Gender and Widening Participation – Session 1

Linda Cooper

linda.cooper@anglia.ac.uk

Looking specifically at gendered roles in education

Stereotyping and changing attitudes Widening participation (WP) – Further

Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) sectors

Consider the move towards raising the age of compulsory education and the effect on HE

Today’s Session

Students will be able to:

Compose a list of inequalities and stereotypes in compulsory education and demonstrate the sources of such inequality

Identify gendered issues in the 14-19 Education and Skills Implementation Plan

Learning Outcomes – 1st Session

Workplace stereotypes - girls

Workplace stereotypes - boys

Boys’ lack of achievement in schools (Ingram, 2009)

Girls’ and boys’ behaviour – social expectation and teacher authority (Shilela, 2002)

How families instill stereotyping through their values and beliefs (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977)

Gender Stereotyping pre HE

Post-It Task:

Compose a list of gender stereotypes in boys and girls and demonstrate the sources of the inequality

Compulsory education

See handout - 3 references to gender

Page 13, 1.5 Page 71, 4.25 Page 75, 4.35

Looking at 14-19 Plan

Task:

Look at the handout and consider the three points raised from items in the 14-19 Plan

Extending compulsory education in England to age

19

Identify that from birth, the home is a site for the reproduction of stereotypes

Social and peer groups often cement these stereotypes through childhood (Reay, 1998)

By the age of 14, these ideas are often ‘entrenched’ (DfES, 2005: 75)

Educational success then encroaches on further/higher education options

Re-cap

Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C., 1977. Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage.

Department for Education and Skills, 2005 [Online] . 14-19 Education and Skills Implementation Plan. Available at: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/_arc_Postcompulsory/Page1/UOB%202037%202005 [Accessed: 07.10.12].

Gorard, S., et al., 1999. Reappraising the apparent underachievement at school. Gender and Education. Vol 11, No 4, p441-454.

References 1

Ingram, N., 2009. Working class boys, educational success and the misrecognition of working class culture. British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol 30, No 4, p421-434.

Reay, D., 1998. Class work: mother’s involvement in their children’s primary schooling. London: UCL Press.

Shilela, A., 2002. Dialogue with difference: teaching for equality in primary schools. In: Moyles, J., and Robinson, G., (Eds). Beginning teaching, beginning learning (2nd ed). Buckingham: Open University Press.

References 2