GENDERED LEARNING AND HETERONORMATIVITY IN MY CLASSROOM.
INTRODUCTION
Gendered learning leads to the idea of “boys will be boys”, a problematic statement at the best of times, and the evaluation of girls as having a lower capacity for success in education. The pressure of gender identity and norms creates a lot of students who feel excluded and who feel like they aren’t valued, at all, or, to the same level as others. I don’t think any student should be made to feel excluded; not by parents, not by students, and not by teachers. Gendered-learning in classrooms is led by the education system and the educators within, reinforced at home, and picked up by students. It’s a part of a systemic form of oppression that has no place in my pedagogy.
WHY OPPOSING GENDERED-LEARNING IS IMPORTANT
How gendered-learning builds inequality.
Girls and boys as ‘passive’ and ‘active’
This dichotomised view of active/passive is presented in classroom as fact that is both practically demonstrable, and scientifically verifiable (Hodgetts, 2008). As seen in the excerpt (below) from the British Journal of Sociology of Education (Mills, et al. 2007) we can see the disparity between treatment of girls and boys, and assumptions made about the way girls and boys learn based on one set of students.
In their test they ignore the quarter of girls whose learning style wasn’t fit to their view, whilst also placing the “visual” and “physical” learning style of boys together to form the idea that all boys like to be “quickly shown… and then be allowed to have a turn.” Interestingly, in ascribing value to gender binary, the idea of girls listening and following instruction isn’t seem as a positive. Instead of viewing compliance as initiative, as they are able to cater for themselves once the task has been completed, there is a shift to view girls as malleable and boys as committed to activity. This could also have been viewed as boys lacking initiative since they seem to rely on the provided activities. Their resistance to comply with instruction has been twisted into a positive, whilst girls are seen as lesser (Hodgetts, 2008).
Girls and boys as ‘compliant’ versus ‘resistant’
The key to girls’ relative achievement (their ability to be ‘organised’, to focus on the ‘future’ and to ‘get assignments in on time’) is depicted as reflecting capacities outside the realm of ‘actual content knowledge’. On the other hand, as shown in Extract 2 (below), boys’ superior performance is evident when the organisational skills they ‘resist’ are not required; “boys did much better when we had sudden death examinations”. The extract suggests that this is a more genuine achievement; a reflection of true ‘knowledge acquisition’ rather than peripheral ‘process skills’. The implicit contrast between ‘actual content knowledge’ and ‘peripheral ability’ works in two ways within Extract 2 to establish the inauthentic nature of success acquired through feminine ‘compliance’ (Hodgetts, 2008). The focus is therefore on the product, not the process; the answers, not the thought.
Girls and boys as oriented to ‘meaningless’ versus ‘meaningful’ learning
High levels of care, attention and presentation which characterise girls’ orientation to education – and the route to their success – are held to signify a lack of the attributes that distinguish ‘meaningful learning’, and to present their achievement, not as admirable, but ‘invalid’. The argument that boys prefer working to a deadline provides the notion that boys get their work done, and because it’s done in a more efficient time-frame that it must hold more value than the girls’ work. This is also shown by Miss H (extract 3, below) who suggests that girls finishing off their work is an indicator of their meaningless achievement, and when boys submit work, regardless of presentation, she is believes their level of work has been consistently meaningful, and ignoring the supposedly peripheral skills of presentation and attention to detail.
Girls and boys as successful via ‘manipulation’ versus ‘integrity’
‘Feminine’ passivity, compliance, neatness, and attention to detail are commonly shown as practices employed by girls not because they are unable to engage with more ‘meaningful’ methods, but because they know such behaviours will see them reach higher levels of success. Accounts of this kind tend to not position female learners in a positive light due to their directing of efforts toward considered, pragmatic, outcome-oriented styles of learning. Instead, girls have been continually depicted as ‘manipulating’ teachers into believing they have superior ability through engagement with what has traditionally been seen as superficially effective, but ultimately inauthentic, learning behaviours (Hodgetts, 2008).
In examples where boys’ and girls’ answers cannot be distinguished in terms of outcomes achieved, male responses are still positioned as superior evidence of ‘genuine understanding’, even when they’re not correct (Mills, et al. 2007).
Ultimately gendered learning creates an education system where, irrespective of outcomes, and the agency through which they are reached, the authenticity of boys’ methods and outcomes is naturalised while that of girls is undermined. These representations of gender binary work to naturalise boys’ achievement (even in its absence), and position girls as inauthentic, and therefore even psychologically abnormal, through the assertion of authentic learning being aligned with masculinity and a ‘masculine’ approach.
“Boys will be boys”
Underachievement is positioned as proof of superior potential, and even valued masculinity. So why would male students change their educational engagement? Many teachers may pose themselves as an educator who thinks it’s ‘cool to work hard at school’, whilst also reinforcing that to be a boy is to ‘succeed without trying’. There can be no expectation for change when hard work renders any results achieved as ‘feminine’ and, therefore, ‘inauthentic’ (Hodgetts, 2008). It appears that boys’ options for success at school will continue to be limited as long as their rejection of a ‘feminine’ (expressive, diligent) means of connecting with learning is not only celebrated for its ‘authenticity’, but depicted as ‘appropriately male’. This is why we must oppose gendered learning. Not only for the boys who are limited by it, but for all the female students who are made to feel that their learning, and their place in school, is not as valuable as their male peers.
Barker, M. (2011). Heteronormativity. Learn1.open.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 May 2016, from http://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=0&u=mjb2276&time=1313591911
Hodgetts, K. (2008). Underperformance or ‘getting it right’? Constructions of gender and achievement in the Australian inquiry into boys’ education. British Journal Of Sociology Of Education, 29(5), 465-477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425690802326887
Mills, M., Martino, W., & Lingard, B.. (2007). Getting Boys’ Education ‘Right’: The Australian Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry Report as an Exemplary Instance of Recuperative Masculinity Politics. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(1), 5–21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036181
Gendered Learning and Heteronormativity 