The Little Things That Educate You In Gender Professional Experiences And Development ]
Teachers, as a normal part of their daily professional lives are observing, assessing, comparing, analysing and making judgements about students' achievements, behaviours and attitudes.
COMPARING SCHOOLS
Many teachers related how their awareness of gender was heightened by moving from one set of circumstances to another, from one school to another, from one system to another. Some of these experiences are recorded in the Whose Knowledge? section of this document. When asked how he became aware of gender issues, this principal from an independent co-educational school was quick to identify the following:
It happened to me very, very simply. I went to an all boys school and I'd been working in an all boys school. I always thought the boys at those schools were absolutely blindingly brilliant. When I went into the co-ed situation, I decided that what I wanted to do was to see if I could encourage real responsibility in leadership amongst students. I quickly got real responsibility - from the girls. They would take responsibility fully, and I realised as soon as those girls had taken real responsibility, that the prefects in the boys' school I'd been at never, ever took real responsibility.
MOVING SYSTEMS
One Head of Department in an independent school had to reconsider his position on gender issues when he moved from the State system and became aware that the issues were more complex and variable than he had realised. Whereas in his previous co-educational government school he had to investigate why girls were not participating well in Science, in his new school his concern was with the participation of the boys:
I come from a public system initially and I suppose I spent about ten or fifteen years with one of my other colleagues trying to work out why Year 10 girls' results were down every single year compared to the boys. I knew the girls' intelligence wasn't a problem. We worked across all science areas, looking at skills, looking at knowledge and other areas. It was very frustrating for us. We even went right back as far as trying to link with primary schools to work out joint strategies. That wasn't very productive, even though we had a couple of minor conferences. It was really frustrating because, in the long term, the effect didn't go away in spite of what we thought were fairly good strategies. In other words, we were fighting against peer pressure, cultural backgrounds and all sorts of stuff we had no control over.So what happened then was that I jumped systems and moved into the private grammar system, as a Head of Department. I always had in the back of my mind that I should keep an eye on that sort of thing [participation of girls] and the school I came to had the exact opposite situation which, to me, was totally amazing.
INDIVIDUALS WHO INFLUENCE
For several teachers, individuals had influenced them, raising their initial awareness or, as in this case with a principal, moving them forward in their thinking about gender:
It was mainly through getting to know Pam Gilbert, and a few people like that, that my awareness started becoming more critical. I started looking at my own teaching context, and realised that even though I thought I was using an inclusive curriculum, it wasn't really. I was focusing mainly on stereotyping and making sure that I had stories about boys and girls and things like that. I wasn't really getting into the construction of gender and the 'creation of desire' as one of the major gender influences. Because people come to desire the very things that stop them from becoming empowered and achieving status in the community ... I got to know Pam very well and in 1992, she suggested that I go on and do my thesis in the construction of gender.
Teachers often extended their understanding of gender issues when they became involved in school based, state level or national projects. Action research was a common approach in these projects, allowing the teacher greater control of the research process, linking it closely to their own practices and providing opportunities for reflection with 'critical friends'. The principal quoted next is one of many who advocated that approach and whose professional experiences were enhanced through participating in gender projects and being supported by system level consultants:
In 1991, I participated in the 'World at Work' project, at State level, with Lyn Martinez ... So, my awareness was aroused through engaging in those types of action research projects, and I think I encouraged a lot of other people to do action research in schools. Even if it's only a very small group in your own classroom, it's a process that's about improvement. I find it very effective myself and I know a lot of the teachers I've encouraged to use it have also found it very effective. What I found too was that there were a lot of South Australian and Victorian resources that were around in the early 1990s that were very very helpful in terms of equity issues. And while the focus might have been on stereotyping, they kind of gave you that background knowledge and that interest in looking at it; the construction of gender stuff kept coming to the fore.
In another situation, the consultant mentioned is one who became a mentor for a teacher whose knowledge of gender was extended by participating on a system level committee:
Roma Aloisi is the contact there. She's the consultant for the Faith Formation Teams for the State and she also goes interstate on conferences representing our State CEO [Catholic Education Office]. She has worked very closely with me on the issues that were very specific to our school, but I also worked with Roma for the CEO on a group called the Gender and Equity Reference Group.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CONFERENCES
Professional development (through various organisations) and conference attendance were often cited as being important in raising awareness of different perspectives, and in providing research findings and data to give teachers new or deeper insights on gender. While this would be true of most professional development, the area of gender equity has been one which has involved some of the most significant changes in school practices and thinking about complex issues.
Well it was actually through the YWCA who have done a lot of work in this area - I think they were working in this area before schools were. Then, most government departments tended to get into it in a big way with inclusive language and equal opportunities and all those kind of things, but that came a little bit later I think ... I went to a couple of National Conferences and these issues were talked about quite a lot.
For the principal quoted above, the development of awareness was gradual and over a period of time. For others, new insights occurred more dramatically to give new directions to their thinking. This was the case in the next instance, where the teacher who had not previously considered gender and boys' educational achievements attended a conference and was faced with statistics on boys' low achievement.
At this particular conference about 'Guys and Girls', we got shown the statistics on the HSC [Higher School Certificate] results. I have got to admit that I didn't know that before then and I teach in the system. We were all stunned! Somebody down the back said 'Excuse me Sir, but why?' Now these fellows had spent two or three years analysing these and they, themselves, could not come up with a reason. Now I do have a theory ...
One English teacher had tried to understand what had been happening in gender programs, particularly those that focused on girls. Often progress met with resistance or limited success, seemingly because boys' attitudes remained largely unchanged. In discussing this with a female colleague who had worked extensively with girls, and with the Head of the Drama Department, a decision was made to explore working with boys to change their attitudes, both towards girls and with respect to their own perceptions of masculinity. Attending two national conferences, reading and investigating what others had done, helped this teacher and his colleagues to develop their direction:
I went to a 'Boys Work' Conference in Canberra, and last year I went to another conference on Gender Equity which was once again in Canberra. From these we brought back readings and research. We are continually forming our own views and impressions and are looking at programs which are operating in other schools over East and finding out what other Education Departments are doing. And we linked with what [a colleague] had been doing which was then very much a focus on the girls. And it was broadening as she developed her ideas into more of an approach to gender.We started to get away from this idea of 'just the boys'. We started to look at gender and as we discussed it more, we came to the idea that awareness raising was the most important. After that we had to make the decision as to whether we went for an holistic approach with the whole staff or whether we tried from a very small area of the staff.