Who can tell me what the product actually means, and Kate’s got the right answer-ish, let’s just tweak it…” Follow-up strategies in the U.K primary school classroom: Does teacher gender matter?

© 2019 McDowell J. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Jobs are rarely seen as gender neutral but built on gendered stereotypes as to what they involve, and the gendered characteristics assumed needed to perform them. Despite an increase in the number of women entering ‘male’ workplaces, gendered occupational stereotypes continue to endure as they are so deeply entrenched within community. Furthermore, even with frequent government initiatives, men’s numbers are not increasing in ‘female’ occupations such as teaching as these jobs persistent to be seen as only suitable for those with ‘feminine’ characteristics. Fewer than 15 percent of United Kingdom (U.K.) primary school teachers are male. De-stereotyping this work role is therefore of key importance as we need more qualified teachers in the U.K. To date, there has been relatively little research into the linguistic behaviour of men working in primary school teaching. To address this gap, this current paper focuses on men’s discursive behaviour in the occupation of teaching in an attempt to begin to de-stereotype this profession through an exploration of how the job is actually performed through language to assess whether teacher gender affects teaching strategies utilised in the classroom. This paper reports on the qualitative findings from an exploratory case study that examines male and female primary school teachers’ linguistic strategies in teacher-led class instruction. To provide empirical insights into how this work-role practice is performed, this paper focuses on the oral feedback given by the teacher to pupils to examine how they use follow-up strategies. Data collected by 12 teachers across 4 schools in Hertfordshire in the U.K. was explored using Interactional Sociolinguistics and a social constructionist perspective. Results demonstrate both female and male teachers actively constructing a context-dependent teaching identity, with their language breaking stereotypical gendered norms of speaking. The discursive behaviour of these teachers should therefore not be described as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’, but rather labelled as the discourse of doing ‘being’ a teacher. They are using the unmarked speech styles in this environment as the work role guides, shapes and permeates their discursive choices. Arguably then, gender is not an overriding variable here in being a teacher. These findings lend support to the current ongoing debate for the imperative need to de-gender how we think about language use, occupations, and the skills and characteristics one is assumed to have simply because of their gender. Men often decide against becoming a primary teacher because they think it is a female profession. We must re-interpret language use as reflecting professional identity rather than gender identity. By raising awareness of primary school teachers’ linguistic behaviour, we may start to take steps towards de-gendering the job for only then may we see more men taking up such professional occupations. This research has important implications for U.K government incentives which currently try to recruit men by stressing that they are needed for hegemonic ‘masculine’ reasons, which only serves to strengthen gender stereotypes.Peer reviewe

Talk in feminised occupations: exploring male nurses' linguistic behaviour

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Joanne Mcdowell, ‘Talk in feminised occupations: exploring male nurses’ linguistic behaviour’, Gender and Language, Vol. 9 (3): 365-389, December 2015. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 3 December 2017. The Version of Record is available online at doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i3.17496. © 2015 The Author. Published by Equinox Publishing.It is widely accepted amongst scholars that gender is socially constructed. Gender identity is not something one has but does, and language is one resource that is crucial when constructing, maintaining and performing one’s identity. Recent sociolinguistic research has illustrated that a speaker’s linguistic behaviour can be shaped by their surrounding context, and one such ever-growing area of study is that of workplace discourse, especially within jobs which could be classified as gendered. Scholars have focused mainly on women’s linguistic behaviour in non-traditional employment (i.e. police, engineers, Information Technology). To date, there has been relatively little research into the linguistic behaviour of men working in occupations seen as ‘women’s’ work (i.e. nursing, primary school teaching). To address this gap, this article focuses on men’s discursive behaviour in the occupation of nursing to investigate whether they utilise language to perform a masculine identity in line with hegemonic characteristics, or whether they use the language indexical of the feminised environment in which they work. Empirical data, collected by three male nurse participants specifically within nurse-nurse interactions whilst at work in a Northern Ireland hospital, is explored using discourse analysis and the Community of Practice paradigm. Results indicate that the male nurses’ discursive behaviour does not differ from that which sociolinguistic literature has repeatedly classed as ‘feminine’. It is then argued that the nurses’ language fulfils discourse tasks essential to the work role. In short, the men are doing being a nurse.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Doing Being A Primary School Teacher: Does Gender Matter?

