Male Teachers as Role Models: Addressing Issues of Masculinity, Pedagogy and the Re-Masculinization of Schooling

Abstract

This article focuses on the call for more male teachers as role models in elementary schools and treats it as a manifestation of “recuperative masculinity politics” (Lingard & Douglas, 1999). Attention is drawn to the problematic gap between neo-liberal educational policy–related discussions about male teacher shortage in elementary schools and research-based literature which provides a more nuanced analysis of the impact of gender relations on male teachers’ lives and developing professional identities. In this sense, the article achieves three objectives: (1) it provides a context and historical overview of the emergence and re-emergence of the male role model rhetoric as a necessary basis for understanding the politics of “doing women’s work” and the anxieties about the status of masculinity that this incites for male elementary school teachers; (2) it contributes to existing literature which traces the manifestation of these anxieties in current concerns expressed in the popular media about the dearth of male teachers; (3) it provides a focus on research-based literature to highlight the political significance of denying knowledge about the role that homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality and hegemonic masculinity play in “doing women’s work.” Thus the article provides a much-needed interrogation of the failure of educational policy and policy-related discourse to address the significance of male teachers “doing women’s work” through employing an analytic framework that refutes discourses about the supposed detrimental influences of the feminization of elementary schooling.

Notes

Notes

1 The term feminization, as it applies to elementary school teaching, relates to three interrelated phenomena: (1) the increasing number of female teachers relative to male teachers; (2) the cultural context or environment of school which is considered to be more “girl friendly”; (3) a backlash politics fuelled by global capitalism, which has had an impact on traditional patterns of employment, relationships, etc. (see Skelton, 2002). As Lingard and Douglas (1999) have argued, this has influenced significantly the perception of women in the workforce in terms of their perceived threat to male power.

2 The media reports included for analysis in this section of the article were selected after conducting an Internet search. They illuminate examples of the popular manifestations of the role model discourse vis-à-vis the call for more male elementary school teachers in the North American context. This is consistent with the analytic perspective on media backlash outlined by Faludi (1991) who claims that the media first introduced the backlash to a national audience in the United States and was instrumental in making it more palatable (p. 77).