Feminist issues in education: developing a theory of class and gender relations

The twelve publications submitted for this thesis constitute a group of essays completed between 1979 and 1989 on related feminist issues in education. Each publication contributes to the overall project of developing a theory of class and gender relations in education. Three stages in the construction of this theory are identified. These are: (a) a critical evaluation of theories concerning the social and cultural reproduction of class relations in terms of their applicability to the study of gender relations. (b) the construction of a feminist theory of gender that accounts for, among other things, the historical and class specific nature of gender relations in education. (c) an analysis of contemporary policy-making at central, local and institutional levels in relation to the promotion of equal opportunities for both sexes. It is suggested that explanations of the relationship between education, the economy, the family and the state based upon male class relations cannot adequately account for the patterns of female education. A range of new concepts more appropriate for the study of gender relations is developed. These include a theory of male hegemony and the concept of gender code involving processes of recontextualisation and different modes of transmission of gender relations through schooling. These concepts are applied to an analysis of the structure and content of the secondary school curriculum, family and school cultures, coeducation and boys' education. The approach developed here is contrasted with other feminist perspectives on gender and education and consideration is given to the ways in which these perspectives have influenced educational policy and practice. The approaches to sex equality of central government are compared with those underlying teacher initiatives in this area. Finally a strategy is offered for the promotion of sex equality through school-based in-service courses focused on the personal and professional development of teachers

Transactional school-home-school communication: Addressing the mismatches between migrant parents' and teachers' views of parental knowledge, engagement and the barriers to engagement

Applying organisational communication theory, this article advocates transactional systems for school-home-school communication with parents of pupils who have English as an Additional Language (EAL). The article draws on a mixed-methods case study of two secondary schools in England, including survey data from 64 parents of EAL pupils and from 407 EAL/non EAL students, plus data from semi-structured interviews with 10 recently arrived migrant parents and 18 teachers. The findings highlight deficiencies in transactional school-home-school communication, reflected in mismatches between parents’ and teachers’ perceptions regarding parental knowledge of their children’s schooling, levels of parental engagement and barriers to parental engagement

Exploring educational and social inequality through the polyphonic voices of the poor: A habitus listening guide for the analysis of family-schooling relations.

The aim of this methodological article is to contribute a new form of qualitative data analysis that is relevant for the comparative study of family cultures and schooling. We describe the development of our Habitus Listening Guide linking Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction to critical narrative theory. The interpretative tool outlines (a) social-structural (b) horizontal intergenerational (c) vertical gender and (d) mythic-ritual listenings which can be used to explore the engagement of youth and their families with schooling. Such listenings reveal the dispositional positioning of schooling in family values and the complex structural and human relational effects of schooling on family members' livelihood and wellbeing. It offers the possibility of comparing families in terms of their gendered and generational relations and the ways in which religious and mythic-ritual discourses legitimate their aspirations in the context of changing communities. The Guide offers a way of accessing and comparing subjective micro level experiences of social inequality and the contribution that schooling plays, or is expected to play, in relation to individual and/or family social mobility.Department for International Developmen

Globalising the school curriculum: gender, EFA and global citizenship education

Whilst the link between access, quality of schooling and gender equality in promotion Education for All is vital, the problematic nature of this agenda for the curriculum in developing countries is not sufficiently recognized. Previous sociological research indicates the contradictions between the social reproductive elements and the egalitarian potential of a 'globalised curriculum' especially in the complex postcolonial scenario of developing economies. A close reading of the EFA Global Monitoring Reports highlights rights within and through the curriculum, representing the 'curriculum as opportunity', 'curriculum as reform' and 'curriculum as a democratic tool'. However, gender equality represents a deeper challenge to dominant knowledge forms than that represented by a gender fair/ friendly curriculum or a gender neutral curriculum. Global citizenship education controversially brings female subordination and gender power into the curriculum but its potential in relation to the goals of EFA is not proven. Localized historical and socio-cultural investigations are needed into the gendering of national school knowledge in non-Western environments, and its relationship to material and socio-cultural conditions of gender relations. Such investigations could account for different types of gender performances in school, and offer a transformative politics of recognition as well as redistribution

