Teaching manfully? Exploring gendered subjectivities and power via analysis of men teachers’ gender performance

Abstract

The notion that teachers’ classroom behaviour and interaction with pupils may be predicted on the basis of their gender underpins recent controversial campaigns to recruit more male teachers in the UK. Teachers’ performances of gender are explored in this article, which draws on three cases from a larger study to analyse the ways in which teachers ascribed male produced their gendered subjectivities in the classroom and in interviews. Findings highlight the extent of diversity in male teachers’ practice and in their constructions of gendered subjecthood, hence providing evidence to question assumptions that male teachers teach, or relate to pupils, in particular ways due to their identification as male. The analysis emphasizes the fluidity and complexity of gender, including the (novel) identification of ‘male femininity’ in male teacher performances. Yet while supportive of the argument that gender is not necessarily tied to sexed bodies, the paper illustrates how embodiment can constrain or facilitate access to, and exercise of, particular gendered discourses, with consequences for power positions. It also highlights how these processes can result in the consolidation of particularly powerful subjectivities, somewhat testing Foucauldian perceptions of power as ‘never localized’. Hence the paper presents a challenge both to education policy makers and to theorists of gender and power.

Notes

1. Of course, the extent of ‘boys’ underachievement’ remains controversial and contested. For further detailed analysis of issues pertaining to gender and achievement see Francis and Skelton (2005).

2. For discussion of the extensive international research evidence that most pupils reject gender as a salient factor in teacher‐pupil relations, and that matching teachers and children by gender and ethnicity has little impact on attainment, see Carrington and Skelton (2003) or Francis et al. (2008).

3. From the theoretical perspective adopted here I feel I should refer to ‘teachers discursively constructed male’ rather than ‘men teachers’, but the former phraseology is rather confusing and difficult to read.

4. Halberstam has not been concerned with ‘Male femininity’ (the inverse to her ‘Female masculinity’ topic) to date, perhaps because she appears, as Paechter (2006) observes, so invested in the promotion of masculinity.

5. The project was led by Christine Skelton (Birmingham University); with Becky Francis (Roehampton University); Bruce Carrington (University of Glasgow); Merryn Hutchings (London Metropolitan University); Barbara Read (Roehampton University); and Ian Hall (University of Newcastle).

6. I have not specified subject areas in order to ensure anonymity. However, it was interesting to see that of the four areas of subject coordination among these teachers, three were in traditionally masculine areas such as ICT and maths.

7. The validity of considering physical/aesthetic aspects in an analysis of masculinity/femininity may be controversial, but is foregrounded as integral and even central by Halberstam (1999).

8. Apparently from a Church of England marketing campaign.

9. Interestingly, Mr Adams associates this ‘parental ability’ with gender, suggesting that women teachers may be better at the ‘strict parent’ role because they have had more practice at it.