Making Spaces Citizenship And Difference In Schools

This book uses an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach to study everyday life in secondary schools in London and Helsinki. Employing a metaphor of dance, it explores the relationship between the official school (correct steps), the informal school (improvised steps) and the physical school (the ballroom). Practices and processes of differentiation, marginalisation and of co-operation are explored in relation to gender and its intersections with social class and ethnicity. The concluding question 'who are the wallflowers?' is addressed through a critique of New Right politics and policies in education.

This book uses an ethnographic, cross cultural approach to study everyday life in secondary schools in London and Helsinki. Employing a metaphor of dance, it explores the relationship between the official school (correct steps), the informal school (improvised steps) and the physical school (the ballroom). Practices and processes of differentiation, marginalisation and cooperation are explored in relation to gender and its intersections with social class and ethnicity. The concluding question who are the wallflowers? is addressed through a critique of New Right politics and policies in education.

This book sheds light on how sexuality and gender intersect in producing heteronormativity within the school system in Iceland. In spite of recent support for progressive policies regarding sexual and gender equality in the country, there remains a discrepancy between policy and practice with respect to LGBTQ rights and attitudes within the school system. This book draws on ethnographic data and interviews with LGBTQ students in high schools across the country and reveals that, although Nordic countries are sometimes portrayed as queer utopias, the school system in Iceland has a long road ahead in making schools more inclusive for all students.

This collection establishes a highly topical, new, international field of study: that of gender, education and citizenship. It brings together for the first time important cutting-edge research on the contribution of the educational system to the formation of male and female citizens. It shows how gender relations operate behind apparently neutral concepts of liberal democratic citizenship and citizenship education. The editors asked leading international educationalists to describe the theoretical frameworks and methodologies they used to research gender and citizenship. Challenging Democracy suggests ways in which the educational system could help develop genuinely inclusive democratic societies in which men and women play an equal role in shaping the meaning of citizenship.

The Handbook of Gender and Education brings together leading scholars on gender and education to provide an up-to-date and broad-ranging guide to the field. It is a comprehensive overview of different theoretical positions on equity issues in schools. The contributions cover all sectors of education from early years to higher education; curriculum subjects; methodological and theoretical perspectives; and gender identities in education. Each chapter reviews, synthesises and provides a critical interrogation of key contemporary themes in education. This approach ensures that the book will be an indispensable source of reference for a wide range of readers: students, academics and practitioners. The first section of the Handbook, Gender Theory and Methodology, outlines the various (feminist) perspectives on researching and exploring gender and education. The section critiques the notion of gender as a category in educational research and considers recent trends, evident especially in the gender and underachievement debates, to locate gender difference solely within biology. This section provides the broad background upon which the issues and debates in the other sections can be situated. Section two, Gender and Education, considers the differing ways in which gender has been shown to impact upon the opportunities and experiences of pupils/students, teachers and other adults in the different sectors of education. It also includes a chapter on single-sex schooling. Section three, Gender and School Subjects, comprises chapters that cover gender issues within the teaching and learning of particular school subjects (for example, maths, literacy, and science). It also includes topics such as sex education and assessment. The chapters in section four, Gender, identity and educational sites, address up-to-date issues which have a long history in terms of explorations into gender and educational opportunities. More recent inclusions in the debates, such as disability, sexuality, and masculinities are discussed alongside the more traditional concerns of ′race′, social class and femininities. The final section, Working in Schools and Colleges, illuminates the working lives of teachers and academics. The chapters cover such topics as school culture, career progression and development, and the gendered identities of professionals within educational institutions. The contributors to this book have been selected by the editors as authorities in their specific area of gender and education and are drawn from the international scholarly community.

This volume proffers a unique perspective on the transformation of education in the 21st century, by bringing together leading researchers in education, sociology and geography to address directly questions of space in relation to education and learning.

This book provides a detailed comparative account of the development of citizenship and civil society in Hong Kong from its time as a British colony to its current status as a special autonomous region of China.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in issues of space and spatiality in the social sciences and humanities generally, if less so in the study of education. This relative lack of interest is surprising given the importance of space and time in the organization of teaching, learning and research. For instance, the timetable and project timeline are central to the organization of learning and knowledge production whether in schools, colleges or universities. Classrooms, workshops and laboratories have different spatial layouts, which support certain forms of interaction and communication. When we add to this, the increasing distances across which knowledge, understanding and competence are being distributed through the use of information and communications technologies, the fact that issues of space have not been taken up seems more than an oversight. This relative lack of interest in space becomes even more surprising when one considers the extensive use of spatial metaphors in the discussion of education and pedagogy. For instance, the notions of open, distance and distributed learning and student-centredness, border crossing, and communities of practice all have a spatial dimension to them. Notions of a spiral curriculum act as a spatial imaginary. Indeed some metaphors, such as flexibility seem to be suggestive of the possibility that all constraints of space and time can be conquered in the provision of learning opportunities throughout life. This collection of chapters from researchers around the world attempts to address these issues, to examine the significance of space for curriculum, learning and identity.