Gender, policy and initial teacher education

Abstract

An examination of gender discourses within New Labour education policy on the preparation of students for a career in teaching in the UK reveals a contradictory yet, at the same time, complementary position. In the guidelines outlining the Standards that a prospective teacher has to achieve, the ways in which gender informs pupils’ educational opportunities is ‘played down’ in that it is not addressed directly. Rather ‘gender’, along with ethnicity, social class, disability and sexuality is embedded within the broader concept of ‘diversity’. At the same time, gender is foregrounded in education policy on the recruitment of teachers with the drive by the Training and Development Agency to encourage men into primary schools. This article explores these tensions and relates these to the published research on the experiences of male primary teachers. It concludes by arguing for a recognition of student/practicing teachers’ real concerns regarding the gender issues which influence and inform their professional choices and careers rather than those set by the Government agenda.

Notes

1. These discourses are particular to the UK context as, as Gaby Weiner has pointed out, teacher education is not the same in other parts of Europe—where in Sweden, for example, in recent years, attempts have been made to raise the professional status of teachers by bringing teacher education into the university and increasing funding for research into schools and teachers’ work. Importantly, Weiner (2000, 2002) indicates that the policy framework here in the UK is based on neo‐liberalism, where ‘human capital theories (link) investment in education to economic productivity’ (2000, p. 61) whilst in much of Europe it is social democratic principles that inform educational initiatives.

2. Few details are provided about the methodology of this research other than it was carried out by NOP World who undertook 1000 telephone interviews with parents of children of primary school age living in England, between 16 and 21 June 2005. See TDA press release: www.tda.gov.uk/about/mediarelations/2005/20051013.aspx?keywords=%22male+primary+school+advisory+panel%22.