genderanded Issues

Host GEA conference 2020

Could your institution host the Gender and Education conference in 2020?

With preparations well underway for #GEAconf2019 at the University of Portsmouth, we turn our attention to conference plans for 2020.

GEA are pleased to announce that the 19th international conference will be held in June 2020. The GEA executive committee welcomes proposals to host its long-standing international conference from higher education institutions across national contexts and from conference teams spanning a variety of academic disciplines, theoretical backgrounds and fields.

The deadline for submissions is 31st May 2019.

For further guidance on submitting your application, please click here.

To ask further questions e-mail contact@genderandeducation.com.

Wondering what to expect at a GEA Conference? Check out highlights from #GEAconf2017 below:

GEA FINAL from GEA on Vimeo.


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Feminist Teacher Symposium 2018

GEA FEMINIST TEACHER SYMPOSIUM 2018, NeW Space, The University of Newcastle, Australia

 

Join us on Sunday, December 9 from 8:30-3pm for a daylong symposium gathering teachers, scholars, and activists to discuss intersectional feminist and inclusive approaches to pedagogy. Throughout the day, teachers will have the opportunity to forge new partnerships, learn and share strategies, and reflect on their practice with international researchers and expert teachers.

 

This first-ever symposium, delivered as part of the 2018 international Gender and Education Association conference hosted by the University of Newcastle, will cover topics such as intersectional feminist theory; feminist digital literacies; anti-bullying and harassment; student-led activism and civic engagement; and inclusive pedagogical practices suitable for primary, secondary and tertiary educators.

 

The Gender and Education Association (GEA) has held biennial conferences since 1997 to facilitate the gathering of world-leading scholars in this area of research.  Throughout the day, speakers will address how these areas can be included in curriculum design, student assessments, and institutional change.
There will be two keynote speeches and two panels, which will explore:

 

  • Strategies teachers can implement to incorporate intersectional feminism in the K-12 classroom
  • The challenges to and successes from doing intersectional feminist work in schools both in Australia and globally
  • How feminist teachers and scholars can share their work so that they may collaborate in innovative ways
Speakers include: Australian feminist teachers: Briony O’Keeffe, Alice Elwell, and Kira Jones; Australian feminist scholars: Penny Jane Burke, University of Newcastle; Kathleen Butler, University of Newcastle; Akane Kanai, Monash University; Nisha Thapliyal, University of Newcastle; UK-based feminist scholars: Emma Renold, University of Cardiff; Jessica Ringrose, UCL Institute of Education; Vanita Sundaram, University of York; and US-based feminist teacher and scholar, Ileana Jiménez, Teachers College, Columbia University.

 

Completing this Feminist Teacher Symposium will contribute 4 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.

 

There is no cost to attend this event. REGISTER HERE. Please share widely with professional teacher networks in Australia and globally. 

 

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Feminism in Schools Conference 2018

The Feminism in Schools Network & WomenEd present their second annual Feminism in Schools Conference.

On Saturday 17th November 2018, secondary age girls will join together with university students, teachers, parents, education professionals, and feminist activists to think about political, community and digital leadership. This inspirational conference sets out to encourage girls and their teachers to set up Feminist Societies in their schools, develop a network of Feminist Societies across schools and support women teachers to get into school leadership. It will feature a range of contributions including motivational speeches; workshops on leadership in politics, campaigning, community work and journalism; as well as networking opportunities & action planning sessions.

The conference will also present an opportunity to learn about and promote the Gender Equality award for schools.

To sign up to the conference please visit the eventbrite page.

If you would like to present/speak/give a workshop/advertise your organisation at the conference please get in touch by email:

ccarson@deptfordgreen.lewisham.sch.uk

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School staff experiences in supporting LGBTI students in schools: A study from Tasmania, Australia

A growing body of interdisciplinary research identifies significant need for LGBTI-inclusive teaching practices and schooling environments (Jones and Hillier 2013; Kosciw et al. 2013; Robinson and Ferfolja 2002; Shannon 2016). Pullen Sansfaçon et al. (2015) suggest that a key barrier to LGBTI-inclusion relates to school staff members’ understandings of gender, and whether discussions of sexuality and gender diversity are viewed as taboo or are positively included within school policies and practices. Other studies similarly show that a lack of knowledge in this area amongst staff makes school experiences difficult for both LGBTI students and their parents (Riggs and Bartholomaeus 2015). While there is now ample evidence of LGBTI students’ negative educational experiences and a growing body of literature examining teachers’ approaches to inclusive practice, the majority of this research is conducted in urban areas of the Global North. Comparatively little is known about Australian teachers and school staff understandings of LGBTI-inclusivity or their lived experiences of supporting LGBTI and gender-questioning students. Inclusive practices: Supporting school staff, supporting students was a research project conducted by the University of Tasmania in partnership with Working It Out (Tasmania’s gender, sexuality and intersex status support and education service) in Tasmania, Australia during 2018.

