Exploring feminism in a multicultural classroom: using Bend it Like Beckham as a tool in a high school class

Abstract

This study concerns itself with a classroom project in English class where the film Bend it Like Beckham was shown to two multicultural classes in a high school in Oslo, Norway, with a view towards exploring students’ understandings and attitudes towards gender. Using an ethnographic methodology informed by feminist approaches, findings indicate that students, on the one hand, valorised modern values such as educational attainment, self-fulfillment and the equal sharing of domestic chores, while, on the other hand, they were equally eager to preserve traditional practices such as wearing the hijab and marrying within their own ethnicity and religion.

Keywords:

• Gender
• education
• multiculturalism
• Norway
• feminism