Walls, seats and the gymnasium: a social-material ethnography on gendered school space in an Icelandic compulsory school

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on how students make use of different spaces in one compulsory school in Iceland and how gender is produced through activities in these spaces. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted for three months in 2016 among 8^th and 9^th graders at one public school in Iceland. Our analysis is based on poststructural and material theorisation in a country with one of the most progressive curricula in the world. It indicates that the school environment favours dividing practices between boys and girls in both overt and subtle ways, with a relative lack of resistance to gender division. The division and gender order are maintained through discourse and practices that support particular forms of masculinity with an emphasis on athletic embodiment and sports knowledge. This gender division affects power relations in the classroom, hindering the facilitation of gender-inclusive environments and gender-sensitive practices that are obligatory in Icelandic education policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Compulsory school
• ethnography
• discursive
• material
• space
• gender binary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Iceland was under the Danish monarchy until 1944, and until 1999 Danish was the first second language at the compulsory school level. Currently, students learn Danish from 7^th to 10^th grade.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by The University of Iceland Research Fund [grant number HI17120065]; NordForsk via the Nordic Centre of Excellence: Justice through Education in the Nordic Countries [grant number 57741].