 

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and school staff on understandings of LGBTI-inclusive education practices in schools. Participants were invited to share their experiences supporting LGBTI students, their understandings of school and department policy, and their professional development needs. Sixteen staff members from six Tasmanian Government high schools participated in the study. Participants were class teachers (n=7), social workers and school psychologists (n=5), school nurses (n=3), and school leadership (n=1) who had been working at their current schools for an average of 4.7 years. The majority of participants were women (n=12) between the approximate ages of 25-60. Two participants identified themselves as members of the LGBTI community. While demographic data was not collected, at interview all participants identified as white, middle-class Australians.

 

Participants discussed both individual and whole-school approaches to LGBTI-inclusive education, including promoting safety and inclusion through anti-bullying initiatives, using inclusive language, having strong school leadership, and including LGBTI experiences in physical spaces and school curriculum. School staff outlined the need for clearer department- and school-level policies around LGBTI-inclusion and additional professional development resources and training to support LGBTI-inclusive practices.

 

Participants views were found to reflect Szalacha’s (2004) paradigmatic representation of inclusive practice. Szalacha’s (2004) framing recognises the multiple expressions of inclusive practice; including practices to promote safety, to promote equity and practices intended to challenge heteronormative schooling environments (critical theory). Szalacha (2004, 69) suggests that “safety” approaches tend to position LGBTI students as victims or problematic students who need special accommodation. Safety approaches are seldom whole-of-school initiatives and tend to focus on individual cases of homophobic bullying in a reactionary manner. In contrast to these reactive approaches, Szalacha (2004, 69) describes “equity” approaches to LGBTI-inclusion as broader initiatives that aim to treat all members of a school community with respect. Rather than focusing merely on anti-bullying efforts, LGBTI-inclusion efforts working in an equity paradigm aim to foster whole-school environments where LGBTI or questioning students are meaningfully included and acknowledged (Szalacha 2004, 69). Szalacha (2004, 69) recognises that equity approaches require teachers and school staff to undertake the challenging, politicised task of advocating for social change. Szalacha’s third paradigm of LGBTI-inclusive education practice refers to approaches that draw on critical theory to problematise heteronormativity in education. “Critical” perspectives aim to interrogate representations of all sexualities and genders in education, particularly through the “queering” of curriculum (Szalacha, 2004, 69), or, the process of integrating non-normative, deconstructionist understandings of sexuality into dominant education frameworks (Luhmann 2012, 120).

 

Overall, we found that school staff feel constrained in their ability to support LGBTI students by the context in which they work. They expressed uncertainty around their roles and responsibilities, and the impact that teaching practices might have on students. While participants were aware of a high-level policy context, the relevancy and details were not always well understood in terms of ‘what this means for on-the-ground practice’. All school staff noted the importance of having explicit inclusive practices for LGBTI students in schools which align with broader policy mandates including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians and the profession-specific code of ethics that participants are bound by, including: the Teachers Code of Ethics, the Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia; and The Australian Psychological Society Code of Ethics. However, we found that the policy landscape, as perceived by participants, influenced how they came to think about what was expected and what was possible in supporting LGBTI students and informed the overarching approach taken to employing inclusive practice (safety, equity, or critical). The next step in this research is to construct a multi-tiered information portal through which school staff can navigate curricular and pedagogical resources to support LGBTI students.

 

The following publication will be available in the coming months, which further details results of the study:

Grant, R., Beasy, K., Emery, S. & Coleman, B. (in press). Beyond ‘safety’: Teachers and school staff approaches to LGBTI-inclusion in Tasmanian schools. Journal of Inclusive Education.

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: The possibility of being a feminist preschool teacher

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

 

C2C: The possibility of being a feminist preschool teacher
By Nehir Gündoğdu, Kilis 7 Aralık University, Turkey

 

I am excited to attend GEA conference and really looking forward to hear and tell stories about feminist journeys. Undoubtedly, coming from different parts of the world to spring up new ideas sounds amazing but certainly it has a different ‘cost’ for everyone. Recently I am following Raewyn Connell’s Survive and Thrive at an Academic Conference series that greatly articulates effort and responsibilities of individuals and institutions in an academic conference. These fascinating pieces are helpful to reflect previous and future conference experiences and as Connell argues the ‘cost’ of attending a conference requires great level of energy from all but it can be really pricey for some as well. This some are most likely to be from developing countries (in my case Turkey), who have to pay for getting a visa, expensive plane tickets, and other high costs. In addition, the funding given in weak local currencies is rarely compatible with the expenses made abroad.

