Teaching boys in neoliberal and postfeminist times: Feminization and the question of re-masculinization in the education system and policy field

This paper focuses on teaching boys, male teachers and the question of gendered pedagogies in neoliberal and postfeminist times of the proliferation of new forms of capitalism, multi-mediated technologies and the influence of globalization. It illustrates how a politics of re-masculinization and its reconstitution needs to be understood as set against changing economic and social conditions in which gender equity comes to be re-focused on boys as the ‚new disadvantaged‘. This re-framing of gender equity, it is argued, has been fuelled by both a media-inspired backlash discourse about ‚failing boys‘ and a neo-positivist emphasis on numbers derived primarily from standardized testing regimes at both global and national levels. A media-focused analysis of the proliferation of discourses about ‚failing boys‘ vis-a-vis the problem of encroaching feminization in the school system is provided to illuminate how certain truths about the influence of male teachers come to define how the terms of ensuring gender equity are delimited and reduced to a question of gendered pedagogies as grounded in sexed bodies. Historical accounts of the feminization of teaching in the North American context are also provided as a basis for building a more informed understanding of the present, particularly as it relates to the contextualization of policy articulation and enactment regarding the problem of teaching boys. In light of such historically informed and critical media analysis, it is argued that what is needed is a more informed, evidenced based policy articulation of the problem of teaching boys and a more gender sensitive reflection on the politics of masculinities in postfeminist times. (DIPF/Orig.)

When theories become practice - a metaphorical analysis of adult-education school-leaders’ talk

Marketization has changed the education system. If we say that education is a market, this transforms the understanding of education and influences how people act. In this paper, adult-education school-leaders’ talk is analysed and seven metaphors for education are found: education as administration, market, matching, democracy, policy work, integration and learning. Exploring empirical metaphors provides a rich illustration of coinciding meanings. In line with studies on policy texts, economic metaphors are found to dominate. This should be understood not only as representing liberal ideology, as is often discussed in analyses of policy papers, but also as representing economic theory. In other words, contemporary adult education can be understood as driven by economic theories. The difference and relation between ideology and theory should be further examined since they have an impact on our society and on our everyday lives. (DIPF/Orig.)