‘Doing identity’ in the Botswana classroom: negotiating gendered institutional identities

Abstract

Drawing on post-structural and post-colonial conceptions of gender, this paper explores multiple student masculinities and femininities in the classrooms of four junior secondary schools in Botswana. These gendered identities, it is argued, are negotiated within broader institutional constraints that have been socio-historically produced. Such constraints include the colonial legacy of heavily authoritarian (and inherently gendered) teacher-student relations, which in turn are sustained (and resisted) through the practice of English as the medium of instruction, and a punitive disciplinary regime, which has corporal punishment at its core. Three similar gender performances are identified for both girls and boys: ‘good classroom students’, ‘classroom rebels’, and ‘docile bodies’, though these are discursively produced and interpreted differently, against the norms of masculinity and femininity, and within a pervasive and stereotypical binary gender ideology.

Keywords:

• gender identities
• schooling
• masculinities
• femininities
• Botswana
• teacher-student relations

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank the staff and students of the participating schools for sharing their experiences with me, and to various former colleagues at the University of Botswana for their support and insights during the research.

Notes

1. The eight sub-groups of the Tswana people, who enjoy greater recognition in the Constitution, collectively comprise the majority of the population in Botswana.

2. Some interviews were conducted in English and some were conducted in Setswana and English with the assistance of an interpreter.

3. Extracts at the beginning, middle and the end of each lesson were transcribed, and notes were made on the remaining lesson material.

4. English is the official language used in government and business and, at the time of the research, the medium of instruction from the third year of primary schooling onwards. Setswana is the national language, used in the traditional courts, various public arenas and some of the media, particularly radio, and is the country's lingua franca for everyday transactions; other minority languages go officially unrecognized.

5. A Motswana is a citizen of Botswana; Batswana is the plural noun.

6. This was not only because teachers (female and male) selected more male students but also because in general fewer girls put their hand up to volunteer answers. However, in one class in the most rural school (some) female students answered more questions than (some) male students and there was gender parity in answers in three other classes.