Discussing and questioning feminist concerns about current education systems and neoliberal practices are not always welcomed in authoritarian contexts.

This is one side of story and sadly the other side of it does not bring any light neither. Discussing and questioning feminist concerns about current education systems and neoliberal practices are not always welcomed in authoritarian contexts. In other words, you come back from a conference filled with diverse transformative knowledge and experiences but it may not be possible to apply those to your own practices straightforwardly due to the mainstream discourses. Frustration may be inescapable in this scenario and I may sound a bit pessimistic here but I am also aware that these challenges create an enthusiasm to search for new ways of seeing the world. Hence, thank you to GEA for creating such an opportunity and supporting me to attend the 2018 conference.

Previously I presented a paper, which is called ‘Hegemonic Masculinity in Preschools’, in Gender and Education Association Biennial Interim Conference 2016 in Sweden which was based on my doctorate research focused on children’s engagement within preschool settings in making their gender identities in the context of Turkey. After finishing my PhD and starting to teach preschool teacher students, my curiosity is growing about the role of the teacher in children’s learning and exercising gender roles in classrooms. My initial question is how it might be possible for pre-school teachers to make feminist interventions in their classroom practices. The paper is inspired by Davies’s Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales but I have changed the idea of telling feminist tales to preschoolers to telling different teacher interventions to gender related situations in classrooms. Then, I plan to discuss about teachers’ ideas and boundaries upon these interventions to see what their positions can be and how far and close they can be when the issue comes to make feminist interventions.

 

Overall, I am looking forward to share my research with all GEA folks in December and I hope our discussions fulfil our expectation.

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: Reflections on Critical Pedagogy in the New ‘Post-Truth’ Landscape

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

A Prelude to: 

“Something Resembling ‘Truth’:  Reflections on Critical Pedagogy in the New ‘Post-Truth’ Landscape”  

By Professor Sondra Hale

Let’s start with this absurdity:  “Truth isn’t truth” (Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer in a TV interview August 19, 2018) and continue with the claim that there are “alternative facts,” an expression coined by Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s media guardians, to justify some of Trump’s lies.  On February 27th this year, columnist David Brooks lamented in the “New York Times” that one of the university students he had interviewed claimed that “We don’t even have a common truth. A common set of facts….”  Time magazine asked on its April, 2017 cover, “Is Truth Dead?”  What’s going on?

When I was invited to present one of the keynote presentations for the GEA conference in Newcastle this year, I was intrigued by one word in the conference theme that I had never worked with—“Post-truth” (PT).  The Oxford English Dictionary proclaimed its 2016 Word of the Year “Post-Truth,” and defined it as “denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”   I thought that examining the new fashionable term PT would give me a chance to delve into the concept of “truth,” which I had rarely done before in my writings or teaching. When I did mention “truth,”  I always focused my attention on deconstructing such absolutes. However, during this period of right-wing populism I could not think of a more timely concept to discuss, considering all of the political discussions around a U.S. president shown to lie with impunity.

I began by thinking that laying out ideas about truth and post-truth would be a rather simple exercise, after which I could then proceed to discuss gender, pedagogy, Freire, and what to do with or think about social media.  Not so quickly.  I had had no idea how many media pundits, academics, politicians, and members of the public were discussing truth, facts, or lack thereof.  Everyone, it seemed, had been getting into the act—all the way from the highly noted late historian Hayden White who in the 1970s saw history as a series of stories.  He argued that historical meaning is imposed on historical facts through storytelling.  Others, such Marian David in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defined truth in tautological terms, e.g.,  To David, truth broadly refers to “any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality….”

When I delved into the literature more—both popular and academic—I realized how questions around truth and fact were rampant.  Fear and alarm were palpable.  But I also began to realize that applying postmodern/postcolonial jargon about such absolutes as truth, legitimacy, authenticity, and universalism might result in a backlash against notions that truth, for example, can be flexible, relative, and negotiable. Or, to use the ideas of Homi Bhabha, truth might be ambivalent.  Strong statements awaited me, lest I attempt to dilute these absolutes.  Former “New York Times” book critic Michiko Kakutani in a new book, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, puts the blame at the feet of postmodernists and deconstructionists because, according to her, “The postmodernist argument that all truths are partial…led to the argument that there are many legitimate ways to understand or represent an event.”  She angrily claims that postmodernism and its relatives have been co-opted by the dark forces on the right.  Oops, just as I was about to posit that truth is negotiable!