Decentring hegomonic gender theory: the implications for educational research

The knowledge gathered and reviewed in the field of gender studies has been disseminated globally over the twentieth century but has paid relatively little regard to the contexts and meanings that have simultaneously emerged in other regions of the world. The emergence of global equality agendas in education associated with new frameworks and metrics for national growth provides a unique opportunity to bring together these diverse understandings of gender. This paper compares gender education theory in Western Europe and North America on one hand, and those from locations within Africa and South Asia on the other. We examine the major contributions of Southern gender theorists, two from Africa and two from South Asia, though four themes raised by these authors: the category of 'third world woman' and by implication the 'girl child'; the othering of motherhood; the sexual/ gendering of the body and the consequence of dislocation on academic positionalities. A new feminist research agenda is indicated that aims to reduce binaries, increase bi-cultural workings, and readdress the role of positionality in the field of gender education research

Youth citizenship, national unity and poverty alleviation: East and West African approaches to the education of a new generation

Youth citizenship is now on the international agenda. This paper explores what that concept might mean in the context of two African nations: Kenya and Ghana. Post independence, both countries focused on rethinking the colonial concept of citizenship in line with their political-cultural traditions, providing education for all youth and to encouraging new notions of national citizenship. Programmes for civic education were established that have been reshaped over the last fifty years. These citizenship education programmes display the tension between different political goals of national unity, economic progress and the promotion of human rights, working with diversity, and encouraging collective responsibility and individual development. The aim is to use the education of the citizen to encourage civic engagement although there is evidence that these programmes might not, for a variety of reasons, engage all young people into the nation building project. The paper considers evidence from a wide range of documentary and social scientific sources to open debate about how to encourage young people's citizenship within the project of poverty alleviation

Migration, racism and the hostile environment: making the case for the social sciences

Brexit, the European immigration and refugee situation and the Grenfell and Windrush scandals are just some of the recent major events which issues of migration have been at the heart of British social and political agenda. These highlight racism and the fundamental relations people who have settled in the UK have to British collective identity and belonging as well as to the British economy, polity and social relations. 9.4 million UK residents are foreign-born, 14% of the population, just over a third of whom are EU-born. Less than 10% of UK residents are not UK nationals. 20% of the population is of an ethnicity other than White British. Social scientists have observed and analysed such public issues and the public policies that both framed and resulted from them throughout the years. In doing so they have not only helped to document and analyse them but contributed towards their critique and problematisation as part of a public intellectual endeavour towards a more equal and just society. In doing so, much of social sciences research has been empirically informed, often methodologically innovative, theoretically productive and has contributed to our understanding of how processes of racialization and migration have been experienced in diverse ways by different groupings. In this report we aim to highlight some of these contributions and their importance to British society and institutions. At the end of this report, we list, as Further Readings, some of the main contributions members of AcSS and other social scientists have made throughout the years in the field of migration and refugees, racism, and belonging. Rather than attempting to sum up these contributions in the report itself, however, we have selected some of the main issues in this field of study, which present particular challenges to contemporary British society and institutions. We focus in this report on the specific contributions of social sciences to these issues. British social science has been playing for many years an important, often leading, innovative conceptual role in international social science debates. Although the issues we study are presented within their historical and locational contexts, we focus in this report on present day issues which have been crucial to our areas of study, such as the development of a ‘hostile environment’ and everyday bordering as a major governmental technology in the control and disciplining of diversity and discourses on migrants and racialized minorities. We also examine how the issues we have been studying have been affected by the rise of extreme right and neo-nativist politics in the UK and the role of Brexit in these, as well as the ways different groups and social movements have been resisting these processes of exclusion and racialisation. In this report, we do not present British social sciences as unified and non-conflictual; nor do we see social sciences in the UK as isolated from professional or political developments in other countries and regions. In addition, the report is multi-disciplinary; it covers research from the fields of psychosocial studies, sociology, social policy, economics and politics. It stretches from the local, to the regional and the national. And it is consistentlyintersectional, addressing gender, class, generation, race, ethnicity and religion