Gender Research

To understand what is taught and learned in schools, curriculum researchers must explore understandings of masculinity and femininity because they are interwoven with formal school subjects, sports and clubs, and discipline and authority. Gender has always been a dimension of schooling with some differentiation, and often segregation, of females and males common worldwide. Popular beliefs attribute differences between males and females to biology, but bodily processes are objects of social practice. Research has documented the mutability, socially constructedness, and historical specificity of what counts as male and female and as masculine and feminine. Schools are invoked in current assessments of gains toward and unfulfilled hopes of gender equality. Schools are now understood as places that produce gendered beings and understandings rather than just responding to ...