Overview How The Project Was Undertaken ]
As indicated previously, this project was about helping schools to understand their gender equity needs and to undertake work towards gender equity. The study took existing effective school procedures as its starting point. This was to ensure that the materials were practical and, at the same time, that good practice in schools was affirmed. While the schools in the study represent only a small sample of what is happening across Australia, their experiences are intended to help schools who want to get started and to act as a further stimulus for those that have already begun and are looking for new directions.
Nominating schools
It was considered important that the study was representative of a range of school situations across Australia. (See Attachment A for contributing schools)
To locate schools for this study, an extensive process of nominating schools was undertaken in order to access those schools, across Australia, that were involved in gender equity reform and were seen to be examples of 'good practice' schools. The process included contacting all State Government systems as well as Catholic and Independent systems (either through their national or their State bodies). In some cases these agencies nominated schools and in other instances they put procedures in place so that schools self-nominated.
In the initial nominating process a simple survey was undertaken to get basic information about schools' gender equity reform processes. This became the basis for more extensive interviews with selected schools.
All the schools that responded to the survey were contacted by letter and invited to contribute further documentation about their programs, policies and how they obtained information about their gender equity needs.
Interviewing schools
Telephone interviews, of approximately one hour, were conducted with thirty schools, involving forty two teachers and principals. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with individuals in five schools. Almost all interviews were taped and fully transcribed. Where necessary, initial interviews were followed up with second interviews or fax communications.
In most instances the information on each school was provided by one person - the principal, head of department or another nominated staff member. In several situations, two or more staff were involved in the interview/s.
The interviews were semi-structured and developed around the following central interests:
An important feature of the project was the exploration of how schools interrogated their data and the different perspectives they brought to bear on gender issues. This proved to be an interesting dimension to the many diverse ways schools were working on gender equity reform and provided much data on teachers and what motivated them to be involved in gender issues.
Documentation
Talking to teachers in this study and getting information about their data gathering and gender equity reforms has been illuminative. What soon became apparent was their modesty about data and their reluctance to dwell on what data they sought and the procedures they used to gather the data. Most times their attention was on what they knew, often an indistinguishable mixture of accumulated wisdom, ongoing observations, reflections and contradictions.
One of the important messages that emerged from this study is the need for teachers and others to value and substantiate, by more formal documentation, the available data and the process of data gathering. Often teachers do not see the need to spend time documenting what they consider must be obvious to everyone. However, what is obvious to one is not always obvious to others and lack of documentation can lead to critical gaps in data. Sometimes the lack of documentation relates to the nature of the information and the difficulty of documenting it. A common response to questions about data gathering suggested teachers often relied on their sensitivity to the familiar. As indicated by one classroom teacher:
The data I have used are anecdotal; they're very strong but something you can't really count. They are very useful and anecdotal in the sense that they are what people actually tell you or what you gather as part of the facts yourself. You use the data to ascertain a situation when there is trouble.
Often what teachers in the interviews put down to being just anecdotal data was, in fact, part of the knowledge they had accumulated from sources long since forgotten. It had become part of their assumed frame of reference on aspects of gender equity. For some, such knowledge came from years of inquiring, reflecting and practical application and as such, it needed to be valued
Documentation is further discussed in the section on Data Gathering Strategies
A bit of everything
One of the dilemmas for teachers is the lack of time to reflect on the vast amount of data they collect in their daily work. Teachers often have a lot of data that do not surface and that they don't recognise until they have time for reflection and discussion. In a sense, a project such as the current one provides an opportunity for teachers to probe and reflect on their own knowledge bank. It was not uncommon during the interviews to have teachers discovering data and data gathering strategies as they talked about what they had done. At the end of one interview, for example, one teacher acknowledged 'Well, when I said I haven't got a lot of data ... the more I come to think of it I probably have got a lot'.
Much of what teachers do when they are finding out about gender equity needs in their school or classroom involves `a bit of everything'. Teachers can find out about gender from surveys, questionnaires or brainstorming activities which are formally put in place to gather certain kinds of information. They can also consciously find out as `participant observers' in the normal routine of their work. And yet again, some aspects of gender can simply surface as teachers ponder about other issues at school. This `a bit of everything' characteristic of how teachers gather data on gender is also the reason why they have difficulty bringing them to the fore of their consciousness and being precise about what they did. According to one principal:
I use various measures to help me. I look at things such as exam results. I look at who occupies leadership positions. I look at who volunteers for things. I look at the opportunity seekers and the opportunity takers. I have a policy of speaking widely with kids of both genders in informal situations (organised but informal situations) and talking about how they see their school. I conduct quite formal workshops about how school is and how its perceived. And I've done two workshops in the last two years each with twenty kids specifically on gender issues.
What became obvious in talking with teachers is that it is often difficult to separate the research, the data gathering and the analysis, from the ongoing life of schools. In a sense, what teachers are doing all the time is working through a whole range of research agendas. In the dynamic and ever-changing activity that teaching is, they constantly face issues or confront problems and they automatically take in data, analyse them and consider appropriate responses.
Review process
Eighty five copies of the first draft of this document were distributed widely for comment. Invitations to participate in the review (indicating the time line and process of review) were sent to all participating schools and to others, namely in States not involved in the original study. Copies were only sent to those schools who expressed interest in taking part, as well as to all gender equity policy officers in government systems and the National Catholic Education Commission, the Association of Heads of Independent Schools Australia, the National Council of Independent Schools Association, the Australian Secondary Principals Association and the Australian Principals Association Professional Development Council.