Teachers negotiating discourses of gender (in) equality: the case of equal opportunities reform in Andalusia

Abstract

This article is focused on the analysis of the narratives produced by a group of teachers, experts in coeducation, while they were discussing their everyday activities. They are responsible for the implementation of a Plan for Gender Equality in public secondary schools in Andalusia (Spain). This study is based on contributions about doing gender view, according to which gender is not an attribute of individuals, but a way of making sense of interactions and practising a complex system as functioning on three levels: sociocultural, interactional, and individual. We use these levels to understand gender culture in schools through teachers’ discourse. Our interest lies particularly in the meanings, contradictions, difficulties, and conflicts experienced by expert teachers in co-education. Our study was based on group discussions with teachers in charge of the plan for equal opportunities between women and men in school settings. Results show teachers’ conflicts about meanings and how they are supposed to apply the Equality Plan. We observed interactional levels during these conflicts and analysed how teachers construct and validate their discourse.

Keywords:

• doing gender equality
• culture
• discourse practices
• Andalusian Equality Plan
• co-education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For conducting group discussions, we enjoyed the cooperation of advisors from Teacher Centers of Seville and Granada (CEPS) who selected teachers taking into consideration the inclusion criteria. They also provided us with the information to contact them on their centres. We negotiated with teachers and advisors the timetable to collect data. Teachers participated voluntarily and they filled out the authorisation requested to participate and to be video registered.

2. The materials analysed and the results presented in this article come from a larger research project that was funded by a grant from the Andalusian Regional Government (Proyecto de Excelencia ‘Teón XXI: Creación de recursos digitales para el conocimiento y difusión de la cultura de género en la escuela’, P06-HUM-01408), aimed at making a diagnosis of gender culture in secondary schools in Andalusia. Once done, we will discuss the results and point out some preliminary conclusions.

3. To maintain teachers’ confidentiality and anonymity, we have changed their names in the transcripts. We also removed some references with which participants could be identified (names of their centres, names of co-workers, projects in which they were involved, etc.).