, logic, power, technical, or scientific
- The masculine:
- Aligned with reason and logic, material power, technology, and scientific method
- Working with your hands led to being skilled, which led to being independent, which was a definition of being a good man
Stories from single-sex classes
The author discusses several single-sex classes in the UK.
Science, 13 year old students, male teacher:
- Teacher was surprised that the girls did not fit stereotypes
- Teacher treated girls differently than boys: Instructions were given differently, and assumptions about “natural” attributes were clear.
- See also: Holland, D., Lachicotte Jr., W., Skinner, D., and Cain, C. (1998) ‘Positional Identities’.
Resistant materials (shop), 13 year old students, male teacher:
- Teacher focused lesson on historical achievements ascribed to males, not females. This provided images that boys could use in their imagination as they saw themselves as members of the community of practice (COP).
- Teacher talked to the girls as users of the technology created by men. He also slowed down the teaching, and denied the girls access to tools and to the COP — he treated them as outsiders.
- Teacher expected the boys to have competence based on their gender, which caused conflict within the boys who were not experienced or competent.
Resistant materials (shop), 9 year old students, male teacher:
- Teacher gave examples to boys and girls that they could all imagine themselves doing.
- Teacher let the girls use the tools and reifications of the practice.
- Teacher expected the boys to have competence based on their gender, which caused conflict within the boys who were not experienced or competent.
The author notes that the boys correctly identified and were interested in, the functional capabilities of the vehicle they were assigned to make for shop class. The girls were given enough space to pursue what they valued, which was design. I found this to be an extremely disappointing statement for the author to make, and it reminded me of the differences identified by Roth and Lee about how white boys are interested in science, while girls and First Nations people were interested in stories and pictures.
Cultural scripts and practice
Cultural scripts about gender and about subjects being taught affect teachers and students.
When girls and boys feel conflicted in their home versus school identities, they typically disengage.
See also
Wenger’s discussion about multimembership: Wenger, E. (1998) ‘Ch. 6, Identity in practice’, in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity.