Gendered distribution of ‘knowledge required for empowerment’ in Swedish vocational education curricula?

Abstract

Sweden is internationally commended for a high degree of gender equality, but many divisions in Swedish society, including the labour market, disadvantage women. This paper addresses gendered divisions of preparation for civic participation in the vocational upper secondary national curricula, which may participate in reproduction of the pattern. In a comparative analysis of the curriculum guidelines for different vocational upper secondary programmes, we focus on the inclusion of important knowledge for empowerment and how knowledge is contextualised in terms of valued labour positions. We deploy Bernstein’s concepts of horizontal and vertical discourse and Connell’s concepts of production, consumption and gendered accumulation. A general finding is that vertical discourse is contextualised towards discourses of consumption in girl-dominated programmes and towards discourses of production in boy-dominated programmes. Boy-dominated programmes include more knowledge that can be clearly classified in recognised disciplines or fields, whereas girl-dominated programmes include courses of undefined knowledge, such as creativity and entrepreneurship. We conclude that the vocational curricula reinforce rather than challenge existing gender structures in the labour market and wider society. In a historical perspective, it can be concluded that Swedish vocational education policy has a continuum of ‘gender-blindness', and thus confirming with wider norms.

Keywords:

• Vocational education and training
• gender and educational training
• policy analysis
• policy issues
• gender and learning
• curriculum

Notes

1. Bernstein’s (2000) theory of the pedagogic device builds on three sets of rules. First, distributive rules, concerning how different types of knowledge and consciousness are distributed between different social groups. Second, recontextualising rules, concerning the construction of pedagogic discourse through the recontextualisation of knowledge from a field outside education to ‘school knowledge’. Third, evaluative rules, concerning the criteria for assessment or evaluation of the texts produced. Though touching on all three aspects in this study, we focus primarily on the distributive rules, in contrast to the tradition primarily concerned with epistemic relations, which generally focuses on the recontextualising rules.

2. e.g. the diploma goals, subject plans and course syllabi for the Restaurant and Management programme consists of 4182 words.

3. Interestingly, a discourse of perspective-taking and intercultural competence, resembling the ‘caring for others’ discourse, is present in curricula for several of the boy-dominated programmes. e.g. ‘The education should thus develop students’ ability to work both independently, and in teams where people with different knowledge and cultural backgrounds cooperate to solve problems.’ (Vehicle and Transport programme, Diploma goals). ‘Students should thus in all subjects work on developing their language skills and get opportunities of meeting and discussing different perspectives on people’s living conditions in society.’ (Building and Construction programme, Diploma goals). ‘The education should develop students’ ability to cooperate with others irrespective of e.g. gender, cultural background, age, position or competence, since working groups in industry are often heterogeneous.’ (Industrial Technology programme, Diploma goals). However, as with the caring discourse in the Health and Care, and Child and Recreation, programme curricular texts, the discourse is legitimised through the perspectives of the vocation and the employers, rather than from the perspective of the students’ citizenship education.

4. See Table 4.