Think back to your early childhood days in primary school. Now I know for some of you this may be farther back than you may want to think about, but please bear with me. When you think of those care-free days, were you taught predominantly (or even totally) by females? Now, fast forward to today and think of who primarily teaches young children today. Has anything changed? Or do women still make up the majority of Britain’s primary school teaching workforce? In short, yes, they do. In the year 2015/2016 less than 13% of primary school teachers in the UK were male (DoE, 2016). There are various explanations that try to illuminate why this could be, the most frequent given that primary teaching is seen as a job only suitable for women. Characteristics such as ‘caring’ are seen as central to the role, and Western society mainly still envisions that it is only women, and not men, that possess such characteristics (MacDougall, 1997). The almost total absence of male teachers in many UK primary schools has led to the suggestion that the girls’ repeated better academic performance (in contrast to the underachievement of boys) may be a result of the feminisation of the teaching profession which has provided boys with too few male role models (Dee, 2007). One main area of discussion surrounds that of classroom management, namely discipline, with thoughts that more men are needed in order to enforce ‘tougher’ discipline, as women are stereotyped to have a more ‘liberal’ style (Martin and Yin 1997). Others however, disagree with this claim (Skelton et al, 2009), and indeed have found empirical evidence to the contrary, that women also use ‘tough’ discipline (Read, 2008). Such issues have led to an on-going debate about whether there is actually any need for more male primary school teachers at all (Carrington et al, 2007; Harrop and Swinson, 2011), whether they can actually bring anything different to teaching that women cannot offer and question what more male teachers would actually do for the children in terms of their academic achievement (Beaman, Wheldall, and Kemp, 2006; Carrington et al., 2008). One way to address the aforementioned questions is to explore how male and female primary school teachers actually interact with their students in the classroom.Final Published versio

Performing discipline in UK primary school classrooms. Challenging essentialist beliefs about teacher gender.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License: Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND), to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Essentialist gendered paradigms argue that there are differences between the traits women and men possess, caused naturally by biological sex. Such principles are often inaccurate and have led to discriminatory attitudes, which is when essentialism becomes potentially damaging. Although what is seen to be ‘suitable’ behaviour for both sexes are often subject to socio-cultural variation dependent on geographical location, what is globally consistent is that gender politics is closely linked to cultural ideologies. This in turn is often tied to certain occupations, such as primary school teaching, being marked for gender and indexed as ‘women’s work’. Because of essentialist gender stereotyping and the marked linguistic term of ‘primary school teaching’, men feel deterred from entering this occupation, resulting in a shortage of male teachers. This trend is evident in countries worldwide. To change this, such beliefs must be challenged. This chapter aims to tackle stereotypes of essentialist gendered behaviour and discriminatory beliefs about this occupation. This chapter outlines key empirical findings from the applied discursive analysis of six male and six female teachers’ classroom discourse (over 150 hours of data) using Interactional Sociolinguistics within a social constructionist framework to challenge persistent cognitive representations of the occupation as ‘women’s work’.Peer reviewe

‘If you're a male primary teacher, there's a big “why are you doing that? What is wrong with you?”’ Gendered expectations of male primary teachers: The ‘double bind’

© 2023 The Authors. Sociology Compass published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The underrepresentation of men in non‐traditional fields of work is often attributed to essentialist gendered beliefs that associate such roles exclusively with women. This phenomenon is not limited to any specific country but is observed worldwide. Moreover, male teacher drop‐out rates remain a consistent issue. This article examines the detrimental impact of gendered expectations of masculinity on male primary teachers through interviews conducted with both male and female teachers in the UK. It argues that men in this occupation face a ‘double bind,’ being judged for conforming to hegemonic masculine norms while also facing judgement for deviating from them. All male teachers interviewed expressed feeling the pressure of gendered expectations, which primarily stem from one central misconception fuelled by traditional conceptions of gender; that the occupation is unsuitable for men. As a result, men who enter the profession encounter challenges not only related to their gender but also their sexuality and their sense of professional identity as teachers. Addressing the damaging role of gender beliefs is crucial in promoting the numerical representation of men in the teaching profession.Peer reviewe

Men’s Talk in Women’s Work: Doing Being a Nurse’

Peer reviewe

Historical Dialogue and Memory in Policing Change: the Case of the Police in Northern Ireland

This article explores the complex relationship between organisational change and historical dialogue in transitional societies. Using the policing reform process in Northern Ireland as an example, the article does three things: the first is to explore the ways in which policing changes were understood within the policing organisation and ‘community’ itself. The second is to make use of a processual approach, privileging the interactions of context, process and time within the analysis. Third, it considers this perspective through the relatively new lens of ‘historical dialogue’, understood here as a conversation and an oscillation between the past, present and future through reflections on individual and collective memories. Through this analysis, we consider how members’ understandings of a difficult past (and their roles in it) facilitated and/or impeded the organisations change process. Drawing on a range of interviews with previous and current members of the organisation, this article sheds new light on how institutions deal with and understand the past as they experience organisational change within a wider societal transition from conflict to nonviolence.</jats:p

Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupFewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Infection history and current co-infection with Schistosoma mansoni decreases Plasmodium species intensities in pre-school children from Uganda

Malaria-schistosomiasis co-infections are common in sub-Saharan Africa but studies present equivocal results regarding the inter-specific relationships between these parasites. Through mixed model analyses of a dataset of Ugandan preschool children, we explore how current co-infection and prior infection with either Schistosoma mansoni or Plasmodium species, alter subsequent 1) Plasmodium intensity 2) Plasmodium risk and 3) S. mansoni risk. Co-infection and prior infections with S. mansoni were associated with reduced Plasmodium intensity, moderated by prior Plasmodium infections, wealth and host age. Future work should assess whether these interactions impact host health and parasite control efficacy in this vulnerable age group