‘Being yourself’: everyday ways of doing and being gender in a ‘rights-respecting’ primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with some everyday ways of doing and being gender which proceed from a dominant liberal rights policy and practice discourse within one English ‘rights-respecting’ primary school in England. Drawing on three ethnographic vignettes of data from different spaces within the school, it utilises a Butlerian analytic to interrogate the kinds of subjects that children are entitled and obliged to be as they take up different subject positions proposed to them in the school. The paper engages with this empirical data, to foster and ignite critical sensibilities, especially as these relate to ‘taken-for-granted’ discourses of children’s rights which presume the participation of all children regardless of their differently gendered subjectivities. This analysis puts in question the universal, normative and essentialising effects of the category of the rights-respecting child as always unproblematic and forever productive.

KEYWORDS:

• English primary schooling
• children’s rights
• gendered subjectivities
• citizenship
• post-structural theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rebecca Webb is a Lecturer in Education and Course Leader for an MA in Early Years Education at the University of Sussex. Prior to the completion of her PhD, she worked for many years as a primary school teacher in England and an education advisor for EAL and inclusion, diversity, equity and achievement in South Wales. Her research foci relate to ethnography, particularly contexts in which she can apply ethnographic and observational skills within qualitative educational research projects. Her theoretical interests are broadly focussed on social construction and post-foundational ideas of working with difficulty, contingency and uncertainty.

ORCID

Rebecca Webb http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7555-2112

Notes

1. See Section 2.

2. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is an intergovernmental organisation which relies on funding from voluntary private donors. It was set up in 1946 by the United Nations Convention to provide emergency care and food for children devastated by the effects of World war 11. UNICEF UK is the arm of UNICEF internationally.

3. http://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/about-the-award/awarded-schools/.

4. http://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/about-the-award/awarded-schools/.

5. http://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/about-the-award/what-is-rrsa/features-of-a-rights-respecting-school.