Dramatic arguments reflect the fear and alarm I mentioned above.  Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) reminds us that “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.”

It seemed wise of me to tread lighter than I am known to do.  A good start was to title my keynote talk “Something Resembling “Truth”:  Reflections on Critical Pedagogy in the New ‘Post-Truth’ Landscape,” borrowing the part before the colon from the title of a new show by Jaspar Johns. I then felt comfortable arguing for Freirian and feminist pedagogies as among the tools to encounter untruths and post-truths in the age of Trump.

Los Angeles, September, 2018

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: Exploring gender in the early years

This post is part of our new Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

 

C2C: Exploring gender in the early years
by Lizzie Maughan, Flinders University

Thank you to the Gender and Education Association for giving me a bursary to attend the conference this year in Newcastle.  My research is social justice oriented and I am interested in practical applications, so having the opportunity to meet practitioners along with academics is fantastic. The conference theme this year strongly relates to my research; debates about knowledge, authority, truth and power are all central to my PhD project.  I am investigating young children’s response to and engagement with gender in the early years (ages 4-8) through a focus on queer and post-structural gender pedagogies.

I aim to challenge and disrupt dominant assumptions about the adult/child and teacher/student binaries, bringing issues of power and authority to the fore. Specifically, drawing on the new sociology of childhood, I am challenging assumptions that children lack competency and agency.  This conception of children then has the potential to destabilise power relations between adults and children.  Furthermore, my research blurs the borders between researcher and participants, challenging ideas of truth and knowledge.  Namely that there is no singular truth, and knowledge is something we construct rather than uncover, and within the research context this may be co-constructed between researcher and participants, even young children.

Drawing on the new sociology of childhood, I am challenging assumptions that children lack competency and agency.  This conception of children then has the potential to destabilise power relations between adults and children.

My project is a three-phase ethnographic study in an early years classroom.  The first stage, developed in collaboration with the classroom teacher, is a series of lessons or activities overtly about gender.  A variety of stimuli from images, toy catalogues, videos, books and songs will be used, and children will be invited to engage through conversation, theatre, artwork and writing.  Ideas such as stereotypes, non-binary gender, transgender, ally, gendered language, and gender policing will be explored.  This first stage will be a co-construction of gender knowledge and look to how children embrace or resist queer and post-structural conceptions of gender.

The second stage involves observations and interactions during fantasy play such as in home corner (eg. Play kitchens) or small world (eg. Trains, cars, blocks) areas.  The focus at this stage is to see how children embrace or resist the new theoretical space offered in stage one during their independent play.

The final stage is a collaborative analysis with the children and a review of the project with children, the teacher, and parents.  This stage will explore the benefits and challenges of engaging children with post-structural and queer perspectives of gender as perceived by children, teachers and parents.  The aim is that this might give practical guidance to teachers or parents wanting to help their children address gender issues.

GEA Conference will be my first international conference since I started my PhD at Flinders University and I’m very excited. If you see me around, please say hi!

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: Building Strong Connections through GEA Conference

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

 

C2C: Building Strong Connections through GEA Conference

by Professor Penny Jane Burke
Director, Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education
and Global Innovation Chair of Equity Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education

 

I am thrilled that the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle will be hosting this year’s Gender and Education Association conference. It has been a great pleasure to work with a wonderful conference organizing team and also to generate a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education in anticipation of the conference, exploring themes of gender, post-truth populism and pedagogies.

It feels like an enormously important time for us to be gathering for a conference to interrogate the politics of post-truth populism and its implications for feminist scholarship, intervention, activism and pedagogy. The explicit and public misogynist foundations underpinning this wave of ‘post-truth’ populism together with its clearly racist articulations is extraordinary in its total lack of humility or shame. The conference enables an opportunity for shared thinking around this which will help to strengthen and contribute to a set of carefully thought through responses from across a diverse feminist collective.

The conference promises a range of voices, histories and experiences to be expressed through feminist research, scholarship and practice and will bring us together across our differences to share, learn from and understand how we make sense of ‘post-truthisms’ and claims to ‘fake news’, while simultaneously we disrupt and deconstruct universalizing, homogenizing, decontextualized and disembodied claims to truth which work to more subtly reproduce insidious inequalities across, within and through educational institutions and pedagogical spaces.

The conference will engage key questions such as whose knowledge matters, who decides and under what circumstances and with what implications? We will consider deep ontological questions in relation to knowledge and practice and with a strong commitment to activism and making a difference through pedagogical processes and relations. With an exciting group of keynote speakers lined up and a rich body of papers across the conference themes, I am looking forward to the chance to work together to think through some of the real challenges we are faced with in the contemporary field of gender and education, the emergent and new opportunities and risks that face us through for example digital technologies, and the ways we might build strong connections to sustain us beyond the conference itself.

