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Abstract
This article is based on an interview study with 14 women teachers in Icelandic primary schools (6–16 years old). It presents their experiences and opinions about the differences in teaching boys and girls as well as what they believe about their prospects and possibilities in school and in the future. It also portrays their opinions regarding the so called ‘boys' debate’. The study found that the interviewees see clear gender patterns among students but also very strong individual differences. The interviewees emphasised that individual differences among teachers are most important, although there are gender patterns. The article is critical of the myth that boys in particular need ‘male role models’, and it argues that student teachers of both genders should be equally prepared to teach children of both genders.
Notes
Correspondence: Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, Associate Professor of Education, University of Akureyri, Thingvallastræti 23, IS‐602 Akureyri, Iceland. E‐mail: [email protected], website: www.ismennt.is/not/ingo
By considering the boys' debate and conducting the interview study from a pro‐feminist point of view, I contribute to the scholarship of men and women who use feminist approaches to understand education. The term pro‐feminism refers to the fact that I want to be cautious of proclaiming myself a feminist (see also Lingard & Douglas, Citation1999). However, in this article no distinction is made between feminist and pro‐feminist literature.
I decided to use the word ‘gender’ throughout the article because in most cases we were talking about social rather than biological sameness or difference, although, in some instances, I believe that it is more likely that the interviewees would have used the word ‘sex’ had they been answering in English.