 

Watch Professor Penny Jane Burke deliver the talk Equity in Higher Education: Why Gender Matters as part of the New Professors Talk series at the University of Newcastle, Australia:

https://youtu.be/_8XY8ll0-HY

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: Keynote Speaker Professor Raewyn Connell

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

 

C2C: Keynote Speaker Professor Raewyn Connell

 

Raewyn Connell is Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney and a Life Member of the National Tertiary Education Union. She has taught at Macquarie University, Flinders University, and several universities in other countries. Recent books are Southern Theory (2007), about social thought in the postcolonial world; Confronting Equality (2011), about social science and politics; Gender: In World Perspective (3rd edn, with Rebecca Pearse, 2015) and El género en serio [Gender for Real] (2015). Raewyn’s other books include Schools & Social Justice, Ruling Class Ruling Culture, Gender & Power, Masculinities, and Making the Difference. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages. She is the 2017 recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award. Details can be found at her website www.raewynconnell.net and on Twitter @raewynconnell

 

As a keynote speaker for #GEAConf2018, Professor Raewyn Connell will be discussing the conference theme by highlighting the global dimension in gender relations, and current debates about knowledge.  ‘Post-truth politics’ is not peculiar to the global North, and is not separate from contemporary imperialism. Power on a world scale is still concentrated among groups of privileged men, including corporate managers, the super-wealthy, and military power-holders.  But their legitimacy is fragile, which is a reason for the revived appeal to violence in global politics and the turn, in media and domestic politics, to hostile fantasies of threat and protection.

Global feminism has disrupted patriarchal authority very widely, and mass education is one of the most important sites where this has happened. Feminist critique of the mainstream curriculum remains essential.  Yet we need to look critically at the global politics of our knowledge about gender, which itself has an imperial history and is challenged by decolonization campaigns

Global feminism has disrupted patriarchal authority very widely, and mass education is one of the most important sites where this has happened. Feminist critique of the mainstream curriculum remains essential.  Yet we need to look critically at the global politics of our knowledge about gender, which itself has an imperial history and is challenged by decolonization campaigns. Claims for the universality of knowledge, which provide some resistance to post-truth politics, are subject to familiar feminist critiques, yet cannot be replaced by claims of epistemic privilege.  We need, in current conditions, a feminist model of truthful practice as a basis for knowledge and curriculum. Professor Connell hopes to illustrate what this means for teachers’ working lives as well as in theory.

 

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018

genderanded Countdown to Conference

C2C: Women’s stories in mathematics

This post is part of our new Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details!

 

C2C: Women’s stories in mathematics
by  Sam Prough, University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

I am thrilled to become part of GEA as well as have the opportunity to attend the GEA 2018 conference! I’m excited to share my research that unpacks the math stories of individuals who identify as women in an effort to understand how they can be supported in learning by looking at their collective experiences as a new and meaningful form of truth.

As the world spirals into a realm of post-truth, people seem to be scrambling to find facts and prove objectivity in order to counteract statements and opinions lacking evidence and substance. When this tightening of accepted truths and truthful stories occurs across the news and even research, what or whose truth is valued? What or whose stories are heard?

What or whose truth is valued? What or whose stories are heard?

There’s a profound irony in how I have placed myself within the hierarchy of stories and truth telling in research. I was more than surprised to have my work accepted for the GEA 2018 conference. In fact, as an early graduate student, I had chalked up the application merely as an opportunity to practice my skills of promoting and concisely writing about my work. This entrenched lack of confidence that such work would be considered meaningful by others was really an internalized thought about what stories or truths would be considered meaningful within academia as a whole.

Within mathematics education the accepted truth of what counts as math learning is narrow and additionally emphasizes the perspective of men. Math is frequently framed as highly masculine and often accessible only to a select few. The ideas and learning of underrepresented individuals, such as women in mathematics, are frequently made invisible.

Research is at a crucial crossroads. I would argue that research can recognize a more meaningful array of truths by listening and embracing the stories of these often made invisible individuals. I’m interested in what new things this can show us about women’s experience in math education. By exploring multiple women’s stories in math, it is possible to recognize a range of experiences that create an environment of what counts as math learning for women.

What are other ways that gender education research can function in a post-truth society without erasing the voices of the very individuals that they study? I look forward to attending #GEACONF2018 to find out!

 

If you are attending conference, let us know on Twitter using the hashtag: #GEAconf2018